Morning on Coruscant, the city awakes

To the spires of the Jedi Temple

The pilotman pilots, the senator lies

Near the spires of the Temple

To the Jedi as loud as the thunder

To the little ones soft as a psalm

And some say the soul of the city's

The stroll of Jedi

The Jedi of the Temple

Look at them, they're beautiful, no?

So many colors of saber, so many changing moods

Because you know, they didn't come back all by themselves

- They didn't? -

No, silly boy.

Up there, high, high in the central tower

lives the mysterious Chosen One.

Who is this creature

- Who? -

What is he?

- What? -

How did he come to be there?

- How? -

Hush, and Artoo will tell you

It is a tale, a tale of a man and a monster.

Dark was the night when our tale was begun

In the alleys near the Temple

Four shadowy figures slipped through the streets, dodging the security guards. Though they were Jedi, and still technically legally allowed to be around, almost every one of them had been accused of some sort of crime the punishment for which was death. And though they could fight off many, they could not fight off every guard on Coruscant. Which was why they slipped through the night and the shadows to reach the sanctuary of the Temple, the only place the sovereign of the galaxy would not violate.

One of the Jedi clutched a precious bundle close to her chest, one that threatened to give away their presence.

"Shut him up, will you?" the angry padawan Vos hissed.

"We'll be spotted!" Reeft pointed out.

"Hush, little one," Shmi Skywalker said, attempting to soothe the upset child in her arms.

Four frightened Jedi slid silently through

The alleys near the Temple

"Forty credits for safe passage to the Temple," Kit Fisto attempted to bargain.

But the taxi driver just smirked and backed away as a dark figure emerged from the shadows backed by his enslaved clone army and a myriad of droids.

But a trap had been laid for the Jedi

And they gazed up in fear and alarm

At a figure whose clutches

Were iron as much as the spires

"Count Yan Dooku," Kit Fisto breathed. "Run!"

The spires of the Temple

The four Jedi turned and ran through the streets, deflecting blaster fire from the clones and the droids as they went. They zigzagged and sped through the twists and turns, drawing ever closer to the Temple. But the clones were too well-trained, the droids too numerous. Reeft was the first to fall, a blaster bolt penetrating his leg and driving him to the ground. As he collided with the street below him, clones swarmed him and clapped him in stun cuffs.

Quinlan Vos's face turned as Reeft fell. He charged the clones chasing them. They surrounded him and quickly overwhelmed him, leaving him cuffed and prone on the street behind them as they ran.

Count Yan Dooku longed

To purge the worlds

Of vice and sin

The two remaining Jedi ran as hard as they could, pelting down the street, ever closer to the Temple. But the clones led by Dooku outpaced them, and they were surrounded.

Kit Fisto deactivated his lightsaber and clipped it to his belt. Shmi did the same, clutching her bundle even closer to her chest. Kit Fisto put his arm around her and pushed her behind him in a futile attempt to protect his comrade in arms.

And he saw corruption

Ev'rywhere

Except within

Dooku stepped forward, his cape billowing behind him with a light night breeze. "Bring these Jedi vermin to the palace of justice."

"You there, what are you hiding?" one of the guards asked, gesturing to Shmi Skywalker.

"Stolen goods, no doubt," Dooku said. "Take them from her."

"No!" Shmi cried. Everyone around her was blown back several feet. Her lightsaber leaped to her and sprung to life, blue blade humming. She jumped over the prone bodies of the guards and Dooku, pelting up the steps of the Jedi Temple.

She ran

Dooku and the clones were the first to pick themselves up. Shmi batted away flying bolts, her feet flying up the steps. She skidded to a stop at the newly walled away Great Hall of the Jedi Temple and pounded on the large double doors made of cortosis ore.

"Sanctuary!" she cried. "Please give us sanctuary!"

But the doors didn't open. There was hardly anyone left to listen to her pleas, hardly anyone at all to open to the desperate Jedi.

The clones had her cornered. Their bolts flew thick and fast. Shmi batted them away, her blue blade a blur, but in protecting the child in her arms, several bolts snuck past her defenses. An arm, a leg, a shoulder. But she fought on, unwilling to fall, until another blade, a blade Shmi knew used to be green, deflected a bolt she had batted away back into her stomach. She cried out and crumpled, using the last of her strength to protect her baby as she fell.

Dooku stepped through the clones and clapped a hand to the shoulder of the dark shrouded figure that once was Qui-Gon Jinn, now Darth Rainfire. "Very good, my apprentice. Impeccable timing, as always."

"Thank you, Master Tyrannous," Darth Rainfire said, bowing his head. He deactivated his brilliant red lightsaber and clipped it to his belt.

"Now, what have we here?" Dooku kicked aside the blanket that covered the bundle lying on the now prone Shmi Skywalker's chest.

A small, red baby lay on his mother's chest, fists tightly clenched and waving in the air. At the exposure to the cold night air, the baby began to squall.

"A baby?" Dooku exclaimed.

"This is the child of Shmi Skywalker," the erstwhile Qui-Gon Jinn commented. "She is the one who conceived a child with no father the month Darth Sidious upset the balance. He is the Chosen One, prophesied to bring balance to the Force."

"He will end you," Shmi gasped with her last breath. "My Anakin…" She stroked her child's cheek. Her hand fell away lifeless to the duracrete of the Temple steps.

Shmi Skywalker was dead.

"A monster!" Dooku exclaimed. He ignited his lightsaber and raised it above his head. The Chosen One must not live to thwart his plans of galactic domination.

"Stop!"

Cried Obi-Wan Kenobi.

"This is an unholy demon," Dooku explained. "I'm sending it back to hell, where it belongs."

But the young, furious Obi-Wan Kenobi could not be moved. He knew the tenets of the Code he had been raised with, the Code that could not be beaten out of him. And he knew he was the one Jedi that neither Dooku nor Qui-Gon Jinn could bring themselves to kill. He wielded his words as weapons, now that his weapon of choice, his lightsaber, had been banned outside the deep confines of the Temple.

"See there the innocent blood you have spilt

On the steps of the Temple."

"I am guiltless," Dooku protested, though the boy's words should not penetrate his conscience the way they did. Something about the innocent, indignant fury of the teen's fiery blue eyes drove into his soul. "She ran, I pursued."

"Now you would add this child's blood to your guilt

On the steps of the Temple."

"My conscience is clear," Dooku said, glancing over at his apprentice. It was due to him that the boy still lived, his lingering care that the words were able to upset his control over his anger and his rage.

Darth Rainfire scowled. "You meddle in things you do not understand, Obi-Wan. It is best that the child die. You must trust me."

"You can lie to yourself and your minions

You can claim that you haven't a tremble

But you never can run from

Nor hide what you've done from the eyes

The very eyes of the Temple."

The spires loomed high over Dooku, the only home he himself had known. That was where he'd learned the tenets that drove him to destroy the corruption in the former Republic, the corruption he'd found at the very heart of the Jedi. But in his quest to destroy the corruption, had he become the very thing he'd sought to destroy?

Impossible! And yet… The boy still strangely moved Dooku. Something in Dooku left from when he was just a boy learning at the late Master Yoda's feet trembled. What would his old master think could he see him now?

And for one time in his life

Of power and control

Dooku felt a twinge of fear

For his immortal soul

"What must I do?" Dooku asked, still not quite sure why he turned to Obi-Wan Kenobi, the last beloved protégé of Yoda, for advice.

"Care for the child, and raise it as your own," Obi-Wan said.

"What? I'd be saddled with this bright...this prophesied…?" Dooku stammered.

"Bane of the Sith?" Darth Rainfire finished.

Uneasiness rolled off Dooku's apprentice. Diving deep into it, Dooku could tell the uneasiness came both from his master's capitulation and from the words of Obi-Wan. Dooku was not the only one with the ghost of Master Yoda haunting him.

"Very well," Dooku said. "Let him live with you, in your Temple." If Obi-Wan wanted the child alive, it would be his responsibility. Dooku had no use for a child, especially one so bright and with such a dangerous future. He already had an apprentice. He had no use for another, and no desire to furnish Qui-Gon with the means to overthrow him.

"Live here? Where?" Obi-Wan asked.

"Anywhere," Dooku said.

"Just so he's kept locked away

Where no one else can see

"The Temple Spire, perhaps. And who knows, the Force works in mysterious ways.

"Even this foul creature may

Yet prove one day to be

Of use to me."

Now here is a riddle to guess if you can

Sing the spires of the Temple

Who is the monster and who is the man?

Sing the spires, spires, spires, spires,

Spires, spires, spires, spires

Spires of the Temple.