Wipper let out a sigh of relief, thanking the night gods that the clans, all the blasted clans on either side of this kriffin war, had decided to entrust their security to offworlders. Walking onto the transport, he did not have binders restraining him, as there were not enough apparently for all the slaves being forced back into captivity by the point of the blaster. Besides, they were slaves, after all, and one did not expect resistance from those who were already broken. Still he struggled to not let his fear show when the pirates waved him through after scanning him, not detecting the ancient tribal vibroblade hidden between the roots of his lekkus. He looked over to Kara, trying to give her a calming smile, trying to not betray his own fear, and realized that she felt none.
"You are brave, Wipper. I have no doubt we will prevail."
What little time they had they needed to prepare, but he remembered her words to him. A woman, who like him, had spent her entire life in slavery, now dared to hope and dared to believe that they could defy the odds somehow. To Wipper, hope itself was courage. There was nothing brave about what they were about to do, for it was merely a matter of survival.
"Our lives have been suffering, Kara, but I'm thankful for it all the same. Thankful that you were there. You cared for me, when no one else did."
He had little to live for, none of them did. He was not the first to contemplate choosing death over his chains, nor the last. Some refused to do so because of what could happen to the family they left behind, even if their family were owned by other masters. Wipper never knew his family, but Kara had always been there for him from his first real memories. She comforted him after particularly brutal days, after beatings, and in time he had done the same for her. He could run away of course, let them blow up his chip, but then who would be there to help Kara through the dark days? Neither one of them were under the illusion that they couldn't be separated at any given moment, but as a slave, neither one of them gave thought to anything but getting through the present.
"I'm not going back, Wipper. They're not taking me again. Not alive."
Their jobs, their usefulness to their owners, prevented them from experiencing the worst degradations of slavery for the most part, but not completely. It happened enough so that both he and Kara understood, and they both knew the fate worse than death they would return to. There would be no mercy from the slavers for those unlucky enough to have tried and failed for freedom.
Freedom was an exhilarating drug, and only having tasted it for the first time did Wipper understand just how truly wretched their previous existence was. To be able to think for himself, choose for himself...fight for himself...he understood now there was no greater blessing. He may die, Kara may die, they all may die, but it was going to be by their own volition and since the moment he was freed, he knew that he would not choose to go any other way.
Obi-Wan let out a rather dramatic sigh. Apparently the former queen had lost her mind. She was reckless during the Trade Federation crisis as well, and apparently her fluke of a success there now made her feel invincible. There was much to be admired about her courage, even were it bolstered by insanity, the young woman standing and speaking defiantly even with her face and body clearly in pain from the torture that had been inflicted upon her, and she would risk her own death as well as her husband's when they could be sitting idly among the Coruscant elite, eating fancy foods with their pinky fingers up in the air.
Not for the first did Obi-Wan bemoan why he couldn't just get some of the more boring assignments his colleagues got...Force Shaak Ti hasn't had to use her lightsaber in almost a standard year. This should have been one of those assignments, guarding a politician, but for once he wished he drew one of the more typical, corrupt, two-faced ones. At least they were too concerned with their own skin to be conducting suicide missions far outside the safety of Coruscant.
"I'm going to assume your remarks about selling off two representatives of the Republic, however inappropriate their actions are, to members of the underworld were made in jest."
"You would do well to worry about yourself, Jedi."
"I sense fear in you, Padawan. Despite your defiance, you fear the consequences of antagonizing the Jedi Order." And there was a new fear as well, Obi-Wan sensed. The girl feared the boy. Surely she sensed his power in the Force now, and perhaps she wondered how truly powerful Anakin was. While a Jedi and a Senator were known factors, Anakin was a wildcard to her.
Ahead of him, Padmé legs, battered from her beating by the pirates, gave way, and she stumbled for several steps before she fell onto the ground. Immediately Anakin broke free of his guard and ran back to her, bending down lamely, his hands still bound behind him, by his wife's side.
"Padmé! Speak to me! Are you okay? What's wrong?"
As the boy screamed in fury, Obi-Wan could feel through the Force the sheer panic and fear gripping the boy, and even now couldn't help but think that maybe it was a good thing he had turned down the Jedi, and whether he could have trained out of the boy this inborn passion and fear, amplified as they were by his years of unfettered attachment to the queen.
"Anakin! Get a hold of yourself!" He did not mean to be harsh, but their situation was volatile enough, and he did not need a hormonal meltdown provoke things further. He cringed on behalf of the both of them, wondering if the boy was always so overly protective in a way not befitting of a captain of security.
"You need to take her to a medbay," he raved, "she needs help. Something's wrong with her. You crossed the line..."
His pleading was interrupted when Ventress rudely slapped him across the face. "You're pathetic, boy. And a waste."
"Anakin," his wife said softly, "I'll be alright. Just a little kink in the ankle."
The reassurance did little good, as Padmé's admission seemed to visibly break the boy's heart. Above them, Ventress waited impatiently. She found the whole scene contemptible, though she had to admire the woman, who had somehow manipulated such power, enough so for the Jedi to believe him a figure of prophecy, into serving as her little whimpering lapdog. The boy would be hers, she would teach him the true power of the Force, and when she was done, the Sith master would thank her for it.
"Take her away," she commanded to one of the weequay guards. It would do them all well for her to cut their bond now. "Keep an eye on her so she can't cause us any more trouble. I'll guard these two myself."
"No," Anakin yelled when he realized what was happening. "You can't...she can't leave me. You can't do this."
Instantly, he felt the hum of a green lightsaber by his neck. "You would do well to understand who you serve now."
As Anakin looked longingly at his wife being led down the hallway, Obi-Wan realized in horror the dark woman's intentions for him. "You will do well to leave him be," he said as she led the two of them into a cell. "An assassin is one thing. What you are considering will bring the might of the entire Jedi Order upon you."
"And who's the one preaching about fear?"
Two beeps and a whistle echoed behind him, and Paan Thothlis still wondered about the Artoo unit crawling behind him. The Senator had told him to use her droid if there was any trouble. The words had been prophetic, as trouble comprised now his entire existence. To either side of him he watched as Kara and Wipper glumly process the captives from the night before...the women and children of his city...the future of his city...back into bondage.
"Commander Ohnaka," he said, bowing to the rebel in charge on the lower level. "My apologies for your loss and any difficulties we gave you. It was out of my control, I assure you."
"Mayor," the head pirate said gruffly. "I expect a full accounting."
"As a token of my regret, and as a gesture of gratitude for sparing Rajar, I offer young warriors from my city, as well as this Artoo unit. They will serve you well."
Hondo narrowed his eyes suspiciously, studying the ten or so younger males behind the mayor. Something smelled wrong...he did not sniff fear or anger from any of them...
With quick swift motions, Kara and Wipper on either end of the room snatched the vibroblades from between their lekkus and stabbed their guardians in the eye.
"Treachery," he screamed, but before he could do more, the Artoo droid zapped him with a burst of electricity, stunning him momentarily as he watched the droid open up a small door and throw out several blasters towards the mayor and the young twi'leks behind him. Meanwhile the two former slaves, acting almost in unison, immediately flung the still writhing bodies of the pirates in between themselves and the blaster fire now coming towards them, grabbing their weapons from limping hands as they died.
Seeing the mayor come up to him with a blaster pointed, Hondo swore and with all the energy he could summon, swiped the mayor's legs from under him in a moment of surprised. Realizing he was outflanked and exposed, he ran back towards the rear of the room.
"Retreat and form a perimeter in the next level! Cut them off." As his guards fled, he saw the mayor aim and fire true at the door switch, locking it open. The other pirates fired back, but as more of them fell, they ran to flee upstairs where reinforcements were. Not wanting to be outnumbered, Hondo ran too, barely dodging a blaster strike from the woman slave as he fled through the doorway.
"We have a situation," he yelled into his comm as he ran up the stairs.
"What's your name?"
"Juk." There was something off about the prisoner. Where she had been weak yet defiant minutes earlier, she now gave off a different scent, and her eyes looked almost meekly, shyly, at him.
"Have you ever had a human woman?" The words almost purred out of her mouth as the senator inched her way along the bench towards him.
"That's enough talking," Juk commanded, knowing that his voice was giving away his faltering resolve.
"I've never had a weequay before," she whispered in her raspy voice. "Your rough skin...biting against my smoothness...inside me." She seemed to slither as she dropped down onto the cell floor, kneeling helplessly before him, eyes curious and begging. "The things I've heard about weequay biology..."
Despite lacking the use of her hands, the senator managed to flip herself over so knelt with her ass pointed so close to him, bending down and facing the wall in the opposite direction. She wiggled her rear, and even Juk, who had never had a thing for humans, couldn't help but stare and want to do worse.
It was the last thing he saw before tendrils of blue electricity emerged from the senator's small cuffed hands, enveloping him, the pain so severe that he couldn't even scream. As he died, he did not notice a small key float off of his belt through the air and right into the senator's restraints. Free at last, Padmé stretched as she regarded dying pirate writhing on the ground. Her eyes gleamed yellow, and Padmé squeezed her hand, crushing Juk's skull into itself in an explosion of blood.
"So you bleed red too," she muttered to herself, unimpressed. "How boring."
The reinforcements were native twi'lek guards, whom Paan despised even more than the offworlders for the fact that they were willing to barter and sell their own brothers and sisters. He hid behind a wall, emerging every so often to fire off a few blasts. Some were hitting their mark, but most of his shots were missing seeing as he was not a trained warrior. Neither were Wipper and Kara, and though they had the initial advantage of surprise on the lower level, their failure to press forward was giving their enemies ample time to regroup and overpower them.
"I can't even see," Wipper yelled from the other side of the room. "There's many blasts out there I can't tell where they are."
"Be careful," Paan yelled, as one of the young men he had brought from the city yellow as a blast struck him fatally between the eyes. "We can't afford to lose anyone." He prayed for a miracle. Somewhere up there was the Jedi. If only they could reach him, rescue him in time, they had a chance, or else his decision would have doomed his entire city to destruction.
He heard the clangs of bodies slamming against the wall, and suddenly the firing stopped altogether. Warily, he peeked his head into the hallway, shocked to find the small Senator standing alone amidst all the bodies. Some were knocked out, unconscious but still breathing, but others were slumped against the walls with their necks bent in unnatural ways.
"What happened..."
"Never mind that," Padmé commanded as Kara and Wipper entered the hallway, their eyes glazed over with shock as well. "Shoot them all. Make it appear as though you killed them."
Wipper ran ahead, following the senator's orders, and Paan followed suit, shooting the already dead corpses.
"I'm surprised you did this," Padmé said. "The odds are not in your favor."
"One has to stand for what's right," Paan said. "It was now or never, and a death gained in honor is better than a life lived in cowardice."
Padmé nodded with newfound respect for the man. "Hurry, we don't have much time before they turn the guns on your city." She paused. "The Jedi and Anakin are on the next floor up. When you see them, tell them you were the ones who rescued me."
Without waiting for them, she ran ahead towards a lift. Paan had a thousand questions for the woman, but apparently now was not the time.
Anakin couldn't help but be smugly proud of himself, though he wondered if his acting was a little too dramatic. While he still seethed with anger and concern at the sight of Padmé being tortured by the scum pirates, by the end of their interrogation by Ventress he had regained some control over his emotions. Padmé was training him to be a cunning sith lord after all...not some feral animal, and he needed to regain his senses so that Padmé wasn't the one doing all the work.
It had been his idea to separate Padmé, knowing it played into what they all already thought of him. They needed to separate one of them from Obi-Wan, but Ventress was too wary of leaving him alone, knowing that Obi-Wan was the one who kept him from using whatever powers she thought him capable of. He sensed her jealousy towards Padmé for her control over him as well, and all Ventress needed was a subtle nudge into acting on what she already desired. Not that Anakin had been that subtle about it.
He sensed unrest in the lower levels, and to his surprise it had little to do with his wife. He looked at Ventress, who sensed something too, but she was too wary of him, too suspicious of whatever trickery he may or may not be capable of. He knew that Obi-Wan was not ignorant either, but the Jedi kept up his sabaac face and betrayed nothing.
They sat in the silent impasse for a few more minutes, Anakin finding out through their bond that his wife had escaped. Suddenly, the dark woman's comm rang. It was Hondo.
"The mayor betrayed us! They brought arms. We sent reinforcements but they've taken the first two levels already."
Ventress's eyes flared with rage. "Regroup to the command room," she ordered.
"But they're advancing!"
"Let them. The mayor will pay for his treachery. I will have him watch with his own eyes his city burn to the ground before I pry them out with my own fingers." She deactivated her comm in a fury and stared at her two prisoners. "Stay!"
Minutes after she had run off, their cell door opened again.
"Mayor Thothlis," Obi-Wan recognized. "I did not expect this."
"Me either," Paan replied. Quickly, Padmé pulled two keys out of her utility belt and unlocked the binders of Obi-Wan and her husband. Behind them, one of the twi'lek youth handed both of them blasters.
"I'm afraid I couldn't retrieve your lightsaber, master Jedi," Padmé said. "I hope this crude weapon will have to do."
"They are heading to the control room," Obi-Wan said urgently, "and mean to commence the attack on Rajar."
"We'll take care that," Padmé said. "There are more than three dozen captives sitting helplessly below. I've arranged for a transport situated on the western sector of the city. Escort them there and bring them to safety."
"But...Ventress and her crew. They'll kill you!"
"The needs of the many against the needs of the few, Master Jedi. I am but one senator." She and the Jedi exchanged solemn glances. "I serve. As do you."
"Very well milady." For the tenth time, Obi-Wan paused in his assessment of this Senator. That she was devoted to her cause was evident. That she was reckless in pursuing it had become clear. That she was fanatical...so much as to lay down her life, that did not fit the description of the politicians he knew. Then he realized. This would be her contribution to her bill. The mission had never been about any actual negotiations, and Amidala had known that from the start. She meant to be a martyr, and use her own death to propel her bill to passage, and she would sacrifice even her beloved and the Chosen One. For a moment he pitied the young man, so smitten with love that he was willing to die for a fanatic.
"May the Force be with you, Senator, Anakin."
She gritted out a smile and reached for her husband's hands. Gripping it, they looked at each other longingly for a brief second, then looked back at Obi-Wan.
"We'll be fine. Paan and our friends are surprisingly good shots. They've rescued me and taken command of three floors in this compound by themselves already."
"Very well. But be wary of Ventress. She is more powerful than she would have you believe."
Without another word, Obi-Wan ran off to the lift, but not before Padmé commanded the rest of the men Paan had brought with him to follow the Jedi, leaving only the five of them behind.
"Good acting," Anakin said to his wife.
"Thanks. You too. Much better than that holodrama display earlier."
Anakin shrugged. "It worked, didn't it?"
"I won't pretend to know what you're talking about," Wipper said, a spark in his eye. "Hurry," he yelled, running ahead.
They all followed him. As they approached the control room, they heard a clang of a small detonator land on the ground.
"Get away from that," Anakin yelled. "Get back here!"
Wipper heard him, but they were all too close, and there was no way they could escape it in time. Looking back and staring into the eyes of Kara, he stiffened and grabbed the detonator, running ahead. There was a small hallway to his left here, and if he could just throw it down in time...
The explosion rocked the hallway, and fire and debris raced towards the small group as the horror of what just happened dawned on them. Stepping to the front, Anakin and Padmé placed their palms forward, somehow creating an invisible barrier between them and the fire, slowly pushing it back.
"No," Kara gasped. Even with the two offworlders somehow shielding them from the explosion, she felt the intense heat within her lungs and couldn't breathe. But right now, she didn't even want to breathe.
"He didn't have to do that," Anakin shouted as the fire subsided. "He didn't have to do that. We would have protected him. He should have known we could."
"Anakin," Padmé said gently to him, noting that his eyes were already yellow. She would not calm the frenzy, but she would direct it. "Let's finish this."
As they continued their advance, Paan spotted two more twi'lek guards emerged by the entrance of the control room, firing at them. Apparently the pirates didn't want to sacrifice their own. He raised his blaster and was about to tell the two offworlders to get back, but somehow they reached their hands forward as they did with the explosion...and absorbed the shots with their own bare hands. Without any further hesitation, the two guards found themselves violently flung through the air against the wall, the impact so severe that their bodies exploded in blood upon impact.
"How can you...," but he didn't finish his sentence when they looked back at him, both their eyes gleaming yellow. With another push of their hands, the door to the command room bent, caved, and collapsed into itself, revealing the small cadre of Ventress and the remaining pirates.
"You," she screamed, looking in horror at Anakin to Padmé and back and forth between the two, the truth dawning in her eyes. She activated her lightsaber, but before she could move, she felt the violent tug of the Force around her. Trying to fight back was futile...this power was so much stronger, and she screamed in pain as she felt both of her wrists broken, bones crushed into powder instantaneously, and her saber dropped harmlessly onto the floor.
The two Siths strode calmly into the command room like wraiths, almost seeming to float before they came to a stop. Hondo raised his blaster at him, but found himself immobilized and lifted into the air.
"Scum," the boy screamed at him, his upraised arm making it clear who was the one responsible for this predicament. "You will pay for hurting her."
As soon as he said the words, Hondo felt immeasurable pain emerging from inside his own body. To his horror, he saw the entire front of his torso from his chest to his abdomen start to bulge outward. He screamed, and the pain only got worse as blood started to gush out where his skin broke, ripped apart by the invisible force.
Paan watched in horror as the boy somehow ripped the pirate's organs out from inside him, the man still screaming when Anakin dropped him onto the floor, his body collapsing in a bloody, formless heap. Anakin looked around ominously at the rest of the pirates, who cowered before his glare.
"Who's next," he snarled, and this time he lifted two pirates into the air, the other two who had beaten himself and Padmé along with Hondo.
Even as they screamed, Padmé heard both Paan and Ventress ask the same question. "Who...are...you?"
"The new Sith order," Padmé hissed out, her voice lacking any trace of the silky smooth voice of a young, attractive, charismatic woman. With the other two pirates disposed of, they flung the remaining pirates against the controls of the room, impaling them, before turning their attentions to Ventress, who slowly tried to back away from them on the floor. Suddenly, a thin wall of blue lightning formed around the two Siths, who held each other hand in hand. Ventress looked helplessly at the two twi'leks on the other side of the energy wall, no room left in her mind but pure, unadulterated fear.
"You're the master," she managed to say weakly to Padmé. "I will...I will serve you...I will be your slave. I have powers...you've seen them..."
"Still you are blind," the deathly senator intoned back to her. "Darth Bane instituted the Rule of Two. Always a master, always an apprentice. The apprentice learns, gains power, overthrows the master, finds a new apprentice, and the cycle continues."
They stopped when they reached her feet, trembling uncontrollably.
"The example set by Darth Bane is dead. The Rule of Two has changed. Don't you see, Ventress?"
She blinked her eyes, not understanding what the senator was trying to say.
"Two is one. One is whole. One will never be separated."
And finally Ventress understood. She saw through the Force, the energies of the two in front of her...she could not tell them apart. They were joined in the Force itself, they were one, and their union was unbreakable. She never had a chance, and as all her dark ambitions came to an end, Ventress saw the deathly lightning flung forth at her, and felt the darkness overpower her.
Nightshade's sydneylover150: Hopefully the story's going somewhere...
