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Hey folks. This is the latest chapter of this story.
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Sundari, Royal Palace.
On large elevated ledge in front of the Sundari royal palace, overlooking a vast, open, and dark memorial plaza, a unit of Clone troopers from Torrent Company of the 501st Legion were arming themselves for battle. A series of clicks and beeps came from power packs being slid into their weapons, powering them up for the fight that lied ahead.
As an ARC trooper captain, named Rex, slid his dual sidearms into his holsters, he looked out over the once opulent and gleaming buildings of Sundari, thinking of the rich warrior history of this planet, which his brothers had descended from.
And as they readied themselves for battle, Rex's words earlier echoed in their thoughts.
'For centuries. The Republic stood as the galaxy's beacon of peace and justice in the galaxy. But now it has fallen.'
Elsewhere on the planet, Imperial star-fighters screeched across the skies above Mandalore, dropping their deadly ordnance on the desert landscape below. Behind them, dark, menacing triangle-shaped warships hovered above a valley, where row upon row of tightly packed formations of clean white-armored troopers awaited the order to march on the cities of Alderaan.
'This new Empire is exterminating everything in its path.'
Across the city, as Jedi-loyal clones and Nite Owl volunteers retreated across the war-ravaged city, they were pursued and subsequently cut down by the advancing Imperial Army
'The so-called 'Emperor' has no remorse for the worlds he seizes, or any care for our brothers.' Rex had said earlier, as his men continued to prepare for battle. They were all that stood between their surviving brothers, the Mandalorian refugees, and the endless destruction caused by the New Order.
'Everything we value will die unless we hold the line. This fight right here isn't about politics or resources. We are fighting for our survival, our brothers, and for the freedom of the galaxy.'
Rex picked up a portable missile launcher, and walked to the edge of the platform, hiding behind a memorial column that commemorated fallen Mandalorian warriors, in front of his men. He peeked around the column and looked down. He could see a row upon row of Clone troopers, or Stormtroopers rather, as they were now called, marching across the plaza towards the royal, accompanied by BARC speeders and AT-RT walkers.
He lugged the portable missile launcher, walked out from behind the column, and took aim at the column of Imperial forces.
"For The Republic!" He shouted before firing three successive rocket-propelled grenades, each one wiping out a cluster of Clone Stormtroopers.
The Imperials looked up to see where the small missile pods came from, just in time to see a horde blue and white armored clone troopers shouting a powerful battle cry that made their teeth chatter, and the ground rumble beneath their feet, before echoing through the smoking ruins of Sundari.
The clones all jumped down from the ledges and windows of the palace and landed in the plaza. When they hit the ground, they charged into the battle, firing everything that they had at their enslaved brothers. Spaarti-grown Imperial clone troopers were speared through the chest with blue plasma bolts, while their speeders and walkers were blown apart from the sheer amount of firepower being thrown at them.
The forward echelons of the Imperial column were routed and overrun almost immediately. These weren't just planetary security forces that wouldn't have stood a snowman's chance in hell.
These weren't even ordinary clones.
These were the elite troopers of the 501st Legion.
The most highly decorated, distinguished, and recognizable unit in the Grand Army of the Republic.
Rex and his men continued to charge into the ruins that were at the bottom of the plaza, continuing to fight their way through row upon row of all-white armored troopers.
Several 501st troopers dove into cover behind a fallen tree. Jesse primed and tossed a thermal detonator after completing a somersault into cover. The grenade hit an Imperial AT-RT. Before it could activate get into the fight, the grenade exploded in the driver's lap, wiping out the pilot, the walker's head, and several surrounding Imperial troopers.
A group of Imperial clone assassins rushed in at the head of another wave of stormtroopers. They unfolded their wrist blades and attempted to break through the Republic lines. But this counterattack was immediately blunted by the clones, who stood their ground and fought like animals.
The clone assassins tried to dodge incoming blasts with their quick reflexes and start hacking away at troopers with with their cortosis knives.
But then, the melee ensued.
Kix flipped a charging assassin over his shoulder, turned around, and swiftly placed several blaster bolts into him. Several others began to clock other assassins in the face with their rifle stocks.
Elsewhere, Rex continued to direct his men through the battle.
"Lets go, move it up!" He called out.
More clones continued to charge through the ruined plaza.
Hardcase and a pair of heavy troopers, all armed with Z-6 rotary cannons and wearing ARC trooper garb, rushed up and stopped. They aimed their weapons and fired them, sending a deadly volley of blaster fire into a squad of stormtroopers. Some of them were killed, while the rest took cover behind fallen debris, and inside ruined buildings that were being ripped apart by laser bolts.
Rex then aimed his launcher at one of the bombed-out bunkers that once protected the palace, firing his explosive rounds, which detonated inside the building, before bals of fire erupted and shot out of every window the bunker had.
That's when several dozen ore Stormtroopers started moving towards the Republic lines, covered by a squad of sharpshooters. They fired, dropping multiple rogue clone troopers from concentrated fire.
Rex gestured towards some of his men with a hand signal to move to the right.
"Flank them!"
He aimed his launcher at the closest troopers in this latest wave, and vaporized several of them.
Elsewhere, Rex's men began to flank the Imperials as ordered, and began hitting them from the sides. The stormtroopers forces were now caught between three groups of clones, all pouring heavy amounts of fire on them.
vehicles and equipment exploded.
Stormtroopers fell.
Assassins tried to dodge the blaster fire, but were eventually overwhelmed and ultimately killed.
The battle seemed to be going well. But then, several distant booms sounded over the ruined skyline, before a howling thunderous scream could be heard from a distance, getting closer and closer
"What's that noise?" One of the rookie clones asked.
That's when Sgt. Coric looked and shouted out a warning to the others.
"ARTILLERY! TAKE COVER!"
Milliseconds later, volleys of blue plasma fell from the sky and slammed into the ground, before a series of powerful explosions ripped through the entire plaza, killing Imperial and rogue clones alike.
One plasma bolt landed close enough to Rex to send him flying headfirst into the ground.
And then darkness began to take over his vision.
An unknown amount of time later, Rex began to blink. He didn't know where he was or how long he'd been out, but the world began to clear up around him. He could here screaming and blaster fire.
His vision was blurry, but as he started blinking, it all became clear, and he could see what was happening. Two Stormtroopers were carrying him. He tried to struggle, but another trooper that was behind him hit him with his rifle stock.
More pain began to surge through him, and he stopped moving as his head began to throb. But he kept looking around. The tide of battle had taken a serious turn for the worst.
Most of his men, his brothers, were dead or dying.
Some of the wounded clones that were still alive were being executed by the Stormtroopers.
It made his blood boil.
He looked up ahead and saw a clone assassin driving his wrist-mounted blade down into another injured trooper. The assassin looked to his left. He then pulled his blade out of the now dead trooper and began to walk over to Rex.
Rex began to struggle again, but his captors had a tight grip on him.
When he looked up again, he saw his executioner standing above him with his blade at the ready. But instead of closing his eyes, Rex looked his executioner in the eye. If he was going to die, then he was going to die like a man.
Like a clone should
But before the blow could ever come from the clone assassin, a Togrutan jumped out of seemingly nowhere, behind Rex and his would be executioners.
As she landed in a crouching position, she punched the ground. With the force, her fist created shockwave that went in every direction. Her attack struck Rex executioners. They all went flying in different directions.
The stormtroopers in the area all turned to see who had attacked them.
It was the former apprentice of Anakin Skywalker.
Ahsoka slowly stood up from her kneeling position. As she stood up, she grabbed her two lightsabers. She crossed them in front of her face, and activated them. The blue blades both pointed away from her in an 'X' shape. Then she spun her blades around and un crossed her blades, so that she was holding them in the Jar'kai form.
As she assumed this battle stance, she stared them all down, challenging them in a nonverbal manner.
But before they could, she was already sprinting towards them across the battlefield.
Behind her, Rex got back up, and was relieved to see that a few of his men were still in the fight. He saw Jesse, Hardcase, Kix, Coric, Echo and several others all rushing through the ruins. Echo tossed Rex his helmet and a fresh DC-15 blaster, which he accepted, and they went back to work fighting off the Empire.
Meanwhile, Ahsoka continued to charge through the embattled plaza. She used one of her hands, the one carrying the shoto, to give herself a boost as she vaulted over a large pile of rubble. Then she came face to face with several Imperial troopers.
She jumped into the air and spun around. As she spun, she delivered a mean kick to a stormtrooper that was too slow to react to her movements. As she finished delivering the kick, she swung both of her blades through the leg of an AT-RT, which began to fall over, spilling the driver out onto the ground. When she landed, she somersaulted underneath another trooper, swiping her blades through his legs. After somersaulting, she extended both blades outward and charged through two clone assassins that were on either side of her, slashing her blades across their armored torsos.
Ahoska runs with acrobatic flips, covering great distance and blocking all blaster bolts from all directions, delivering saber strikes and knocking down any clone in her path. The clone stormtroopers, still bewildered and fatigued from Ahsoka's first attack, tried to fight back, but they could only do one thing: Stand and fight.
But Ahsoka continued to dodge and dash and flip towards her enemies, striking with both blades in quick succession.
When Ahsoka slashed through her last target, she stood in a kneeling position atop the edge of a mobile command station with her sabers pointing up behind her back.
She then looked up, to see several clones and an Imperial officer staring at her, dumbfounded.
"Kill the Jedi!" The officer shouted as he drew his hand down to reach for his sidearm.
His men did the same, but before they could, Ahsoka quickly deactivated her blades, and used a force repulse to throw all of them out of the mobile command post. But as they flew out of the small platform, several clone assassins surrounded her, armed with their wrist blades, blaster rifles, and electro-batons.
'This is hardly fair...' she thought to herself, before she reactivated her lightsabers, the emerald and yellow lights bathing her snarling features in a terrifying glow.
The clones, however, were not impressed. Or at least that's what she thought before half of them opened fire with everything they had, while the other half rushed in with melee weapons.
Ahsoka spun her blades, batting away the oncoming bolts into the chests of two stormtroopers. The Force then warned her of the threat of the other clone assassins, who were all around her, ready to strike. But she struck first.
She jumped up into the air, spinning her body like a corkscrew, and spinning her blades at the same time. As she came back, the clones were all cut apart and sent flying back. One that got way too close was neatly decapitated even before she finished her jump. She then threw her blades out and impaled two more clones, before diving behind another troopers, reaching out, wrapping her hands around his neck, and twisting.
There was a series of sickening pops coming from the trooper's neck, before she reached out and used the force to summon her blades back into her hands.
That's when more clone stormtroopers tried to bring her down. Ahsoka dashed and rolled forward again, slashing one clone across the chest. He fell away, his blaster firing randomly as his finger clamped around the trigger in his death throes.
Ahsoka then dove at another clone, tackling him to the ground as she plunged her blades through his chest, and into the ground.
She then looked up to see the remaining clones charging at her. While deflecting their blaster bolts with her blades, she leaped toward them, her foot aimed at the lead trooper's chest.
But this clone was more skilled than she gave him credit for. The trooper reached out and grabbed her foot, before swinging the startled togrutan around before slamming her into the ground, hard. Her sabers fell away from her and deactivated, before one of the clones plunged his stun stick deep into her abdomen.
She screamed in pain, as electricity coursed through her muscles, and stars began explode into her vision, before she began to pass in and out of consciousness.
When they were open again, she remembered that she was on the ground, with three clone assassins standing over her, with a boot stamped onto her chest. The cold metal of a DC-15 carbine was pressed against her forehead.
'Was this how it ended?' Ahsoka wondered. 'Was this how she was going to die?'
Her answer came in the form of a blue light spearing the trooper above through the helmet. The other two troopers turned around to try and face this new threat, but were immediately gunned down by more blaster fire.
Ahsoka was confused at first. But then she saw Rex standing above her, surrounded by eight other clones. She then smiled. "Nice work, boys," she allowed herself to say breathlessly, before blacking out.
The battle was over.
Rex's eight remaining men scanned their sectors with their rifles. When everything was clear, the few Republic troopers that were left standing in the palace plaza began to regroup.
Rex knelt down to check Ahsoka's vitals, before he picked her up and carried her over his shoulder.
Fires continued to crackle in different parts of the ruined plaza. The loudness and chaos of battle was now replaced with a calm and quiet that was unprecedented in wartime. Bodies from both sides, mostly Imperial, lay everywhere.
When everyone was gathered up, the clones all thought back to Rex's final words before the battle.
"While the sacrifices of our brothers will be heavy, we will fight knowing that a single spark of courage can ignite the fires of hope, and restore freedom across the galaxy."
To prove his point, when a trooper fired a flare gun up into the air, it was immediately answered by other survivors far off in the distance. More and more red flares were shot up into the air. It was as if everyone was calling out at the same time: 'We have survived, and we will fight on'.
As this happened, the Imperial occupation had to fight against the Mandalorian resistance in order to advance, giving Rex's men the chance to slip away.
High up, from the city's outer docks, as the Imperial Army landed and moved to conquer the city in the name of their glorious Emperor, stormtroopers from the docked warships could see the dark skyline of the city dotted with red signal flares, which would serve as a beacon of hope.
One that would serve as the spark that would ignite the courage, and the quiet, unyielding anger within the spirt of every galactic citizen, and inspire many others to fight the Empire.
Several blocks away from the palace.
Later, as Commander Bow's men and Imperial reinforcements continued to advance throughout the city, securing the palace and clawing out the last remnants of the resistance, Ahsoka, Rex, and the eight other clones that made up what was left of Torrent Company, continued to walk through the ruined streets of Sundari.
They all walked like they were demoralized, having just suffered the greatest betrayal in history, and losing so horribly when they were so close to victory.
But as they limped through the streets, they all saw a manhole cover moving.
Ahsoka swiftly ignited her sabers, and Rex's men aimed their blasters at it, ready for whatever might come out of the manhole cover. but before they could strike, it flipped open, and a familiar figure wearing Mandalorian armor emerged with two other warriors.
Ahsoka and her men lowered their weapons, relieved to see Bo-Katan Kryze.
"Hey kid. You're late."
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Mustafar.
Anakin forced Obi-Wan back and back, slamming his blade down with strength that seemed to flow from the volcano overhead. He spun and whirled and sliced razor-sharp shards of steel from the wall and shot them at Obi-Wan with the full heat of his fury. He slashed through a control panel along the walkway, and the ray shield that had held back the lava storm vanished.
Fire rained around them.
Obi-Wan backed to the end of the balcony; behind him was only a power conduit no thicker than his arm, connecting it to the main collection plant of the old lava mine, over a riverbed that flowed with white-hot molten stone. Obi-Wan stepped backward onto the conduit without hesitation, his balance flawless as he parried chop after chop.
Anakin came on.
Out on the tightrope of the power conduit, their blades blurred even faster than before. They chopped and slashed and parried and blocked. Lava bombs thundered to the ground below, shedding drops of burning stone that scorched their robes. Smoke shrouded the planet's star, and now the only light came from the hell-glow of the lava below them and from their blades themselves. Flares of energy crackled and spat.
This fight was not Sith against Jedi. Far from it actually. This was not light against dark or good against evil; it had nothing to do with duty or philosophy, religion or morals.
It was Anakin against Obi-Wan.
Personally.
Just the two of them, and the damage they had done to each other.
Obi-Wan backflipped from the conduit to a coupling nexus of the main collection plant; when Anakin flew in pursuit, Obi-Wan leapt again. They spun and whirled throughout its levels, up its stairs, and across its platforms; they battled out onto the collection panels over which the cascades of lava poured, and Obi-Wan, out on the edge of the collection panel, hunching under a curve of durasteel that splashed aside gouts of lava, deflecting Force blasts and countering strikes from this creature of rage that had been his best friend, suddenly comprehended an unexpectedly profound truth.
The man he face was everything Obi-Wan had devoted his life to destroying: Murderer. Traitor. Fallen Jedi. Lord of the Sith. And here, and now, despite it all . . . Obi-Wan still loved him.
Yoda had said it, flat-out: 'Allow such attachments to pass out of one's life, a Jedi must'. But Obi-Wan had never let himself understand. He had argued for Anakin, made excuses, covered for him again and again and again; all the while this attachment he denied even feeling had blinded him to the dark path his best friend walked.
Obi-Wan knew there was, in the end, only one answer for attachment . . .
He let it go.
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Senate Building.
The Convocation Center of the Galactic Senate was a drum-mounted dome nearly a mile in diameter; even with the aid of the Force, Yoda was breathing hard by the time he reached the edge. He found himself in another access way, this one used for maintenance on the huge lighting system that shone downward onto Republic Plaza through transparisteel panels on which he stood.
He looked around, and pulled a lever, which opened up a hatch in front him.
Without hesitation he dove headlong into the night.
Catching the nether edges of his cloak to use as an improvised airfoil, he let the Force guide him in a soaring free fall away from the Convocation Center; he was too small to trigger its automated defense perimeter, but the open-cockpit speeder toward which he fell would get blasted out of the sky it it deviated even a single inch from its curving course.
He released his robe so that it flapped upward, making a sort of drogue that righted him in the air so that he fell feetfirst into the speeder's passenger seat beside Bail Organa.
While Yoda strapped himself in, the Senator from Alderaan pulled the rented speeder through a turn that would have impressed Anakin Skywalker, and shot away toward the nearest intersection of Coruscant's congested skyways.
Yoda's eyes squeezed closed.
"Master Yoda? Are you wounded?" Bail asked with concern.
"Only my pride," Yoda said, and meant it, though Bail could not possibly understand how deep that wound went, or how it bled. "Into exile I must go. Failed, I have."
And with that, they flew off into the night sky.
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Mustafar.
The lake of fire, no longer held back by the ray shield, chewed away the shore on which the plant stood, and the whole massive structure broke loose, sending both warriors skidding, scrabbling desperately for handholds down tilting durasteel slopes that were rapidly becoming cliffs; they hung from scraps of cable as the plant's superstructure floated out into the lava, sinking slowly as its lower levels melted and burned away.
Anakin kicked off from the toppling superstructure, swinging through a wide arc over the lava's boil. Obi-Wan shoved out and met him there, holding the cable with one hand and the Force, angling his blade high. Anakin flipped his sword into the Shien reverse-grip and swiped at his knees. Obi-Wan yanked his legs high and slashed through the cable above Anakin's hand, and Anakin fell.
Pockets of gas boiled to the surface of the lava, gouting flame-like arms reaching to gather him in.
But Anakin's momentum had already swung back toward the dissolving wreck of the collection plant, and the Force carried him within reach of another cable. Obi-Wan whipped his legs around his cable, altering its arc to bring him within reach of one from which Anakin now dangled, but Anakin was on to this game now, and he swung cable-to-cable ahead of Obi-Wan's advance, using the Force to carry himself higher and higher, forcing Obi-Wan to counter by doing the same; on this terrain, altitude was everything.
Simultaneous surges of the Force carried them both spinning up off the cables to the slant of the toppling superstructure's crane deck. Obi-Wan barely got his feet on the metal before Anakin pounced on him and they stood toe-to-toe, blades whirling and crashing on all sides, while around them the collection plant's maintenance droids still tinkered mindlessly away at the doomed machinery, as they would continue to do until lava closed over them and they melted to their constituent molecules and dissolved into the flow.
A roar louder even than the Volcano's eruption came from the river ahead; metal began to shriek and stretch. The river dropped away in a vertical sheet of fire that vanished into boiling clouds of smoke and gases.
The whole collection plant was being carried, inexorably, out over a vast lava-fall.
Obi-Wan decided he didn't really want to see what was at the bottom.
He turned Anakin's blade away with a two-handed block and landed a solid kick that knocked the two apart. Before Anakin could recover his balance, Obi-Wan took a running leap that became a graceful dive headlong off the crane deck. he hurtled down past level after level, and only a few tens of meters above the lava itself the Force called a dangling cable to to his hand, turning his dive into a swing that carried him high and far, to the very limit of the cable.
And he let it go.
As though jumping from a swing in the Temple playrooms, his velocity sent him flying up and out over a catenary arc that shot him toward the river's shore.
Toward. Not quite to.
But the Force had led here, and again it had not betrayed him: below, humming along a few feet above the lava river, came a big, slow old repulsorlift platform, carrying droids and equipment out toward the collection plant that its programming was not sophisticated enough to realize was about to be destroyed.
Obi-Wan flipped in the air and let the Force bring him to a cat-footed landing. An adder-quick stab of his lightsaber disabled the platform's guidance system, and Obi-Wan was able to direct it back toward the shore with a simple shift in his weight.
He turned to watch as the collection plant shrieked like the damned in a Cornelian hell, crumbling over the brink of the falls until it vanished into invisible destruction.
Obi-Wan lowered his head. "Goodbye, old friend."
But the Force whispered a warning, and Obi-Wan lifted his head in time to see Anakin hurtling toward him out from the boil of smoke above the falls, perched on a tiny repulsorlift droid. The little droid, after being forced to drop its container of raw materials into the river, was vastly swifter than Obi-Wan's logy old cargo platform, and Anakin was easily able to swing around Obi-Wan and cut him off from the shore. Obi-Wan shifted weight one way, then another, but Anakin's droid was quite nimble. There was no way around, and this close to the lava, the heat was intense enough to crisp Obi-Wan's hair.
"I have failed you, Anakin. I was never able to teach you to think."
"I should have known the Jedi were plotting to take over . . . " Anakin said.
"From the Sith! Anakin, Chancellor Palpatine is evil." He said back to his former apprentice.
"From the Jedi point of view! From my point of view, the Jedi are evil."
"Well, then you are lost!"
"This is the end for you, my Master," he said. "I wish it were otherwise."
"Yes Anakin, so do I," Obi-Wan said as he sprinted into a leaping dive, making a spear of his blade.
Anakin leaned aside and deflected the thrust with near contempt; he missed a cut at Obi-Wan's legs as the Jedi Master flew past him.
Obi-Wan turned his dive into a forward roll that left him barely teetering on the rim of a low cliff, just above the soft black sand of the riverbank. Anakin snarled a curse as he realized he'd been suckered.
"It's over Anakin!" Obi-Wan called out from his perch on the black shore. "I have the high-ground."
"You underestimate my power." He snarled.
"Don't try it," Obi-Wan warned, or arguably begged.
Anakin leapt off his droid and arched over the hill, with the intent of getting behind Obi-Wan and slashing at his back. But he was half a second too slow.
Obi-Wan's whirl to parry didn't meet Anakin's blade. It met his knee. Then his other knee.
And whilst Anakin was still in the air, his burned-off lower legs only starting their topple down the slope, Obi-Wan's recovery to guard brought his blade through Anakin's left arm above the elbow. He stepped back as Anakin fell.
Anakin dropped his lightsaber, clawing at the edge of the cliff with his mechanical hand, but his grip was too powerful for the lava bank and it crumbled, and he slid down onto the black sand. His severed legs and arm rolled into the lava below him and burned to ash in sudden bursts of scarlet flame.
The same color, Obi-Wan observed distantly, as a Sith blade.
Anakin scrabbled at the soft black sand, but struggling only made him slip farther. The sand itself was hot enough that digging his durasteel fingers into it burned off his glove, and his robes began to smolder.
Obi-Wan picked up Anakin's lightsaber. He lifted his own as well, weighing them in his hands. Anakin had based his design off of Obi-Wan's. So similar they were.
So differently they had been used.
"Obi-Wan . . . ?"
He looked down. Flame licked the fringes of Anakin's robe, and his long hair had blackened, and was beginning to char.
"You were the chosen one! It was said you would destroy the Sith, not join them. It was you who would bring balance to the Force, not leave it in darkness." Said Obi-Wan Kenobi.
A flash of metal through the sky, and Obi-Wan felt the darkness closing in around them both. He knew that ship: the Chancellor's shuttle. Now, he supposed, the Emperor's shuttle.
Yoda had failed. He may even be dead. That might have left Obi-Wan alone: the Last Jedi.
"I hate you," he screamed.
Obi-Wan looked down and shook his head. "You were my brother, Anakin. I loved you." He said. But I could not save you."
And then, below his feet, Darth Vader burst into flames. As Obi-Wan looked down in horror, he thought it would be a mercy to kill him. But he was not feeling merciful. He was feeling calm, and clear, and he knew that to climb down to that black beach might cost him more time than he had.
Another Sith Lord approached.
In the end, there was only on choice. It was a choice he had made many years before, when he had passed his trials of Jedi Knighthood, and sworn himself to the Jedi forever. In the end, he was still Obi-Wan Kenobi, and he was still a Jedi, and he would not murder a helpless man.
He would leave it to the will of the Force.
He turned and walked away.
After a moment, he began to run.
He began to run because he realized, if he was fast enough, there was one thing he still could do for Anakin. He still could do honor to the memory of the man he had loved, and to the vanished Order they both had served.
At the landing deck, back on the former Separatist hideout where their duel began, C-3PO stood on the Naboo skiff's landing ramp, waving frantically.
"Master Kenobi! Please, please hurry!"
"Where's Padme?"
"Already inside, sir, but she is badly hurt. We should leave this dreadful place."
Obi-Wan placed a reassuring hand on Threepio's shoulder before he ran up the ramp to the Skiff's cockpit and fired the engines. As the Emperor's shuttle curved in toward the landing deck, the sleek mirror-finished Naboo skiff streaked for the stars.
And Obi-Wan never looked back.
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Well folks, that was the the great battle of the heroes.
The death of Anakin Skywalker, not literally.
On the next, and final chapter, we see the birth of Vader, the birth of a new hope, and a resolution for Ahsoka and her men.
Until next time, this is Grubkiller, over and out.