The clones watched with rapt curiosity as Ahsoka climbed over and took her place where Anakin sat. Gingerly she lifted her Master's head onto her lap as instructed, fighting away the urge to shudder when her hands came away with stains of dried blood. She was grateful then, for the poor lighting inside the AT-TE: she really didn't want to gauge Obi-Wan's pallor against the bright red smattering his face and robes. With a short breath to collect herself, she tried to remember Anakin's position. If she could recognize something distinctive about his posture, it might provide some clue as to what he was doing – what she was apparently intended to resume. She closed her eyes. One hand held Obi-Wan's head in place against the tank's jarring movements, and the other hovered delicately above it. Emptiness, she felt. The Force wept soundlessly inside the cavernous vacuum that was Obi-Wan's Force signature. Ahsoka shuddered viscerally and withdrew.

"What's wrong?" asked one of the clones nearest to the head of the tank. Despite his lack of marks, the clone was readily distinguishable as belonging to the 212th due to the dense layer of scuff and grime plastering over his armor. And if Ahsoka had the mind to notice then, she would have seen that nearly all of those crammed inside this particular tank were those of Obi-Wan's unit, as well.

"It's- I don't know yet. He's…" she trailed.

"He's- He's still with us, right Commander?" The clone standing next to him elbowed him in the side then, and shot over what was undoubtedly a look of personal offense from underneath his helmet.

"Yeah…" Ahsoka supplied anyway, "At least, it doesn't… It doesn't feel the way that the dead feel. There's just…" she closed her eyes again and resumed her probing, feeling a little more mentally prepared this time around. "There's just… Nothing." The clones bristled uncomfortably; going off description alone, it certainly sounded like the depiction of a dead person. Silence fell among them. Ahsoka drifted, pouring herself bit by bit into the ample space where her Master was supposed to be, exploring an endless hollow of dilapidated wastes.

Outside atop the climbing AT-TE, Majum bellowed in Huttese to communicate with Anakin over the combined roar of creaking tanks and the crunching of rocks beneath their mammoth claws. The tank housing Cody's group could be seen a ways down where it dropped from the line: it clung there motionlessly to the canyon wall, streaming a constant pillar of smoke from somewhere on the far side that neither of them could see. As he struggled to keep balanced, Anakin's attention was additionally divided between the rushed summary of early-model AT-TE mechanics, and the miniscule blips in the Force that signaled him to deflect the incoming sniper bolts. The two debated like this – in brief fragments between shots – until their plan of action was decided and Majum readied his position facing west. Anakin waited just long enough for the next bolt to strike his blade, and then in one fluid motion he drew his breath, took a wide step forward, and catapulted Majum through the air with a great arc of his arms. The Force skittered through his palms and traveled into his feet, powering his own lunge off the tank in pursuit. Red bolts chipped away at the cliffside behind them.

The clones stranded inside the faulty tank thought they'd been hit with yet another missile when the soles of Majum's heavy boots collided with the front of their craft. With a sudden lurch they were knocked into one another, overhead straps abandoned, scrambling to avoid falling back onto the wounded lying against the closed hatch below. Cody tightened his grip on the stanchion. There was no need to report a second impact – the others already knew that his group wouldn't be joining them at the top. He also figured they knew that in spite of his promise, "catching up" wasn't likely the way this situation would end. Everybody knew that a stationary target was more tempting than a moving one. He'd made up his mind on the last trick to try, when to everyone's surprise, the resounding crash upon their roof turned into a pair of footsteps. General Skywalker, Cody ascertained. He reached toward the hatch. At least, he profoundly hoped it would be General Skywalker on top of his tank, because another option would be forced surrender and subsequent capture by the Sand Wraiths. Or even worse, Cody dreaded, it would be Obi-Wan.

Anakin scaled down the side of the tank opposite from Majum. He reeled away at the thick smoke overtaking his vision, reaching a point near the bottom when the hatch swung open from above and Cody leaned out apprehensively. Anakin coughed. "Commander! Keep the hatch closed! I'm gonna see what I can do about the leak!"

Although this was the best outcome Cody imagined he'd come to, he wasn't exactly overwhelmed with relief at the sight. Leaning further down in Anakin's direction, he asserted the authority he was given. "Permission denied, sir! You'll be blasted off this karking piece of metal! Now get back to the others or get inside before the next missile hits!"

For a moment, Anakin was purely confused. It just wasn't normal to be denied anything in the voice of a clone. The realization slapped him hard. But if Cody was going to play Obi-Wan for a day, Anakin saw no reason not to treat him as such. "Whaaaat?! I can't hear you over the walkers!" he called in an exaggerated tone. And with a satisfied snicker, he doubled his climbing pace and disappeared onto the underside of the fuming AT-TE. Cody watched him go. He pondered in silence for a few seconds after the fact, but ultimately gave up and retreated into the dim cabin's safety. If Obi-Wan was incapable of taming Anakin, how in the universe did he expect Cody to succeed?

The site of impact was right at the junction where the AT-TE's left flank met its underside. By the time Anakin reached it, Majum was already fast at work. An array of tools hung heaped together inside of an old leather sack that was looped around a nearby pipe. Majum had managed to keep himself in place with his legs, back to the wall and feet to the vehicle's underbelly in order to bridge the narrow gap between. He wasted no time in explaining the problems he'd discovered to Anakin: the missile had apparently disrupted the pressure system maintaining the pistons driving the walker's legs, which caused further damage by collapsing the legs' suspension. Collecting a few tools from the sack, Anakin volunteered to realign the suspension while Majum stayed in place attempting to re-close the pressure system.

Meanwhile, Ahsoka toiled away with repairs of her own. Buried deep in the void of Obi-Wan's place in the Force, she came upon a sliver of life, woven like intricate, invisible stitching left haphazard and nowhere near complete. The threads were fragile and overstretched. It took the entirety of Ahsoka's concentration just to keep track of them; the idea of manipulating them seemed impossible. The longer she struggled, though, the easier it became to see them clearly. At some point unbeknownst to her, Ahsoka slipped into a trance that mirrored Anakin's from before. Liiqua dutifully instructed the clones to remain quiet. Knowing that Ahsoka might be the only chance at their General's survival, all of them were happy to oblige. She had just begun to coax the strands from Obi-Wan's mind into hers when the comm on the wall blared out a mess of static, and the tank to their immediate right took a missile directly to its top hatch. The clones swung and staggered from the transferred shock. Liiqua grit her teeth, and Obi-Wan bolted upright with a startled gasp. Ahsoka, looming over him as she was, met his forehead with an audible smack, and was flung away backwards seeing stars. Obi-Wan groaned similarly, his head landing squarely back into her lap with a hand over his eyes.

"M-master…!" she recovered somewhat, unsure if the room's shaking was all in her head. Similar exclamations rang out from the clones, temporarily displaced from the fear and anxiety over their brothers' safety next door. Obi-Wan wrapped an arm over his ribs and sat up strenuously in response. Ahsoka gathered enough of her bearings then to plead for him not to, but he merely blinked and took in the surrounding scene without enthusiasm. His clones were now sideways. There was a pinkish Twi'Lek sitting across from him. The only light in the lopsided room was red. His face slowly receded into his palm.

"…You know at some point in my life I might like to wake up to something mundane."

Ahsoka felt exhausted just looking at him. "Look, you're hurt. Like, really, really hurt. I think I was getting somewhere with–"

"Oh," Obi-Wan interrupted, seemingly unaware that she was speaking in the first place, "This is a tank, isn't it."

The clones exchanged unreadable glances.

"Yes Master, we're climbing out of the canyon," confirmed Ahsoka. "But like I said you're really–"

"And where, pray tell, is Anakin?"

She shrunk into herself at the question, feeling suddenly and inexplicably responsible for her other Master's decisions. "He's… Outside," she conceded.

Obi-Wan shook his head. "I don't know why I even bother asking anymore." He then made to stand. About twelve different hands pushed him back down with an accompanying hailstorm of "please sir"s and "take it easy sir"s in much the same voice.

"Really now, all of you," he protested, "I'm just going to take a look, settle down." There was little else that the clones could do.

Liiqua casually unfastened her shoulder constraints. "If you want him unconscious, little one, I think you should know I have no formal obligations to not harm the Jedi."

Ahsoka held out her hands in decided objection.

"I like your new friend," Obi-Wan commented. He cleared his desiccated throat once and paid extensively for the attempt with the most acrid sensation of barbed wire curling into his lungs. His face dug into the crook of his free arm as he coughed viciously. The clones shuffled, nervous about perhaps ten different things going on simultaneously. Sadness filled Ahsoka's tired eyes, which quickly flipped to adamant disapproval on seeing Liiqua perched upright on the side of her bench, motioning dangerously with her left hand cracking the right one's knuckles.

"Right–" Obi-Wan said forcibly, "None of that– please–" He scrubbed the fresh blood from his lip with the plastoid plate on the back of his hand. "Now, I'd love to discuss your part in all this at a later time, but you'll have to pardon me for now." He stood again, wilting disturbingly easily into the arms of his clones.