OMG IT'S FINALLY HAPPENED! I TOLD YOU ALL I WOULD COME BACK TO THIS!

Thank Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni, seeing Luke in the Mandalorian brought the Star Wars spark back and I felt inspired to write and continue and hopefully finish some of these Star Wars series again, and I've been riding that high every time I start to slump.

I apologize if it starts out rough. To be fair it's been FOUR YEARS (Or more) since I wrote this story and it's a little rough to get back into the feel of the near end of the last book of a series.

Anyway, LOOK, IT'S THE NEXT CHAPTER OMOAIFEJALIGJRILAJGFOEFJAOGIJRAO;VRIJA!

I might still be slow with updates because I have six or seven other projects I've also been working on, plus I'm SUPPOSED to be searching for a job in the writing field and need to write pieces for my applications, among many other things, BUT I AM UPDATING.

I wanted to do this all before Christmas, but this one got slowed down because, like I said, it's a little rough to get back into a story that you haven't written in so long.

Anyway, PLEASE REVIEW (And have mercy on my return chapter)!

Enjoy!

When Luke stepped out of the bathroom, he looked like himself again. Freshly shaved, blonde hair, and he'd even taken the time to give himself a trim, since his hair had grown too long for his liking. Of course, he also took the time to shower and clean up since he'd just been buried alive not too long ago, so he not only looked like himself, but he felt like himself as well—completely refreshed.

However, by the time he stepped out of the bathroom, his father, sister, and newly minted fiancé weren't in sight. Only Han, Chewie, and his mother remained, and the looks on their faces made him unsettled and worried. Had something happened in the brief time he'd been in the bathroom that caused all the Force-sensitives besides himself to be called away? Had the plants in the Jedi Temple attacked and an all-hands-on deck situation erupted.

No, if that had been the case, Luke would have been brought along as more much needed help. So what—

Padmé saw Luke standing just in the hallway, and her worried features immediately softened, going up to her returned son with a gentle, overjoyed expression on her face. Her hands gently touched his cheeks, her touch feather light since Luke had just shaved, even though there wasn't any visible knicks on his skin.

"Oh…I'm so glad to see you home safe," she said gratefully, pulling Luke into her arms again without any resistance on Luke's part. He'd put his mother through so much stress recently, he wasn't about to deny her anything.

Well…maybe one thing.

As Luke pulled back, he frowned slightly at his mother, the concern in his eyes. "Where did everyone else go?"

Padmé reflexively looked in the direction of the temple, which only helped to solidify Luke's theories even more. "Anakin told me to tell you that they're handling part of that inside problem at the Temple."

Luke looked up sharply in the direction he knew the Temple was. His first instinct was to immediately make chase and get to the Temple before chaos hit—his body even leaned forward to start moving. However, he held himself back. If they thought they needed his help, they would have told him—they would still call him if things went south. Anakin had a point when he'd highlighted the repercussions of Luke being part of the group to go into the Temple and start arresting and fighting Jedi. It wouldn't be pretty, so Luke had to be the last resort backup. He had to stay put here with his mother, Han, and Chewie.

Padmé was watching his face carefully, trying to discern what was happening or what Luke was going to do by the shifts on his face. "Are you going with them?"

Luke looked back at his mother, giving her a slight, gentle smile that had been absent from his expression for far too long. "No. Not yet, anyway. My presence would only complicate things if I was there for what's going on right now."

"Can you at least tell us what's going on, Kid?" Han asked with a note of frustration in his voice.

"Not this time, Han. Absolute secrecy and all that."

"Sounds like some pretty big stuff," Han mused, taking a seat on one of the veranda couches. "I look forward to hearing all the detailed stories of what happened, then, when its all over," he said, though the gloominess in his tone gave away the fact that he still wanted to be a part of the action.

"Threepio?" Padmé called deeper into the home, and the gold droid waddling out into the veranda from the hallway. "Could you get us some hot cafs from the kitchen? I think we all need something nice and hot to drink."

"Of course, Miss Padmé," Threepio answered graciously, heading back the way he came to get the requested drinks from the kitchen.

After asking Threepio to make the drinks, Padmé released Luke and carefully took a seat on the couch opposite Han. Luke, however, couldn't find it in himself to sit down calmly. Out of everyone here, he was the one who knew what was happening. So, he stayed on his feet and started pacing, tension tight in his limbs as he waited for some kind of sign or knowledge of what was going on at the Temple.

He wouldn't be able to rest until he knew that the situation was taken care of, and everyone on the list he had given Anakin was detained.

*At the Temple*

It was always noticeable when a large group of Jedi walked into the Temple at the same entrance at the same time. Even more noticeable when it was their group, with the Grandmaster and his daughter, and Mara Jade, with Galen Marek, Obi-Wan, and Windu met them halfway through the Temple…

They were drawing eyes, and it made Anakin uncomfortable, knowing how long the list of Jedi they had to detain was. They needed to hide away before they drew that unwanted attention that could potentially compromise their current element of surprise. All it would take was one jumpy turned Jedi to see them and decide to act on a whim, and chaos would erupt in a rapid domino effect.

The group stepped aside into a quiet room out of the prying eye of the Jedi in the Temple, Obi-Wan and Windu immediately turning to Anakin with Galen shutting and locking the door behind them.

"How do you want to do this? There's not as many of us as I would like, but we don't exactly have the time to gather more people?" Obi-Wan commented.

"This should have been done earlier, before Judro's death. Then we could have properly prepared, and we wouldn't have trigger-happy threats spread across the Temple four or five times as large as the people available to apprehend them," Windu said disapprovingly.

"I needed time to look over the list. And there were other pressing matters I was trying to handle, as you well know," Anakin replied calmly. He looked over at Galen. "We should focus on the most dangerous and the jumpiest first. Detain the biggest threats so that we don't have to worry about them while we're trying to round up the others. And going after the jumpiest lessens the chance for this to get messy. As long as we can keep the others from noticing their conspirators are being arrested."

"Do you already know who the most dangerous are?" Mara asked.

"Some. Others are more unpredictable, but we'll have to worry about them second in favor of the jumpy ones." Anakin did a quick head count, then mentally paired everyone off. "Galen, go with Windu, Leia with Obi-Wan, and Mara, you'll be with me."

"That's only three of Judro's plants at a time. We might want to go individually to—" Galen started to suggest, but Anakin cut him off.

"No. Some of these people will be extremely dangerous if they feel they've been caught or are being backed into a corner. For everyone's safety, it's better if no one goes alone. Pairs. We'll just have to be extra careful not to raise any alarm. Come up with any ruse you have to in order to get them to follow you, just try to do it quietly. The last thing we need is people being attacked in the Temple left and right, so again, detain as many people as you can as quietly as you can," Anakin stressed. "Windu and Galen, take the north end of the temple. Obi-Wan and Leia, the south. Mara, we're going to start at the east and work our way to the middle."

"What are we going to do with them once they're detained?" Windu asked. "We could vacate the storage rooms for the time being and put them in there until we can properly transfer them to a prison."

Anakin was tempted to say no, but it was the best option they had for temporarily hiding a group of detainees until they had full control of the situation. "That will have to do for now. Everyone make sure you have restraints ready—I don't want to risk someone waking up from a Force induced sleep and freeing the others. Here's the list."

Reaching into his pack, Anakin pulled out five small holodisks that had Luke's list of possible security threats and gave one to everyone so they knew who they were looking for. Each name had an image from the Temple archives to go with it so they could be easily identified, and addition Anakin made in his spare time to make this process go a little smoother. With that, their small group broke off in their pairs, some going to get restraints while the others went to locate the first targets. There was a tension in the air that Anakin was trying to stifle so no one could pick up on it, and he silently prayed to the Force in his mind that they could get at least half the names on the list before the alarm was raised, even with their unfortunately slow pace thanks to their small number.

Mara stayed by Anakin's side, the pair receiving looks as they walked between the Grandmaster being out and about and Mara, who had been presumed dead until she very publicly saved Luke on live television. Seeing her meant that Luke was back, and seeing her with Anakin, unfortunately meant that something was probably happening. He probably should have thought this pairing through before they left, but now it was too late to go back on the pairs, everyone had already spread to the different corners of the Temple in the process.

"There's A'kkar. He's our first. Remember—subtly," Anakin murmured lowly to Mara as they turned a corner and saw A'kkar walking with another Jedi and engaged in some kind of discussion.

Thank the Force this wasn't his younger days, when subtlety was not in his skillset. Now, he could be silent and efficient if he needed to be—like now.

"Knight A'kkar, correct?" Anakin asked, suddenly stopping when they were a few feet away as if he had just realized the other was there.

The man's eyes flickered between Anakin and Mara, narrowing slightly in suspicion at Mara before returning to Anakin. "Yes, Master Skywalker?"

"The Council was going to summon you to discuss a mission for you, but since you're here, I'll just do it now. Be outside the Council Chamber in fifteen minutes—it's time sensitive," Anakin said sternly, nodding his head to the other Jedi before he calmly continued on his way and turned to Mara to speak in a low tone once they were out of earshot.

"Just like that. Find the next person and send them my way—I'll go meet A'kkar outside the Council Room and take care of that. You send them my way every thirty minutes or so, and I'll detain them one by one outside the Council Chamber," Anakin told her, giving her a light push in one direction before he took the opposite direction towards the Council Chamber to meet and detain A'kkar. He supposed this was splitting up his pair, but it could work efficiently between them this way, and he would keep track of Mara in the Force to make sure nothing happened to his future daughter-in-law.

Besides, she used to be the Emperor's Right Hand in their other life—if any of them were going to be good at this kind of an operation, it was going to be her. She was simultaneously the person he worried the least about based on her skills and (almost) the most about because of her status as Luke's fiancé.

An hour passed in the Temple without incident.

Two hours…

Two and a half…

Before three hours could pass, the element of surprise was finally lost with one of Windu and Galen's targets. It wasn't really their fault that the smokescreen was finally pierced and the trigger of the trap was sprung—the woman they'd been rounding up had been on high alert and one of the jumpy ones, not to mention whispers were starting to swirl around the Temple that a lot of Jedi were being called to various places by the same Council Members, and at least six or seven Jedi had been called to the Council Chambers and met with Anakin just outside the chamber in the past few hours. The façade couldn't have held up much longer anyway—they'd reached the point of confrontation. Hopefully what they'd already done would be enough to minimize the damage with the fighting starting to break out, considering there were still quite a few they needed to at least detain.

As Galen and Windu had attempted to lead Kinnareth down the hall to a more secluded area under the guise of a visit from an old family member, the Force suddenly twinged in warning, and the woman sent a powerful Force Push their way. She caught several unsuspecting bystanders in the blast and caused Galen and Windu to double down and prepare for a fight, sending them back a few feet but nothing more. They were at least still on their feet, and ready to take her in with resistance.

There were a few shouts, ripples in the Force at the disturbance, and the hum of lightsabers and clash of blade against blade began to echo through the surrounding area. That alone was enough to tip off anyone who was looking that something was happening in the Temple. And once one knew, the rest were close behind, the knowledge spreading like wildfire as more of the Jedi on the list lashed out. Those on the list revealed their true colors as they either tried to escape, tried to flee the attackers (revealing these individuals innocence), or lashed out and started attacking almost indiscriminately, trying to do as much damage as possible now that they had been discovered. The latter was the most common reaction, as the three pairs went from stealth and covertly detaining people to being put on the defensive trying to subdue attackers and protect the unsuspecting victims of the sudden attacks.

For those who had lived through the Clone Wars, the sudden attack inside the Temple was traumatic, to say the least.

The initial attack was pure chaos, because most didn't know what was happening or why they were being attack. Some people had the person sitting or standing right next to them suddenly turn on them and were cut down before they could even realize what was happening. Death suddenly cut through the air in the Temple.

When it happened, Anakin and Mara were in different parts of the Temple, separated and each around a different person on Luke's list—except Anakin's was in chains. Obi-Wan and Leia had to react swiftly to detain their current suspect, since they had been in the process of quietly leading them away in quiet conversation when all three of them sensed the starting ripple of the attack. Leia and Obi-Wan had to outmaneuver their opponent with superior reactions to put the manacles on them before they had a chance to attack. It was something they did successfully, and they immediately sought to drag their last captured suspect to the best, closest place in the Temple for their suspect to be stashed until the situation at the Temple was back under control.

Galen and Windu obviously found themselves in the heart of the conflict immediately, and it didn't stop after the one fight. Because by then, the word was out that something was happening, and that was all the other targets needed to be set off and start attacking.

*Luke's POV*

He felt the ripples in the Force all the way in the apartment, moving over to the window and gazing in concern off in the direction of the Temple, a worried frown tugging at the corners of his mouth. The fact that he'd stopped pacing caught his mother's and Han's attention, as well as the direction he was now looking.

"What is it? Is something wrong?" Han asked in concern.

"No, but also…Something's going on, besides what they were doing. Or, I suppose I should say something's changed. And I think I know what…"

Luke's hand drifted slightly to his belt as he spoke, closer to where his comm unit was, prepared and anticipating a call for reinforcements any moment, now. If he was sensing these ripples after several hours, then their operation most likely had been discovered. Some of those ripples held the familiar current of a fight in them.

"Do they need help?" Han asked, starting to get to his feet.

Luke shook his head. "Not yet. They didn't want me getting involved because it could make matters…difficult, but if they need help, they'll call for me," Luke told him, falling into a meditative stance in front of the window with his hands clasped together, gazing unseeingly out towards the Temple as he waited in anticipation to feel what was going to happen next.

*Anakin's POV*

Anakin and Mara fought there way back to each other when Judro's agents started fighting around the Temple. In all the chaos of people running or fighting and trying to figure out what was happening, it was best not to be alone—there was less of a chance for them to be blindsided by an attack if they weren't alone.

"Anakin!" Mara shouted at him from a few meters away where she'd just knocked one of their targets to the ground. "Some are trying to flee from the Temple before we catch them!"

He could sense it too. At first he'd hoped someone would cut them off before they escaped, but now…

The others were embroiled in their own conflicts around the Temple. Even now, he could sense as much as he pushed back with his lightsaber against one of his two opponents to give himself a little breathing room. His lightsaber twirled loosely in the air to discourage another engagement while his free hand reached for a comm, parrying another attack from his second opponent with ease.

They needed someone to keep any more from slipping through the gaps and disappearing into the galaxy. The last thing they needed in the middle of this war was Dark Jedi running around.

"Luke—we need you to run catch and release along the perimeter. Some are trying to escape in the chaos," Anakin said into the little device. As much as he didn't want to involve his son in this matter, he had to—he didn't have anymore lists, or anyone else familiar with the names and faces on it. Plus, he didn't have the time to brief someone, and whoever was at the perimeter wouldn't have time to check a list. He needed someone who could recognize who was and wasn't a threat on the spot to successfully drive back the threats and let the rest leave if they felt it was necessary. Hopefully, they could contain this attack fairly quickly, with how many of the more dangerous threats they'd managed to subdue already.

But just in case, at least this would put Luke just outside the Temple if they ended up needing him inside.

*Luke's POV*

As soon as Luke's comm went off he was headed for a speeder on the veranda's personal landing pad, before Anakin's message even came through. He could still feel the ripples of a fight from the Temple, so he knew he was likely being called in for a fight, and he wasn't going to hesitate to help when he was asked.

"I'll be right back, I promise!" Luke called to his mother as he jumped into the speeder, taking off immediately for the Temple in the distance.

Even if he was just running catch and release along the perimeter, he was still nearby to help if something went wrong inside.

When Luke arrived at the Temple, there were several people trying to get out, mostly younger Jedi, led by the occasional older Jedi that with one look Luke could tell had seen Order 66. No doubt they were trying to get as many out as possible to survive in case this was similar to then. It wasn't, of course, not by a long shot, but there were attackers inside the Temple, so the alarm was justified.

Luke left the speeder running near the front, jumping out and unhooking his lightsaber as he rushed towards the main entrance, looking around at those fleeing for anyone who was on his list of potential Judro agents that might be trying to slip away in the chaos.

Ignoring the group of children that ran in fright with their older Jedi protector when they saw him, despite the sting in his heart, Luke honed in on a familiar face, cutting right through the swath of fleeing Temple occupants and gathering onlookers to reach them.

"Stop," he commanded in a hard tone, standing only a meter or so away from the other Jedi, a young Togruta woman with pale green eyes that narrowed in recognition at him before she even finished turning around to face him, having recognized his voice.

"You," she replied sharply, drawing a yellow lightsaber with a curved hilt and igniting it. The move did nothing to calm the confused crowd around them, a few individuals screaming at what was clearly about to be a fight. Luke didn't draw his weapon yet, just in case this was a reaction of trauma and malice to his presence and not malice born from an alliance from Judro. Not everyone on that list he gave his father had to be Judro's agents, it was just a list of who might be. They were meant to go carefully through the list and arrest the real conspirators while releasing the others. Now, they had to detain the entire group and go from there.

He could figure out which one this woman was while they fought. Or after, depending on how quickly this went.

The woman charged at him with a shout, and Luke called his lightsaber into his outstretched hand, the green blade snapping to life in the perfect position to parry her attack, giving her a slight push in the Force to correct her momentum and keep her from barreling into an onlooker. At the sight and sound of lightsabers, more people started screaming and those in the immediate vicinity scattered.

Falling into a traditional Soresu stance for defense, Luke waited for the woman's next move, gaze level and hard but otherwise unperturbed, perfectly calm.

This only seemed to enrage her, and she came at him with another flurry of attacks. Luke stepped, sidestepped, shifted his weight and position so he came astride her, and as her fury mounted, his focus sharpened. She tried to slice at his back as they found themselves moving to where the previous opponent had been, but Luke deflected it with a quick arm movement, keeping his blade firm and unmoving behind his back against her blade before he drew frontwards facing her once again. His other hand came to rest carefully on the hilt of the blade, the woman stumbling as someone racing by clipped her in the shoulder and she looked up at him with unbridled rage.

If she wasn't one of Judro's, she was in danger of falling to the dark side in her enraged attack against him. She might mistake his passive movements as mocking him.

Best to end this quickly and get back to the search for more possibly fleeing agents.

As she came at him a second time, Luke stood his ground, waiting stalwartly for her to reach him before his fluid moments took advantage of a weakness in her brazen attacks, disarming her of her lightsaber with his own while his free hand reached out and touched her forehead, a rush of energy and will from in the Force transferring from his body to hers until his calm determination overrode her blind rage, breaking through her defenses and successfully putting her under with the Force. He deactivated his lightsaber as she slumped, catching her in that same arm and carrying her back towards the Temple so he could carry her away from the chaos of the crowd and from the risk of being trampled to death in the panic. It also allowed him to position her closer to where he needed to be so he could keep an eye on her.

Once she was safely placed against the outer wall of the Temple, Luke's head went back to a full swivel. He'd searched the crowd while he rushed against it, but so far hadn't seen anyone else familiar. That didn't mean no one had slipped past him, since there were three other sides to the temple and it was a crowded area, not to mention he'd been a little distracted. But he was looking closely now, and he was ready when a fair haired youth barreled out of the Temple at full speeds, an unmistakable dark aura pulsing unrestrained out of him like hair that had been released from a tightly woven braid in the wind.

Luke's lightsaber snapped to life much quicker with the confirmed dark aura of this man, blade pointed towards him as he uttered his command once more in that same voice of determined calm.

"Stop. None of Judro's allies will leave this temple while I stand here."

And a battle began once more on the steps of the Jedi Temple.