Author's Note: With the semester behind me, I can finally update! Sory for the long wait.

Chapter Twelve: Slaves No More

At the Chancellor's order, the Senate Building became quiet as a tomb. Senators looked around in confusion and slight fear before all eyes in the rotunda locked on Jesse and Rex. The two clones went ramrod straight and tilted their heads toward Sidious in unison. They raised their blasters to put the nearest senator, Padme Amidala, in the iron sights of their weapons. "As you command, Lord Sidious."

A fearful look came over the senator. "What is the meaning of this, Chancellor?!"

The Dark Lord looked at Rex and Jesse as if he expected death screams twenty minutes ago. Then, the Dark Lord turned his gaze to the young dragon. "If you wish to save the one you love, dear boy, join me, and I will cancel the command." He whispered to Anakin before Jesse and Rex moved their weapons to rest with the blasters parallel to their bodies. "What is the meaning of this?!" He scowled in a fracturing tone of attempted calm. "I am The Emperor, and you are in love with a Senator who is an enemy of order and control in my Galactic Empire!" His lips quirked in a slight smile before he picked up Padme in a choke, even as searing pain arced through Sidious' features. "Listen, boy."

Ripples of shock spread through the room as senators from all over the Galaxy looked in horror at the senator from Naboo held at blaster point by two GAR troopers on the orders of a crazed man who named himself Emperor. Worse yet, this same man led the Republic into a war they did not have to fight! Now, he held a senator in midair as she clawed vainly at her neck.

All the ruckus rattled in Anakin's mind like a large shopping center in the Upper Levels packed with people. "(SILENCE!)" Anakin finally shouted in his mother tongue when he could stand no more of the worrying chatter.

Everyone froze at the roar and stared at the stranger in shock. The formerly bustling Senate Hall now made not so much as a rodent's squeak. Anakin surveyed the faces around him. Most of the senators in the room showed their fear plainly in various unconscious reactions, analogous to pale faces in Humans. Most eyes in the room now seemed locked on the helpless senator.

Anakin glared at Palpatine for only a moment before his expression turned apathetic. "Kill her, beat her, burn her with lightning." Anakin chuckled darkly as the rhythm of the Force flowed through him, Ashla ebbing away slightly and Bogan growing but restrained. "I have no love for a foul Nekrio!" Anakin turned and snatched her out of The Pretender's grip as an adult might take a toy from a child. "Go home to Palo before I decide to ignore Ahsoka's warnings in my head."

Padme glanced at Ahsoka for a moment, likely seeking support from the girl. An angry hiss and bared fangs greeted her plea. The woman jumped back in fear. "Ahsoka?!"

Ahsoka shook her head. "You've done enough damage, Senator. Leave like Anakin said."

"A-Anakin?!" Padme looked at the blue-eyes beast with black jagged scales as he stood behind Sheev Palpatine. When those eyes looked in her direction with an irritated snort, Padme ran.

As Padme ran, the chatter that started while she, Anakin, and Ahsoka talked started again. Thousands of hushed whispered meshed together into an unintelligible mass of sound. When Bail Organa moved his pod to a speaker position in the center of the room, all voices faded off into quiet. "Dooku sent this bounty hunter and his apprentice to give a message." Bail Organa answered above the chaos. At his voice, the ruckus in the chamber quieted. Bail then turned to the strange scaly creature as the male stood, tensed in rage, behind the

soon-to-be former Chancellor. "We would hear your message…"

Snips, take Rex and Jesse back with you to begin processing the Ro-Nata for his cell in the prison below The Temple. Anakin smiled at her and brushed their Bond gently to draw one last bit of strength from her before he began. Then, his smile turned to a frown of worry. "Senators, I hail from a system outside the bounds of Republic Space." The young halfling looked around himself at the room. "The only home I knew, Tattooine, faced lawlessness, and no one questioned slavery in fear of The Hutts." Anakin sighed as memories of his boyhood brought the shine of tears to his eyes. With a gentle hand on his arm through The Bog'shla from Ahsoka, she eased his pain and helped him bear the sorrow of his mother in that moment. "The Jedi tore me from the arms of my mother with promises of training to protect innocents with marvelous power and to travel the stars."

Many in the rotunda listened with rapt attention, but a few of the oily snakes cast angry expressions his way: Trade Federation and Kaminoan senators mostly.

Anakin turned his attention to these senators and flashed a deadly, fanged smile at both for a moment before he continued as if he did not notice them. "The Force bid me to train under their tutelage and even gain a student of my own in time, but when Jedi betrayed Ahsoka to rot before you ravening wolves without defense and had the AUDACITY to ask her back as if nothing happened. It was then we left The Jedi Order for the diseased creatures they are."

Anakin shook his head and almost howled as memories of that day ran through him again: icy, invisible chains and stone of The Bogan on his ankles, the rage and pain that allowed him to temporarily reverse the flow of The Bogan back to its user, and the peace and contentment as he held Ahsoka and guarded her while they walked out.

"After that, we were guided to my home system where I met with my kin and people." Anakin chose this moment to stretch his wings and glide around the surprisingly spacious room. "They don't like politics, and politicians are about a half-step above prostitutes." Anakin landed with a heavy screeching thud as his foot claws tore into the hover pod occupied by Trade Federation delegates. "They eat politicians who actually serve as double agents and show themselves to be lower than dirty tapeworms, feeding off the ill health of the institution and its disgruntled Mid-Rim and Outer Rim victims to make themselves fat, happy, and apathetic!" Anakin's eyes blazed with dangerously vivid red as he spoke. "Traitors are dealt with swiftly…" Anakin gripped the entire pod and tore it from its wall moorings. "…without mercy or pity!"

"DOOKU PROMISED US POWER AND INFLUENCE IF WE SPIED FOR HIM!"

Anakin recoiled and hissed involuntarily as the Nemodians in the pod proceeded to soil and wet themselves. Still, they clung to the pod like a life raft. "Cowards and worms don't deserve to live!"

Lod Dodd actually screamed and began crying like a child!

Anakin forced a laugh down and kept his face unreadable but would be lying if he said he didn't enjoy stripping The Trade Federation of their polished exterior to expose the putrid mass beneath. "I have a good mind to take the lot of you to Tattooine and feed you to a Sarlacc or Krat Dragon!"

"Dooku promised…" the lead Nemoidian delegate whimpered like a child not allowed to play.

"Dooku is paying me and my Sol Mythrin to end this war." Anakin countered. "He neglected to specify how." Anakin glared at the delegation as they all shrank away. Then, he reattached the pod to the wall.

Shocked faces ran along the entire room of representatives. Hushed whispers grew after Anakin gave the senators much to consider about so-called "allies".

Finally, the young halfling turned to the Senators. "Dooku is calling a cease fire!" Anakin's passion thundered through the building. "The bloodshed can stop! Downloaded to your data pads are copies of the treaty proposed by The Count of Soreno!" Anakin flapped his wings slowly and looked at each delegate in turn. "Consider your people, not your credit accounts or your possible gains. Consider your people. Anyone who wants to argue, I can introduce to Draconian 'aggressive negotiations'. Am I understood?!"

The room fell dead as a tomb. No one knew what to make of this reptilian as he took down nearly three years of fighting in the span of five could feel outrage from some senators, and part of him wanted them angry. Anger sharpened the senses but, without control, often turned the most cunning beings into fools. The young dragon wanted -no he needed- them to be foolish because then the young hybrid would have a legitimate claim to self-defense in the eyes of Republic and Draconian Law alike. Such as it was, Anakin waited.

Senators scanned over the treaty with some measure of haste. Anakin could feel when most of the senators came to the part concerning the treatment of clones during peacetime. The most violent reaction came from the Kaminoan "senator": Halle Burtoni.

"These products are property of Kamino!" The tall, nigh anorexic-looking…creature caused a growling curse roughly translated with some of the scalding intent lost in translation in Basic as "vile beast" to leave Anakin's lips in a whisper.

"Kel'araz!"

The senator continued, either ignorant or spiteful. "They have no rights!" She intoned, her voice calling Anakin's instincts like a bleeding fish called sharks. "They are product, no different than the blasters or armor we provide for the soldiers."

Anakin nearly snapped her twig of a neck with a quick claw swipe, but the soothing presence of Ahsoka's signature held him. Instead, he flew and hovered in the center of the room as to not be ignored by anyone and sharpened his rage into a fine point before the former slave of Tatooine. "Have you so quickly forgotten The Rakata who enslaved every sentient not of their own race?!" Pain and rage rattled the walls so fiercely, many yelled and ducked in their pods for a meager hint of safety. "You have mere Legends of their cruelty, but my people have long memories and recall bloody battles where thousands of Sol Mythrin pairs fought and died to keep Rakatan claws from our Hatchlings!" Tears rolled freely as Yggdrasil opened to Anakin and allowed him to experience the pain and death of battles long forgotten by The Galaxy at large. With a mournful cry that brought tears to all but the coldest beings in the room, a calm fell over the assembly.

In that moment of agony, peace brought by The Sisters themselves gave Anakin the ancient monarchs wishes for the clones. Anakin then stared at Halle Burtoni. "My Queens and The Draconian Castle Council know of your barbarism towards many Hatchlings under the care of your people." Anakin flew to meet her, his face centimeters from hers. "Free them, or face annihilation." Anakin demanded. "By Draconian Law, your people are already marked for planetary destruction by The Castle with your world to be inherited by the men who fought and died for this war." Anakin flashed his fangs at the Kaminoan. "The choice is yours: become a protectorate of My Queens by giving full rights to all clones or have your people slaughtered for their crimes against Hatchlings." Anakin grimaced as he remembered the exact words of The Sisters in those final moments of his time in Yggdrasil. "If it comes to war over these child warriors, pray the Dark Queen stays asleep. While the Light Queen will just kill the lot of you," Anakin informed with a small, poisonous smile. "The Dark Queen will make it so you'll never so much as step foot in a place of lawmakers again. Do not think you can sway the terms of this treaty. Take it or leave it."

The Kaminoan glowered at Anakin. The expression wasn't visible, but the creature's eyes showed the glimmer of rage in her face. "We will never bow to some inferior…lizards!"

Anakin closed his eyes and willed the anger generated by the horrid insult to pass into the Bog'shla without hindrance to vanish into the cosmos. "You have been weighed. You have been measured, and you have been found wanting."

Meanwhile; Ahsoka, Rex, and Jesse escorted their prisoner to The Jedi Temple. With a hood over him and clone troopers with a Jedi, the Chancellor looked like a common criminal. Sidious' once haughty, all-knowing visage now marred itself with a scowl as the group neared the temple. Jedi sentries eyed the newcomers with a cautious but accepting head turn to keep a watch on them as they did for anyone going in or coming out of the Jedi Temple.

Ahsoka let out a dry laugh as she walked up the steps to the entrance. "I never thought I'd ever come back here, Rex."

The captain of the 501st nodded in understanding. "I don't blame you, Commander."

Ahsoka tensed for a moment at her former rank within the GAR. "Rex, I'm not your immediate CO anymore."

Rex grinned under his helmet. "You aren't the brash child you once were, Ahsoka." He put a gauntlet-covered hand on here shoulder. "If I were Grand Master Yoda, I would put both you and General Skywalker on the Council immediately."

For a moment, Ahsoka pictured the old green master in a miniature form of Rex's armor and laughed heartily at the image her mind conjured. Then, Ahsoka felt the overwhelming wash of Ashla light and stumbled slightly before she gaged and regained herself.

Palpatine's serpentine voice took Ahsoka from her thoughts, "Wretched, is it not?" Palpatine smiled for the briefest moment before his scowl returned, somehow deeper and more set than before. "They serve power instead of seising it for themselves."

Jesse hit him in the back with the butt of his rifle, "Quiet!"

Ahsoka held up a hand. "Calm down, Jesse." The Togruta said gently. "I know he planned to use you and your brothers, but vengeance will be served in time."

Palpatine usually loved when fear empowered him in The Dark Side, but the shiver that ran down his spine at the girl's words drove fear deep into him without a feeling of power and strength to come with it. Empty fear settled in his gut as the group traveled ever deeper into the bowels of the complex. Suddenly, Palpatine felt The Force shift towards The Dark Side. Dusty stone slabs and empty torch holders replaced the fine metal and stonework of The Jedi and nearly reeked of The Bogan.

A pulsing red pyramid about the size of a fist beckoned toward the four. Ahsoka looked at Rex and Jesse before she gave a hand signal to retreat. For a moment, Rex hesitated even as Jesse jogged back to the room entrance. Then, with a reluctant sigh, Rex followed his brother out for the room.

With a satisfied nod, Ahsoka then turned her attention to Sidious and the Sith holocron. "You say you seek ultimate power, Sidious?" She frowned at him and waved her hand. The holocron shimmered and undulated before it changed to a purple heptahedron. "Open it, and ultimate power will be yours." Ahsoka promised before she got up and left him there. He'll die trying to open it because it's a Draconian Holocron. With a quick flick of her hand once she was outside the doorway, a massive slab slid in and blocked the door with no hope of prying it open with tools due to the fine cut of the stone or blasting it open due to ancient wards in The Bog'shla itself to protect this unfathomably ancient ruin. A parting gift, Ahsoka thought with no small hint of satisfaction as she trailed back to the gifts Shmi left for Anakin on Tattooine. A gift from Nicholai and Shmi Skywalker to show you what happens when Ro-Narta try to corrupt their hatchling.

The feeling of smug victory evaporated when Ahsoka saw Rex and Jesse taking cover behind a wall at the edge of the main room of the building. She looked at Rex worriedly who simply gestured and nodded towards temple guards. A part of Ahsoka wondered for only a moment why temple guards were here. Then, she saws Mace Windu, purple saber blazing, as he marched for them with guards behind.

"Ahsoka Tono, you are under arrest for kidnapping The Supreme Chancellor!"

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