A/N:There are a couple of reasons for the wait this time; one is your average IRL crap, the other is excellent news (at least for me). The good first: I AM NOW AN INDIE VIDEO GAME COMPOSER! I am already working on my first soundtrack for someone's RPG Maker MV game, and hopefully that will turn into more offers in the future. The IRL crap is college math. Ugh.

Disney owns Star Wars. The Mouse may have tainted Star Wars with the cinematic skidmark that is The Last Jedi, but at least they don't own or control fanficASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL.

After the initial shock of the vision I had seen during the bomb incident—which, surprise surprise, led Palpatine to propose extensive privacy-violating "security" laws—wore off, I realized something: all three instances of the vision involving the lightsaber to date had occurred while I was stretching my senses outward or otherwise immersing myself in the force through meditation. With that in mind, I decided to try and train my sensory abilities as far as I could whenever I wasn't practicing anything else in hopes of somehow triggering another vision, hopefully clearer than the others. Sadly, no matter how hard I focused or how far I stretched out, no more visions came. That's not to say the practice didn't have SOME benefit; after all, my sensory abilities were my greatest asset, and while it didn't have the obvious combat applications of, say, telekinesis or sustained physical augmentation, I was sure that if I thought about it hard enough I could find some way to utilize it in a life-or-death situation.

I already knew from prior experience that my ability to perceive my surroundings was beyond that of many knights, and would probably only get better as time went on; useful for avoiding ambushes, but not much help in an actual fight. So I decided to see what would happen if I turned my trump card in the other direction: rather than stretching out and trying to see as much as possible, I would narrow my focus to as fine a point as I could. As it turned out, this resulted in a supercharged version of Concentration*; with only a few extra days' practice, I was already taking a small marble-sized pebble and finger-flicking it at the same nanometer-wide point with perfect accuracy again and again. This was pretty cool to be sure, but I knew the next fight I probably wouldn't involve blowing up a Death Star, so what practical use such a skill would have was something that I would just have to find out through experience. As for my lightsaber skills, the extra training in Form V I got from Ahsoka and Anakin was finally paying off; I had finally succeeded in learning the fluid riposte, and learned a few good offensive strikes that I could easily transition into from it. Master Obi-Wan even decided that I was ready to start on some of the more advanced methods of Soresu. With all the progress I had made, I was fairly confident that if I ran into Ventress again—assuming that I wasn't fighting alone—I wouldn't be as utterly dominated as I was the last time. I knew for a fact that I wouldn't be able to take on someone of that level in a straight-up fight, but hopefully with my improved combat abilities and the continued instruction in strategy and tactics from Master Obi-Wan, I'd be able to avoid death long enough to find a way to get out of such a fight with my life and limbs intact.

My training aside, though, it was clear that events were still barreling towards the culmination of Sidious' plans; the bombing attempt by Cad Bane gave Palpatine an excuse to propose the aforementioned surveillance laws, a proposal that was only BARELY defeated by a coalition of votes by Padme and Bail Organa, who took full advantage of the progress with the League of Neutral Systems to make the immediate threats seem slightly less frightening to the rest of the senate. But because their success was so slim, it was extremely unlikely that they would be able to prevent it from being passed if Sidious and his allies put it back for another vote (which, of course he would). I also caught some other news that gave me pause; evidently there were CIS bombing runs on Lotho Minor and Dathomir which wiped out a good number of the largest settlements on those worlds. Something about those planets seemed familiar to me, but at the time I couldn't quite place where I knew them from. If only I had known then...

"Kevin, pack your things. We need to leave immediately."

I looked up from my meditations to see Master Obi-Wan entering the training room, looking worried. "What is it?"

"An attack has occurred on Rishi Station; we managed to intercept a transmission between Asajj Ventress and General Grievous. It seems the Separatists have designs on Kamino."

And there it was. The big one. This was an event I had been dreading and training for, and I was about to find out just what that training was worth. After grabbing all the essentials I could, I rushed to the transport to find Ahsoka and Anakin together. In the series, Anakin and Master Obi-Wan went without her (in canon, they were in transit when they got the message, not at the temple); that welcome change helped to ease a few nerves. Who knows, maybe with all four of us here, plus Master Ti, we could get rid of Grievous and Ventress altogether.

As we travelled aboard the Negotiator towards Kamino, however, nerves of a different sort showed up when I met the clones for the first time. For beings who were literally bred to be soldiers using the DNA of one of the deadliest warriors of his day, each and every one was nice as they could be. Identical appearance aside, they seemed both refreshingly and frighteningly normal, telling jokes, listening to music, laughing, and reminiscing with each other. The Force kept me from speaking out, and for once I considered ignoring it because of the sheer sorrow I was feeling about this. I quickly found myself heading for an empty area to sit down and try and clear my thoughts, but the feeling remained, nagging at me.

This is basically a slave army. This is wrong.

"Kevin?"

I looked up from my musings to see Master Obi-Wan standing over me, a sad look on his face; evidently he had picked up on my feelings.

"Master Obi-Wan, I—"

"You're right."

I wasn't expecting that. Master Obi-Wan continued, kneeling in front of me and putting a hand on my shoulder.

"Once again, my young padawan, you wear your thoughts on your sleeve; I know what your worry was, and you are absolutely right, Kevin. They are as much victims of this war as they are soldiers; they deserve better. And once the war is over, they'll get it."

I shook my head sadly. "The Kaminoans see the clones as products, not people. They won't ever allow them to be free, even after the war, not without a lot of pressure from the Senate. And..."

Suddenly, the "revealing canon = bad idea™" feeling from the Force relaxed, just a bit; this was an opportunity to change something.

"...And there's something wrong with them. In their heads. Something they don't even know about."

Master Obi-Wan stood up, a rare expression of confusion on his face. "Did you sense something from them? What was it?"

"I don't know. But while we're here, maybe we ought to look at the clone records. Without the Kaminoans' knowledge."

Dooku sat alone in his private chambers on Serenno, looking over the various holos, documents, and datapads arrayed in front of him with carefully tempered pride. Everything was falling into place; all the unecessary players had been removed from the field, save for Ventress and Caller, and if he was correct in his assumptions about Palpatine's next move then said padawan would be temporarily out of his way—giving him plenty of time to turn the tables on his master before unleashing his own plan.

He chuckled to himself. I truly was a fool. His fool. But no longer. Soon, I will be the master.

"The device will operate as promised, Supreme Chancellor, but I am still somewhat unsure of the purpose of it all; why not simply design a bomb or a laser? This doesn't destroy, it transports."

"You are not required to know, Lieutenant Commander Krennic... and you would do best to avoid asking questions in the future. Be sure that it is ready to deploy at the appointed place and time, or there will be grave consequences. You are dismissed."

The holocall ended, leaving Sidious to his thoughts. Ordinarily, he would simply have the mysterious young padawan killed for certain and be done with it, but at this stage he could not afford to risk suspicion from the Order, and a vanished boy leaves fewer trails than a dead one. Once the republic fell, he would be free to deal with that particular loose end whenever he wished, but with Dooku clearly prodding the Jedi towards the Senate, he needed to use careful misdirection to allay their suspicion and keep them occupied.

"Ah, Anakin, General Kenobi, I am terribly sorry for what happened to young Caller. Rest assured, I will do everything in my power to help you locate the poor boy!"

"How sad, Anakin, that the Order would not allow me to aid in the search for padawan Caller. I fear they are losing sight of their ideals if the fate of a boy matters so little to them!"

If it all went according to plan—and there was no reason for it not to—then he would remove a hydrospanner in the works from the equation and further divide the Chosen One from the Jedi Order. Dooku was still an issue, but all that his apprentice's scheming would accomplish would be that the Plan would be put into action sooner rather than later; there was no stopping a long con one thousand years in the making.

But first, Kamino. The Plan would work regardless of the outcome of the war—whichever army had the clones, or did not have them, meant nothing in the end.

The hidden Sith Lord grinned viciously. Let Tyrannus scheme. He has no inkling of the true plot. The end begins with Kamino.

The arrival on Kamino and the briefing with Master Shaak Ti and Prime Minister Lama Su went more or less as canon, save for me and Ahsoka being there for it all; even when we got to the spaceport control center (which had been converted into a war room to observe the space battle), things didn't change much. It wasn't until the space battle began that things changed—and this time, it was our side making the difference.

"RSS Onasi to Command! CIS Fleet sighted, shots fired! Requesting fighter support!"

"Strange," Master Obi-Wan said, "I would think Dooku would send a larger fleet."

Anakin shared a nod with my master, then with Ahsoka. "Well, they're about to get smaller. Ahsoka, stay here and help with the defense. I'll go with the fighter squadrons."

As the battle began in earnest, Lama Su watched the CIC display with a calm expression. Beneath the surface, however, he was experiencing mild panic in spite of the solid resistance the blockade was putting up.

I know this because I was rummaging around in his head while he was distracted. Super Sense Powers for the win!

"Something's not right," Master Obi-Wan said, slowly recognizing the separatists' real plan.

"I'm going to press the attack, Master."

"No, Anakin. Wait. It's too easy; not even Grievous would attack so recklessly."

"Master, the battle's up here in space—not down there."

"The debris from the destroyed Separatist ships is the key," Master Obi-Wan replied before turning to me and Master Ti. "I'm going to go for a bit of a swim. Kevin, Ahsoka, I think you two should go and help organize the ground forces just in case."

Once we all left the room, Master Obi-Wan stopped and addressed us quickly. "Did you find anything, Kevin?"

I smiled. "Prime Minister Su didn't have much in the way of mental defenses; I managed to get his administer override password."

"Good. That should get you into the clone database without much trouble. Both of you, stick together and make sure to actually rendezvous with the troopers once you're done investigating to help allay suspicion; we're breaking more than a few rules here. Good luck!"

With that, he ran off to do his thing while Ahsoka and I made our way to the cloning facilities. Once we located the database room, I entered the Lama Su's password while Ahsoka stood watch outside the room. The computer was surprisingly user-friendly, and it wasn't long before I found some suspicious-looking files hidden deep inside. Unfortunately, my excitement turned to horror once I looked through them.

In the movies, Order 66 was horrifying to watch. In the series, the episodes involving the conspiracy were almost as bad. But here, where it was all real, looking at the files that even Fives didn't see practically punched me in the gut, because as it turned out those files contained no less than the actual programming for Order 66.

One of the worst things about it was that it read like just that—programming.

# if: trigger = y

#### previous orders: drop

#### conscious thought: drop

#### Target: Jedi

####### Kill

# end

Something about it made me sick to my stomach. Clones or not, these were living, thinking, feeling, breathing people, and the Kaminoans were programming them like they were just machines, even having a switch to basically steal away their free will. Puppets, slaves to be used and discarded.

Well, not if I could help it. After copying the files to my datapad, I looked around the files some more, hoping to find something, anything that could help me fix the problem. Fortunately, I found the answer: regular "software update" procedures to ensure that the trigger was always fresh in every trooper's subconscious. That must have been where the glitch with Tup in the show happened. The procedure was completely automatic... which meant that the Kaminoans hopefully wouldn't notice if someone had, say, changed the program a bit:

# if: trigger = y

#### previous orders: drop

#### Target: Jedi

####### Protect

#### all triggers: drop

# end

Thank the Force for my computer savvy back on Earth. Hope I got the language right on that last part... I quickly copied the new programming to the first file, changed the admin password, and logged off before leaving the room.

Ahsoka turned to me as I walked through the door. "Did you find what you were looking for?"

I nodded gravely. "Yeah. It wasn't pretty; we can talk about it with our Masters later. For now, let's get to the front—"

"We meet again, children."

A wave of Dark Side energy announced the entrance of the last person in the galaxy Ahsoka and I ever wanted to encounter again. Asajj Ventress stepped out of the shadows, glaring at the datapad in my hand.

"That looks quite interesting. I would ask you to hand it over..."

She smiled wickedly, activating her twin lightsabers. "...but that would take all the fun out of it. Let's begin, shall we?"

I don't think I have to tell you that things are about to get a bit crazy. Sorry about the cliffhanger here, but I need to work on the Ventress fight a bit longer (not to mention that the Obi-Wan/Grievous fight will go a tad differently). See you next time!

*Concentration: a canon force ability that slows perception of time and allows for extreme pinpoint targeting, among other things (most notably used by Luke to blow up the Death Star)