With Nik in the Senate Dome, the end game might be a little easier, but they didn't have this area mapped out as well. Dashing between dumpsters and poking carefully around corners, Luke and Kess managed to catch some of their breath. Their movement was stuttered by hiding behind cover and peaking for clearance. Within a few klicks, they found themselves facing a wide rim of Imperial troops dotting the surrounding towers with snipers, and stormtroopers holding fast to prevent any Alliance advance on the Senate Dome. Luke and Kess weren't detected in their secret peeking, but agreed that trying to get around by north or south would do no good against this circular line. They had no means to go over, so Luke and Kess ducked back into the nearest building to seek out a way to go under.
A family of three huddled in a ball in the far corner of what looked like an office lobby. Kess patted her palm out with promises they wouldn't hurt them as Luke ignited his blade and stabbed down into the floor. It took a minute, but he stepped around in a big circle, dragging the blade to cut a large hole, and pulled the blade out again. With one foot, he stomped down onto it, but it barely nudged. Kess stepped over and stomped down the other side. It took several shoves before the hot-melted circle of metal broke free and fell like the loud clattering manhole cover onto the level below.
Kess ignited and used the Force in her jump to clear the hot-melted edge, already guarding herself from whatever was down there. Luke landed back-to-back behind her. They watched as people scattered away like mice in the apartment hallway.
"Do you know the layout here?" She asked as she rushed down the hall behind him.
"No." He huffed back, running without pause, stopping only when he found an elevator lobby and thumbed the button repeatedly to call a car.
"I lost track of which way is east," she said.
"That way." He said, pointing quickly to his right, and eyed the elevator as if that would make it come faster. "Don't lose track."
They rushed into the elevator together before the doors fully opened. Luke proceeded to cut a hole in the car's ceiling. Kess stuffed herself in the corner to stay out of the way thumbed to send the car down by ten floors, then jammed the doors to close as fast as they would. "Some of these levels are secured with key codes."
"And those are the ones we want." He told her and stepped against the wall beside her. The second manhole cover-shaped cut fell down from overhead. "Send it down one more as soon as we move."
He shut off the blade and centered himself under the hole, staring up until the car rested close to a stop. The doors didn't open because they didn't have the code. Luke jumped up through the hole with the Force and landed, with spread feet straddling the cut, on top of the car. Kess thumbed the next floor down and rushed to follow him, but she rushed so fast that she came too close to the cut edge and singed the shoulder of her pale tunic. Luke reached out and grabbed the back of her shirt, helping her until her feet found purchase on top of the elevator car, and kept his grip on her as the car sank one more level beneath them.
Predictably, the unsecured access doors of the last stop were still closing as the car sank another four meters. Kess shoved her arm fast between the closing doors so the auto-stop would prevent biting down on a passenger. The doors bounced back open, regardless of the lack of lift at its level, and Luke shoved her ass farther into it until she climbed onto her stomach on their chosen deck.
Luke climbed up seconds later, finding themselves now in a long, wide east-west hallway of fine office clusters, complete with framed posters of politicians hanging on the walls.
"We're getting close."
They ran. Someone tried to shoot at them from ahead, but Kess blocked the shot and bounced it back to land on the angle of wall. The opponent dove away and out of sight. They ran. Kess mentally thanked him for making her run that fucking grinder because she wasn't out of breath yet. And they ran some more.
The hallway opened up to a huge circular lobby wrapping around a coliseum-sized interior structure. These halls were oddly empty, but hundreds of scared and angry people spiked out on the Force from inside.
"This is it." He dashed left, searching the tall wall of this enclosed coliseum for the best way in, and to determine how far up or down they were from its full height. The spread of scared people reached far overhead and far below. One fancy entrance with its slammed shut archway seemed no different than the next, Luke lunged forward to try to figure out how to get it open.
But Kess grabbed his shirtsleeve. "No wait." Her eyes searched up and searched down, and pointed. "He's at the bottom. Underneath it."
Luke looked around for another elevator but remembered the layout from the drawings enough to know none of the lifts from this lobby would reach down to the Chancellor's chambers below. And these decks and ceilings were too thick with blast armor to cut through with a lightsaber.
It was a puzzle. Kess sensed panicked politicians inside still trying to claw their way out from every level. They could probably unlock the doors with Telekinesis, but they'd be flooded by panicking people the moment a door opened. Luke sensed a herd of Coruscant guard holding position on the outside skin of the building, holding back any Alliance help from outside. Luke and Kess were stuck in the abandoned lobby between the two crowds.
As Luke's eyes scanned the situation with severity, he pulled out his commlink and waited for connection.
"Yes?" It was Mon Mothma. And she was anticipating this call.
"We're here. But we're still trying to get inside."
"How long?"
He looked around and shook his head. "Couple minutes."
"Copy." Click.
Kess stood at the ready for all this, watching the halls with lightsaber en guard in case of attack. None came. All the guards were outside holding back the Alliance. And the building's security was holding back the Empire inside.
Luke's eyes kept his fast figuring scan of the area as he thumbed another connection. "Artoo, what's your twenty?"
The droid beeped through the comm. Both Luke and Kess immediately turned that direction and leapt into a run counter-clockwise around the massive lobby. Artoo continued to report his attempts and successes as they ran nearly a half a klick for him, finally appearing around the great circle and plugged into a wall comm.
"Hero of the day," Luke smiled in his running and immediately covered Artoo's six in case the droid's efforts were disrupted by blaster fire. No one was around, but that didn't matter. Kess too covered his other quarter and did the same as they waited for Artoo to make his move.
He whistled a question, and Kess answered. "No. He's already here. Down in the Chancellor's chambers."
Another question.
"She's on her way."
Artoo piped a happy, Copy that, and swiveled his face back to get to work.
A few meters away, a short little access hatch opened in the wall, guarded by lasers so that only droids could get through. The three of them hopped to it and Luke slashed down to cut the lasers off the frame.
Artoo rolled right into it, Luke ducked in after him, and Kess crouched in behind. Lightsabers disappeared and latched to belts. With a pause, she used the Force to close the hatch again so no one would suspect where they went.
All three of them were silent to crawl through these access tubes. These were meant only for certain droids, which made it difficult for two full sized humans to maneuver through some places. They reached what would be considered a droid lift, except there was no lift; droids were designed to do that themselves. Artoo rolled over the space with a 'tallyho' and fired his thrusters to slow his decent. Luke and Kess both peaked over to see how far the droid lowered down to know where they should stop too.
Artoo paused and shined a light out from the porthole to show where he waited.
It was only a half dozen levels, and there were plenty of frames and tracks to use as handholds. Kess was ready to climb down.
"That'll take too long," Luke said, pulling out his grappling hook and threaded out an eye-balled measure of line.
Kess waited and watched as he hooked the grappling securely on a frame nearby and wrapped the distant end of the line around his wrist and hand. He motioned her over with his other.
A jump to a sudden stop? With the weight of both of them? Kess squeaked. "You're going to take your own hand off doing it like that."
He wiggled his tied fingers with a grin. "Not this one."
Even cyborgenics couldn't handle this kind of maneuver, but Kess accepted that if he lost it, he'd just get another one. She shuffled herself to sit beside him over the edge, both sets of boots dangling over the endless pit, and angled over to hug his body and grip his tunic with all her might.
"Ready, set . . . go—
They jumped together and SLAMMED to a stop. He slipped from her grip in the sudden force of it, but her hands continued to squeeze, almost ripping his tunic, in the desperation not fall farther. Luke's left hand came down and grabbed her forearm with precision. For a split second, Kess dangled and looked up wide-eyed at the man that had her.
"I've got you," he almost grinned to say it.
She almost grinned too, and instantly gripped his clothes to lift herself back up his body, now reaching boots out to the framework on the side and removed her weight. She climbed up the side of the shaft. Luke set his boots out for footholds too and quickly climbed up after her.
Artoo bent over them from the porthole with his helpful light, warbling jokes as they climbed to get to him.
Luke whispered at him to shut up. They were close now, and they didn't want anyone to hear them coming.
During the jump, the locket had dropped further down his sock and under his heal. Afraid he was going to break the possibly fragile solder-line, Luke stepped gently until they were down the tunnel and on the other side of the final entrance.
Kess sat down in the tunnel and closed her eyes to sense out. "He's in there," she whispered almost inaudibly. "But they're doing something to him. He's not . . . he's not exactly conscious."
As she spoke, Luke took the opportunity to pull off his boot and nudge the locket back to the upper part of his sock.
"What's the matter?"
"I've got something stuck in my shoe." Despite all that was going on, he couldn't help but grin about this development.
Kess watched with exasperation that he just moved it out of the way and stuffed his boot back on with the thing still in there. "Well, get it out!"
"It's fine. It's okay." But still he couldn't help but smile at the humor of it. He forced his attention back to business. "Let's do this."
He crawled forward and whispered Artoo to get behind them. It was a struggle for the two of them to slip passed the droid in the tight space, but soon they were side by side, crouching on one knee in front of the final access hatch. Hilts came off belts at the ready.
They eyed each other . . . breathed . . . and nodded.
Force Telekinesis opened the locked hatch. Kess's blade came out first. Already they were hearing blaster fire and the inner rim accent of shouting. At first, all Kess did was cover Luke from blast shots until he came to his feet and ignited his own blade. Then he deftly blocked shots as she came to her feet beside him. In seconds, four Red Guards were on the floor, dead from their own fire, and the front half of the Grand Moff's blaster was flying into the wall.
Luke immediately shoved his forearm against the officer's chest and slammed him into the wall. Jakobi put his hands up in hope that surrender was an option.
But Luke didn't strike him. He just ripped the commlink from Jakobi's hand and stuffed it into a pocket. He held the man at bay with his arms and the power of a constant Force Push.
As soon as the coast was clear, Kess leapt on top of the desk and sliced the interrogator droid in half. A protocol droid shuffled away in a panic. She didn't want to, but she had to slice him in half too. He sizzled and warbled as he fell. She disengaged her blade and slid off the desk to her feet beside the big chair of Darth Tovecus.
"Nik?" Gently, she removed his helmet. It was Nik, staring blank and unblinking at the desktop, his mouth slack with spittle on his lips. His body shuddered weakly. She unraveled the droids finger grips from his hand. She unplugged the voice-cap from his throat, and she grimaced to rip off the mind control capsule from the skin on the back of his neck. "Nikolai. It's me, Kess." She moved around to his front, practically sitting on the desk to put herself in front of him. She took his face with both hands and made him look at her. "Nik?"
Mouth parted, eyes bloodshot, shoulders slumped from rapidly repeated shock treatment, Nik's eyes searched out for understanding in the blur.
They didn't have time for this. Kess cringed to have to do it, but she reached hard over her own shoulder and backhanded his face. "Nik!"
Nik's head whipped to the side at the blow, but he blinked more, and angry. He returned to sit up to recover from it but now ready to fight back this strange attacker.
Kess scrambled to pull out the wedding locket from her tunic and wagged it into his face. "Nikolai! It's me! Kay Kay! Nikolai, see me!"
Brown eyes spun to find the rocking white locket in front of his face like he was being hypnotized by it. He began to sit up in the oversized chair.
"You're too late," Jakobi chuckled at all this in spite of being pinned to the wall by a Jedi. "He's mine now."
A familiar voice spoke, Nikolai, lad, find the brightness.
But only three of the four people in the room could hear it.
Kess smiled as Nik's eyes began to find her behind the locket. "Nik, listen to grandpa," she said. "It's me, Kay Kay."
Nik's eyes opened with hope, with understanding, but it was foggy at best. Anger constricted his face as he searched the room, saw the dead guards and found the Jedi holding Jakobi against the wall by the forearms. All watched him for his reaction.
Nik's teeth tightened with fresh anger. He climbed from the chair using the desk to steady himself, and stumbled over to Luke and Jakobi. Kess rushed up to stop the impending struggle, calling his name as she reignited her blade, but didn't know what she could do to stop this.
Luke's eyes widened, trying to figure out how to manage both men in the same fight without hurting either. He let his body get ripped away from Jakobi by Nik's angry hands.
Brown eyes flared with wrath, but not at Luke. Nik grabbed Jakobi by the gray uniform and lifted his feet off the floor to slam him harder against the wall, shouting into the man's face.
"YOU TOLD ME THERE'D BE COOKIES!"
Kess almost laughed, Luke blinked back with a grin, but both went immediately back to work to calm Nik and secure Jakobi once more.
"Nik?" She made him turn to her and talked up into his face, talking fast and quiet. "Nik, look at me. I need you with me. You want to be a Jedi? We've got Jedi work to do. Can you see me? Can you hear me? Nikolai, come on. Snap out of it."
Nik continued to rub his face like he just woke up. His eyes continued to spin around the room and the action therein trying to figure out what was going on. Obviously, his humor was coming back, but Nik was not 'back' yet. He still looked at her as though he didn't know who she was.
Meanwhile, Kess tossed Luke the voice-cap and Luke caught it out of the air. He pressed Jakobi to the floor and stabbed the voice-cap it into the other man's throat with an apology. Jakobi's eyes bulged. He opened his mouth to try to complain and talk, but it only came out in a whispered cough.
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Luke yanked Jakobi to his feet and pulled out his own commlink. "We're ready."
Kess looked at Luke and shook her head that they weren't.
"Use Persuade," he told her as he stuffed his commlink away.
"On my own brother?"
Luke nodded and chinned her to get moving onto the Red Guard part of the plan.
Kess struggled to catch up, speaking urgently up at her tall brother's face. "Nik, bud, we gotta go." She stepped over and picked up the helmet and returned to him. "Put this on."
"What's happening?" Nik grumbled like he was nauseous.
Kess helped him get it back onto his head. "You are about to become an Emperor."