Hey folks, Grubkiller here.
Here's the latest chapter.
I hope you enjoy.
And will someone please, for the sake of my sanity, please leave a review. I want your feedback.
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Mustafar, former Separatist facility.
Blade-to-blade, they were identical. After thousands of hours in lightsaber sparring, they knew each other better than brothers; they were complementary halves of the same warrior.
In every exchange, Obi-Wan gave ground. It was his way. And he knew that to strike Anakin down would burn his own heart to ash.
Exchanges flashed. Leaps were sideslipped or met with flying kicks; ankle sweeps skipped over and saber slashes parried. As they made their way off the platform, the walls of the narrow corridor were slashed apart. The door to the control center was cut to pieces, and then they were inside among the bodies of the dead separatist leaders. Consoles exploded in fountains of white-hot sparks as they ripped free of their moorings and hurtled through the air. Dead hands spasmed on triggers and blaster bolts sizzled through impossibly intricate lattices of ricochet.
Obi-Wan barely caught and flipped them at Anakin: a move of desperation. Anything to distract him;anything to slow him down. Easily contemptuously, Anakin sent them back, and the bolts flared between their blades until they faded, and the particles of the packeted beams dispersed into radioactive fog.
"Don't make me destroy you, Obi-Wan." Anakin said, his voice having gone deeper than a well and bleak as the obsidian cliffs. "You're no match for the power of the dark side."
"I've heard that before," Obi-Wan said through his teeth, parrying Anakin's swift strikes madly, "but I never thought I'd hear it from you."
A roar of the Force blasted Obi-Wan back into a wall, smashing breath from his lungs, leaving him swaying, half stunned. Anakin stepped over the bodies and lifted his blade for the kill.
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Coruscant, Emperor's office, beneath the Senate Chamber.
There came a turning point in the clash of the light against the dark side.
It did not come from the flash of lightning, or the sizzle of energy blades, though there was no shortage of either. It did not come from a flying kick or a surgically precise punch. Thought those were traded too.
It came as the battle between Yoda and Sidious shifted from the holding office to the great Chancellor's podium. The hydraulic lift beneath the podium raised it on its tower of durasteel a hundred meters high, and more, so that it became a laser-point of battle at the focus of the vast emptiness of the Senate arena.
Between the Force and the podium's controls, delegation pods were ripped from the curved walls of the chamber, and were then used as hammers and battering rams, crashing against each other in a rolling thunder-roar that echoed the Senate's cheers for the galaxy's new Emperor.
Yoda found himself alone against the dark.
In that lightning-speared tornado of feet and fists, and blades and flying pods, his vision finally pierced through the darkness that had clouded the force.
Finally, he saw the truth.
The truth: that he, the avatar of light, Supreme Master of the Jedi Order, the fiercest, most implacable, most devastating powerful foe the dark side had ever known...
...Just...
...Didn't...
...Have it.
He may have lost before he even started. Maybe before he was even born.
The Sith had changed. They had grown, had adapted, had invested thousand years' intensive study into every aspect of not only the Force, but Jedi lore itself, in preparation for exactly this day. The Sith had remade themselves.
They had become new.
While the Jedi, on the other hand, had spent the same millennium training to refight the last war.
The new Sith could not be destroyed with a lightsaber; they could not be burned away by any torch of the Force.
The brighter his light, the darker their shadow. How could one win a war against the dark side, when war itself had become it's very weapon?
Yoda knew, at that instant, that this insight held the hope of the galaxy. But if he fell here, that hope would die with him.
'Hmmm,' Yoda thought, 'A problem this is . . .'
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Mustafar.
As Anakin rose his blade above his head, preparing for the killing blow, Obi-Wan had only one trick left, one that wouldn't work twice...
But it was a very good trick. One that worked quite well against Grievous some time ago . . .
He twitched one finger, reaching through the Force to reverse the polarity of the electro-drivers in Anakin's mechanical hand. Durasteel fingers sprang open, and a lightsaber tumbled free.
Obi-Wan reached out again, this time for Anakin's lightsaber, and it flipped into his hand. He then poised both blades in a cross before him. "The flaw of power is arrogance."
"You hesitate," Anakin said. "The flaw of compassion-"
"It's not compassion," Obi-Wan said sadly. "It's reverence for life. Even yours. It's respect for the man you once were." he sighed and shook his head. "It's regret for the man you should have been."
Anakin roared and unleashed an arch of Sith lightning from his flesh hand, forcing Obi-Wan to raise both blades to defend himself. He then flew at him, using both the Forceand his body to crash Obi-Wan back into the wall once more. His hands seized Obi-Wan's wrists with impossible strength, forcing his arms wide. "I am so sick of your lectures!"
Dark Power bore down with his grip.
Obi-Wan felt the bones of his forearms bending, beginning to feather toward the greenstick fractures that would come before the final breaks.
'Oh', he thought. 'Oh, this is bad.'
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Senate Chamber.
Darth Sidious cackled with sinister delight as he used the force to pull several delegate pods out of their moorings, and make them float around him, before he sent them hurling down towards Master Yoda's pod. The elder Jedi master continued to hop from pod to pod, dodging Palpatine's projectiles in an effort to reach him, and continue their epic fight.
Pods were crashing all around him, demolishing other pods below.
Yoda then reignited his lightsaber as he prepared to jump up and launch another ferocious assault on Palpatine, only for him to look up and see the cackling Dark Lord levitating three more senate pods. He hurled them down to try and crush Yoda, but he jumped away just in time as they crashed down all around him. He climbed up one pod as it rolled off of the edge, and continued to pod hop from one spot to the next.
He landed face down, nearly exhausted. He picked himself up and began to re-access the situation, when a third pod flew towards him. Thinking quickly, he deactivated his lightsaber and used the force to catch it in midair. He then decided to give Palpatine a taste of his own medicine, and start spinning the pod around.
He heard the Emperor laughing out loud. But he didn't seem to notice what was going on. He had apparently let his guard down, whether it was arrogance or he had thought he had succeeded in killing Yoda.
But when he saw a spinning pod hurling back up towards him, he growled in frustration before he jumped down to the next level, before he frantically searched around for the little green hob goblin.
That's when Yoda jumped up out of no where and began to unleash a ferocious assault on Palpatine, causing him to almost go over the edge. The Dark Lord drops his lightsaber as he could barely keep up with Yoda's bows. But he was able to recover in time, just before Yoda could deliver a killing blow.
He responded to Yoda's strikes with a blast of Sith lightning from his hands, knocking Yoda's saber out of his hands, where it began to tumble to the ground below, getting lost in the wreckage.
But before he could become enveloped by Sidious' energy, Yoda began deflecting the Sith Lord's lightning bolts with the palms of his hands.
"GGRrrrrrr!" Palpatine growled as he unleashed his full power into killing the old and puny Jedi Master. He smiled gleefully when he did so, as Yoda looked over his shoulder over the vast fall beneath him, and he seemed like he was faltering, with streaks of lightning coursing through his robes.
But then, before Sidious could claim any sort of victory, Yoda turned his face back towards him, with a face that had determination written all over it.
With all the power he could muster, Yoda planted his feet where they were, and began to use all of his might to condense Sidious' lightning into an ever expanding ball of unstable energy.
When the Emperor saw what was happening, he started to panic when he realized that it was becoming too much to handle, and that the more energy he used to fry Yoda, the more he was endangering himself. His own lighting even began to envelope himself as he tried to lean into his attack in a desperate attempt to break Yoda.
And then, the ball of force energy exploded, the shockwave sending both powerful force users over the edge of the pod. Palpatine tumbled back and over the side, but managed to grab a hold of the railing.
Yoda, on the other hand, was not so lucky.
The shock blasted him backward to crash against the podium, and he fell.
He fell a long way.
The base of the arena was a hundred meters below, littered with twisted scraps and jags of metal from the pods destroyed in the battle, and as the little green goblin fell, finally, above, the victorious man, by default, was once again Palpatine: a very old, very tired man, gasping for air as he pulled himself back back into the pod. He then leaned against the railing and let out another sinister laugh, which echoed throughout the chamber.
Though old he might have seemed, there was nothing wrong with his eyesight, and he began to scan the ruins for the body of Master Yoda.
He did not see one.
He flicked a finger, and in the Chancellor's Podium in the center of the chamber, a switch was tripped and sirens sounded throughout the enormous building; another surge of the Force sent his streaking in a downward spiral to the holding office at the base of the Podium tower. Clone troopers from the Coruscant Guard, along with the royal guards, were already swarming into the chamber.
Mas Amedda was there as well, and went to the Emperor's side.
"It was Yoda," Palpatine said as he landed the pod, allowing Amedda and two royal guards to enter. "Another assassination attempt. Find him and kill him. If you have to, blow up the building."
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Mandalore, Sundari, Banking Center.
As the battle outside, between Ahsoka's loyalists and Maul's Shadow Collective, went into full swing, Ahsoka continued to move through the building faster then any human can run, thanks to the Force. Eventually, she found herself on the roof, as smoke continued to rise up and obscure the skyline.
She looked around, trying to spot Maul.
At first, she couldn't see him.
But then, out of the smoke, a double edged-red lightsaber flew towards her like a propellor. She cartwheeled backwards in order to avoid the spinning blade, and when she was cleared, the blade flew back towards the smoke, and was snatched out of the air by Maul, who charged at her.
What followed was a ferocious fight, as both nimble warriors hopped around one another, trying to outflank and out slash the other. They used the force to throw objects at one another.
The former Sith Lord charged at her again, twisting and spinning his blade, forcing her to keep up with his strikes. But as she was being forced back towards a hole that was in the roof of the bank, thanks to a Republic artillery blast from the earlier stages of the siege.
Ahsoka thought of something quickly. When Maul struck again, she caught him in a saber lock. But instead of trying to break the stalemate through brute force, she jumped over maul's head, and kicked the back of his head with both feet.
The force of the kick sent Maul stumbling forward. But he was forced to recover quickly, as Ahsoka turned right back around and launched a renewed offensive, combing acrobatic flips and force abilities with her lightsaber strikes. Maul growled, as he was now the one who was forced to keep up with Ahsoka.
Ahsoka continued to swing her sabers at Maul, slicing his saber into two halves. Maul was then forced to fight with a lightsaber technique that Ahsoka had excelled at, before she crouched down and spun around, sweeping Maul's legs with her sabers. Maul jumped up to avoid the deadly sabers, but not fast enough, as she slashed through one of his ankles.
"Grraahh!" He growled in anger.
But Ahsoka wasn't done. She immediately spun around and delivered a kick to her opponent's abdomen. Maul fell through the hole in the roof, and fell towards the main lobby of the bank.
Maul looked at his foot and saw that it was missing, replaced by a stub that spat lightning from the exposed wires.
He then heard a shout, and looked up to see Ahsoka diving through the hole in the ceiling down towards him. Thinking quickly, he flipped back over his hands in an effort to jump out of the way.
And just as he did, Ahsoka plunged her lightsabers into the ground where he just was, before she used the force to emit a shockwave that repulsed everything around her, including her opponent. Maul was sent flying through a nearby doorway, and slammed into a wall, leaving a dent.
Maul struggled to get back up, as his head throbbed and blood began to run down several cuts on his body and face.
He then saw Ahsoka charging at him like an agile fox, her sabers thirsting for his blood.
But before he could be struck down by the togrutan's blades, he looked around to see that he was in the bank's main vault, which was empty thanks to his men making a swift withdrawal. So he used the force to activate the vault's ray shields, blocking Ahsoka from claiming her kill.
She growled in frustration, before slashing away at the shield. "That shield won't keep you safe forever, Maul!" She declared, before she deactivated her sabers and removed a panel for the shield controls
"I know." He said, before he smiled. "But I doubt that you can bring it down in time."
"Watch me!" She said before she started ripping out cables and re-wiring them.
"By now, my men will have finished defeating yours. They will be coming soon enough." He continually taunted.
She ignored him, still trying to bypass the panel. But then he com-link went off. Ahsoka rolled her eyes and answered it with one hand, while continuing to bypass with the other. "Commander Tano speaking." She said with an annoyed ton e in her voice.
"Commander, it's Rex! Hostiles have broken our lines. The city's being overrun, and my men are being slaughtered. We're going to make a stand at the royal palace to buy time to evacuate the wounded. We need your help right now!" Rex said frantically over the comm.
Ahsoka answered back. "I'll be right there! Hang tight!" Then she terminated the transmission and went back to bypassing the shield controls.
Maul grinned. "I sense your fear."
Ahsoka continued to ignore him, but she began to scowl.
But Maul continued taunting her. "The Empire is taking control of the city. Your men will not last long against them. You don't want to let them down, do you? Or are you just that desperate to please your former masters, who are probably all dead anyway?"
Ahsoka stood up and slashed at the shield with her blades.
"Shut up!" Ahsoka shouted before she slashed the shield again. "Just shut up or I will cut out your lungs and feed them to you!"
"Yes. Use your anger and hatred. Use it to cut down your defenseless enemy". Maul taunted, before he looked past her. "Hmm, It looks like you're too late."
"Freeze, Jedi!" A Mandalorian commando, Lieutenant Dryden Vos, ordered.
Ahsoka turned around and faced off against the score of super commandoes who were in the lobby, facing her. She assumed a fighting stance and raised her lightsabers. The commandoes fired. Yellow blaster bolts filled the room, and Ahsoka viciously swung her blades around, deflecting and dodging all of them. She managed to strike three commandoes down with their own fire.
One bent down to fire a missile at her, but she used the force to push it in another direction, making it explode in the ceiling, and making debris crash down around the commandoes, striking them in their helmeted head. Ahsoka used the force to make some of the falling fly towards the commandoes like a horizontal rain storm of metal and glass fragments, injuring and disorientating several more.
But then the remaining commandoes got much closer, using their wrist vambraces to send shockwaves that put her off balance. They then used cables to try and subdue her. One of her wrists and the opposite ankle were both tied up. But she used the force to pull both commandoes towards her, slashing away at them with her sabers when they got close to her.
Realizing that her situation was hopeless, she used the force to take the jetpack of a fallen commando, overload it, and throw it towards the commandoes. They fired on it, and it exploded before it could be thrown between them. Through the smoke, they were able to see Ahsoka's blue lightsabers glowing in the smoke. They moved to the side of the room, and were used to slash at the windows as she jumped through. Several of the commandoes went over to the window and starting firing at her as she ran away, in the direction of the royal palace.
At the same time, Dryden Vos and some of his warriors went over to the shield, and finished bypassing it, allowing Maul to limp out of the vault.
"Lord Maul, Lieutenant Kast is on the roof with your personal shuttle, with all of the wealth we were able to liberate from the vaults. But do you wish for us to chase the Jedi?"
"No. The city, and the planet, are rapidly falling under Imperial control. It's time for us to leave with what we have left, and rebuild what we lost," Maul said, as he leaned on the shoulder of one warrior, and limped over to the window and he watched Ahsoka run away, and jump from rooftop to rooftop in the direction of the battle being fought in the distance.
Then he smiled.
"Besides, if the rumors we've heard are true, then her kind will soon be extinct."
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Mustafar.
With Anakin's grip on his wrists bending his arms near to breaking, forcing both their lightsabers down in a slow but unstoppable arc, Obi-Wan let go.
Of everything.
His hopes. His fears. His obligation to the Jedi, his promise to Qui-Gon, his failure with Anakin.
And their lightsabers.
Startled, Anakin instinctively shifted his Force grip, releasing one wrist to reach for his blade; in that instant Obi-Wan twisted free of his other hand and with the Force caught up his own blade, reversing it along his forearm so that his swift parry of Anakin's thundering overhand not only blocked the strike but directed both blades to slice through the wall against which he stood. He slid Anakin's following thrust through the wall on the opposite side, guiding both blades again up and over his head in a circular sweep so that he could use the power of Anakin's next chop to drive himself backward through the wall, outside into the smoke and the falling cinders.
Anakin followed, constantly attacking; Obi-Wan again gave ground, retreating along a narrow balcony high above the black-sand shoreline of a lake of fire.
Mustafar hummed with death behind his back, only a moment away, somewhere out there among the rivers of molten rock. Obi-Wan let Anakin drive him toward it.
It was a place, he decided, they should reach together.
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Senate Building.
With the help of the Force, Yoda sprinted along the service access way below the Senate chamber faster than a human being could run. He then began to squish his way through a mass of wires in a small chute. Every so often, he would use the force to fill the chute behind him with coils of high-voltage cables, twisting and spitting lightning.
If he had any pursuers behind him, they would have to get past the cables. But he knew that instead, they would be covering every possible exit. And since there were thousands of them, he knew that they could afford to.
Yoda paused for a moment to talk on his comlink.
"Hurry. Careful timing we will need."
"There aren't many troops on this side." Bail Organa answered back, flying around the building in his personal speeder. "Activate your homing beacon when you're ready."
Back in the main Senate chamber, an intense search is taking place down on the arena floor. Curious senators stare at the damage from scattered pods.
One delegation pod with Commander Thire and several other troopers climb up to where Mas Amedda and the Emperor are waiting. Beneath the Main Podium, twenty clones search for Yoda's body.
"There is no sign of his body, sir." Thire said.
"Then he is not dead." Amedda reasoned
"Double your search." Palpatine ordered.
"Yes sir. Right away, sir." Thire acknowledged as his pod began to float down to the base of the Podium tower, in order for he and his men to join in the search.
Palpatine didn't have time to direct the search personally. The Force hummed a warning in his bones: Lord Vader was in danger.
Mortal danger.
As Clones scattered in the search for Yoda, the Emperor leaned towards Mas Amedda. "Tell Captain Kagi to prepare my shuttle for immediate takeoff."
Amedda nodded. "Yes, Master."
"I sense Lord Vader is in danger."
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Well folks, that was the latest chapter, finally released.
I hope it was well worth the wait.
I'll be working on the next chapter as much as possible, and have it released as soon as possible.
Until next time, as always, this is Grubkiller, over and out.