When Obi-Wan left Watto's shop the next morning, he had a bag of hyperdrive parts slung over one shoulder and the control unit for Shmi and Anakin Skywalker's slave chips in his belt.
While Anakin ran ahead to tell Shmi the news, Padmé walked beside him radiating bittersweet satisfaction.
"I wish we could do more," she murmured.
"We do what we can with what we have," he replied. "But I will alert the Exploration Corps and the Medical Corps. Perhaps they can do more."
"What are those?"
"Two of the branches of the Jedi Service Corps. Those whose inclinations aren't toward becoming a knight often join the Corps to use their gifts to help the galaxy."
She nodded, and they finished the journey to the Skywalkers' residence in companionable silence.
Shmi met them at the door, holding tightly to a jubilant Anakin. "I hardly dared to hope."
"Knight Kenobi is a skilled negotiator," Padmé said. "The outcome was never in doubt."
He had doubted the outcome, but he knew better than to admit as much aloud. Instead, he handed over the slave chip control unit to Shmi and accepted her tentative hug and kiss to his cheek along with her murmured thanks.
Still, something dark and dangerous whispered at his awareness, and he said, "We shouldn't linger."
Shmi nodded and ducked inside, calling Anakin to pack his clothes. Padmé followed, offering her assistance, and Obi-Wan lingered outside to comm Qui-Gon, who answered promptly.
"I have the parts," Obi-Wan reported. "We will be heading back soon."
"That is good news," Qui-Gon said. "We received a transmission from Governor Bibble. He reported that the Naboo are suffering. I repeated your instructions to send no transmissions of any kind, but I don't know how long their resolve will hold. We must return to Coruscant as soon as possible."
"Understood." He ended the connection and was surprised to find Padmé and the Skywalkers ready to go.
Then again, if you didn't have much, it didn't take long to pack.
"Where are we going?" Anakin asked as they started toward the edge of town.
"First, Coruscant," Obi-Wan answered. "We'll get you both complete medical evaluations, and then you can decide what you want to do now."
"Can I be a Jedi like you?" Anakin asked.
"Probably not a knight like me," Obi-Wan said gently. "The Order prefers to begin training knights before the equivalent of their fifth birthday."
"Why so young?" Shmi asked.
"Almost every culture has a variation of, show me the child and I will show you the adult," Obi-Wan told her. "The age of the child – the child of five, the child of seven, or what have you – varies, but the intent is the same. At some point in early childhood, the foundation of who we will become is laid, and most people of most species find it very difficult to change that foundation to align themselves with the Order's philosophy."
"Oh." Anakin's immense disappointment rang through the Force.
"But you can still be a Jedi," Obi-Wan continued. "The Service Corps don't require the same dedication that the Knights do."
"What are they?" Shmi asked. "I've not heard of them."
Describing the missions and goals of the Agricultural Corps, the Education Corps, the Exploration Corps, and the Medical Corps took most of Obi-Wan's attention as they walked, though he kept his senses open and receptive. Watto had surrendered the control unit willingly enough, but this was Tatooine, Hutt territory, and Force only knew what might lie in wait for them.
Anakin's questions trailed off as they approached the edge of the city, possibly due to heat fatigue as Tatooine's twin suns neared their apexes in the sky. Despite the bright suns overhead, the dark feeling Obi-Wan had had earlier only grew stronger as they crossed into the bare desert toward where they'd left the royal starship.
Another presence tickled at his awareness, and he focused his attention and Force-senses off to his right.
Oddly, it was the Living Force, his weakest affinity, that brought him the warning.
"Something's coming – someone is coming, and it's not good."
A dark speck appeared at the edge of the horizon. Obi-Wan didn't need to enhance his vision to conclude it was a vehicle of some kind.
"Get to the ship," Obi-Wan said. "Quickly."
Without being prompted, Padmé took the bag of parts from his shoulder and started toward the ship at a pace that was better than walking, but not much more, thanks to the deep Tatooine sand.
"You can run faster like this."
Obi-Wan didn't dare focus on what Shmi might be showing Padmé, not with splitting his attention between the oncoming – yes, it was a single-person speeder bike – and a call through the Force.
Unexpected company, he sent to Qui-Gon, along with an image of the newcomer.
He received Qui-Gon's acknowledgment, but the speeder was closing too quickly for him to continue the conversation.
Instead, he let their connection drop and examined the newcomer with every sense in every detail, from the blocky build of the speeder to the flapping of the rider's cloak…
The rider's very voluminous cloak.
Sometimes, when Master Yoda visited the younglings, he gave impromptu lessons in using the Force, dropping aphorisms to help a child remember. One of those came to Obi-Wan's mind.
Size matters not, Yoda had said. And then one of the younglings – Draw Semaj, if Obi-Wan remembered correctly – added cheekily, but weight does.
Cloth weighed almost nothing.
Through the Force, Obi-Wan encouraged the being's cloak to flap up into thon's face and then around thon's head. Not tight enough to smother, but certainly enough to cling to the being's face, impeding thon's vision.
He followed that with a veritable blast of sand to the being's head, taking a Force-assisted leap to one side as he did. No sense staying where he was if the being intended to stay on the same course despite being blinded.
The speeder swerved away from him, and the being leapt backward over it, somersaulting in the air to land on thon's feet, ripping the cloth away from thon's face as thon did so.
Obi-Wan recognized his opponent as a male Zabrak with red and black markings, his face etched into a scowl and his anger radiating through the Force.
Long accustomed to dealing with highly-emotional missions as Qui-Qon's padawan, Obi-Wan let the anger slide past him, but the Force…shuddered. If Obi-Wan didn't know better, he'd say the Force actually flinched away from the Zabrak's anger.
That flinch was the only warning Obi-Wan got before the Zabrak ignited a lightsaber with a blood-red blade and a grip more than twice the length of any other saber Obi-Wan had ever seen.
The Physical Force twitched a warning, and the Zabrak lunged forward to attack.
There was no subtlety at all to the Zabrak's attack, and Obi-Wan fell into the defensive form, Soresu, to allow himself the time to study the Zabrak's form overall.
First he thought it might be Ataru, the Aggression Form, but as the clash continued, he realized that the anger he'd sensed in the Zabrak was growing, almost as though the Zabrak was using it to fuel his attacks.
Juyo, then – the Ferocity Form.
Which meant Obi-Wan couldn't rely solely on Soresu. Instead, he shifted more into Djem So, countering each strike the Zabrak made and going on counteroffensive when an opening presented itself.
He and the Zabrak seemed of similar skill, neither one gaining a definitive edge over the other while the heat of Tatooine's twin suns beat down on them. He found himself feeling the other man's rage and he released that emotion to the Force, allowing peace and serenity to take its place and fuel his own reserves.
He'd just deflected a powerful overhead strike – the deflection itself making his opponent even more angry, a situation he might be able to take advantage of – when he felt Qui-Gon's presence in his mind once more, warning him that the queen's starship was about to take off to skim the surface of the desert and he should be ready to leap aboard to escape.
What he would later call a plan rather than an instinctive strategy born of necessity and opportunity burst into his mind.
When his opponent attacked next, Obi-Wan kept the rage behind it and asked the Cosmic Force to transform the rage into relief and triumph, and then he sent that feeling back to his opponent, feeling as though the emotions traveled from his core down his arm, and through his blade, then mirroring the journey into his opponent.
The Zabrak snarled and attacked again, fury lending speed and strength to his movements while stealing accuracy…
…and Obi-Wan found the opening he'd been waiting for, sliding forward on shifting sands to bend under the red saber and bring his own up and out.
His sapphire blade sliced through the Zabrak's torso, catching him under the right rib and then sliding through center mass to the left side junction of neck and shoulder. The Zabrak didn't even have time to scream before his heart was bisected.
The two parts of the body fell to the ground at an odd, sickening angle, and the Zabrak's lightsaber fizzled out as the hilt fell from lifeless fingers.
Obi-Wan shut off his own saber, returning it to his belt as he crossed the few steps to the Zabrak's body. He knelt to check for a pulse and found none – in either part of the body.
The whine of the starship engine filled his senses so much that he asked the Force to dampen his hearing. He rose and turned to face the ship, waving it to land nearby.
While he waited for the starship to land, he examined the Zabrak's saber hilt. He'd never seen a lightsaber hilt so long before. He soon discovered the reason: more than just a two-handed grip, it was actually double-bladed.
"Obi-Wan!" Qui-Gon's shout from the opening hatch of the ship prevented him from doing more than staring at the double blades before extinguishing them and securing the hilt to his belt. "Are you injured?"
"He used the dark side of the Force," Obi-Wan replied, then took a breath, releasing his anxieties with it. "But more, I believe he was a Sith."
Qui-Gon's shock bled away into the Force. "That will be something for the Council to decide. We must return to Coruscant."
"Let's take the body with us," Obi-Wan said. "The Council will want as much information as we can give them. I'll search his speeder, see if there's anything of note in it."
BREAK
A couple of maintenance crew and engineers had been among the "pilots" Obi-Wan rescued from the Trade Federation's droids on Naboo and, with R2-D2's help, they had the starship's hyperdrive repaired in short order.
As soon as the ship made the jump to hyperspace, Obi-Wan left the command center for the medical bay. He shouldn't have been surprised when Qui-Gon fell more or less into step beside him, still limping despite the bacta applied to his leg.
"You've learned some lessons too well," he said.
"Oh?" Obi-Wan quirked an eyebrow at him. "Which one in particular?"
"Picking up stray life-forms."
"Ah." Obi-Wan blew out a breath, centering himself in the Force. "It was the will of the Force."
"Was it?"
"Yes." He had to bite back the master that had followed yes for more than a decade. "I will fully brief the Council when we return to Coruscant."
"As part of the mission debrief," Qui-Gon said.
So he could be there for it, of course. Obi-Wan kept his tone neutral when he answered, "As you say."