"Power!" Palpatine cackled, blasting Mace Windu with lightning. "Unlimited power!"

Anakin stared, having trouble processing what was going on for several long seconds, until the Battlemaster of the Jedi Order fell out the window and out of sight.

Then Anakin went back over the last several seconds in his head, and pointed his lightsaber at Palpatine.

"Master Windu was right," he said.

"Anakin," Palpatine replied, sounding hoarse. "We don't have much time-"

"You literally just killed Master Windu!" Anakin snapped. "He said you were too dangerous to be kept alive – I disagreed with that! I wanted you arrested! Then you immediately killed him the moment it was possible!"

Palpatine coughed, for dramatic effect, then stood up, and Anakin backed away a step. Then another.

He trod on something that went squish, and glancing down for a moment revealed that it was about sixty percent of Master Kit Fisto.

"...uh," he went on, glancing around and noticing for the first time the three dead Jedi Masters on the floor. "I…"

"Anakin, you are fulfilling your destiny," Palpatine said. "Become my apprentice. Learn to use the Dark Side of the Force."

Anakin glanced down at his lightsaber, then swung it up to point it at Palpatine again.

Then pointed it away.

"I don't know what to think," he admitted.

Palpatine discreetly rolled his eyes.

"Only I can save your wife," he reminded Anakin. "Think of that."

Anakin frowned, then cut both of Palpatine's hands off.

Palpatine blinked, staring at Anakin, then looked down at where his hands had been a few seconds ago.

"Anakin… why…?" he asked.

"I had to think of something!" Anakin replied. "It's the only way I can think of to arrest you where you won't just be able to use the Force to – uh…"

He frowned, thinking. "Now I think about it, I guess I don't have trouble pulling things with my robot hand… uh… maybe if I blinded you or something? No, no, people can sense things with the Force too, this is really hard…"

Palpatine did not seem particularly impressed by this particular point of esoteric Sith remand policy.

Padme's communicator chimed, and she picked it up.

"Senator Amidala," she said.

"Padme!" Anakin replied, sounding relieved. "I'm glad you're there. Listen, uh, this is going to be kind of complicated…"

"What is it now, Ani?" she asked, smiling through a yawn. "I've just got up…"

"Right, but I really need to let you know something, and to ask you to pass on a message, too," Anakin told her. "Advice might help, as well… so, uh, listen, I tried to arrest the Chancellor for being a Sith and also a murderer, but it was kind of difficult to work out how to take him prisoner, and he's… dead."

"He's dead?" Padme repeated. "How did… how did that happen, exactly?"

"I was having trouble working out how to stop him shooting lightning!" Anakin protested. "But I called the Coruscant Guard in case they had any ideas, and the Chancellor tried to shout something which sounded like he was using a mind trick or something so I tried to stop him doing that as well, and then he exploded so I guess I must have done something wrong. But, anyway, since I killed him trying to arrest him I've turned myself in anyway, and this is my one comcall…"

Padme did her best to decipher that, because she was good at parsing Anakin but there was only one true master at that and he was currently on Utapau.

"...you turned yourself in?" she checked, carefully.

"Yeah, there's… more than one reason for that, but one of them is that I failed so hard at arresting a man that he exploded," Anakin said. "Anyway, uh, can you ask Obi-Wan to come and help me out when he gets the chance? After what's happened in the last twenty-four hours I'm worried that if I get assigned a defence counsel I'm going to make them spontaneously combust."

AN:

Oddly, more Jedi than normal.