Star Wars: Episode 2—A Retelling
Attack of the Clones
By: Tellemicus Sundance
#05: Victory in Defeat

Midnight, Coruscant

Zam Wesell leaned against the side of her speeder, impatiently tapping her gloved fingers on the roof the old vehicle. She wore an oversized purple helmet, front-wedged and solid save a small rectangle cut out about her eyes, but while that hid her assumed beauty, her formfitting grav-suit showed every feminine curve. Zam didn't think much about it at the time for with this particular mission, it was more important that she merely blend in. Often she had taken assignments where her assumed feminine wiles had helped her tremendously, where she had played upon the obvious weakness of a male to get close.

Those wiles weren't going to help her with this assignment, and Zam knew it. This time, she was out to kill a woman, a Representative, and one who was very well guarded by beings absolutely devoted to her, as protective of her as a parent might be to a child. Zam wondered what this woman might have done to invoke the wrath of her employers.

Or at least, she started to wonder as she had started to wonder several times since Jango had hired her to kill the Representative. The professional assassin never truly let her thoughts travel down that path. It wasn't her business. She was not a moral gauge for anyone, not one to decide the value of her assignment or the justice or injustice involved. She was just a tool, in many ways, a machine. She was the extension of her employers and nothing more. Jango had bade her to kill Amidala, and so she would kill Amidala, fly back and collect her due, and go on to the next assignment. It was clean and it was simple.

Zam could hardly believe that the explosive charge she had managed to hide on the landing platform had not done the job, but she had taken that lesson to heart. She had come to understand that the weaknesses of Representative Amidala were not easily discerned and exploited.

The changeling banged her fist on the roof of the speeder. She hated that she had been forced to go outside for help, to procure a probe droid to do the task that she so relished handling personally. But now there were Jedi about Amidala, by all the rumors and Zam had little desire to do battle with one of those troublesome fanatics. She glanced into the speeder, to the timepiece on the console, and nodded grimly. The job should be completed by now. The poisonous kouhuns had been delivered, likely and one scratch of a venomous stinger should be more than enough.

Zam stood up straight, sensing something, some sudden feeling of uneasiness.

She heard a cry, of surprise or of fear, and she glanced all about. Then her eyes went wide indeed from behind her cutout rectangle of the helmet. She watched in blank amazement as the probe droid, her programmed assassin, wove through the towering buildings of Coruscant, with a man dressed like a Jedi hanging on to it! Zam's fear lessened and she smiled widely as she watched the droid go into defensive action, for this one was programmed well.

It smacked against the side of a building, nearly dislodging the Jedi. When that didn't work, the clever droid dived back into the traffic lane, soaring behind a speeder, just above the vehicle's exhaust. The Jedi squirmed and tucked, somehow managing to keep himself out of the fiery exhaust. And so the droid swooped off to the side, taking a different tack. It flew in low over the top of one building. Zam's eyes widened as she watched the spectacle. She was impressed at the way the Jedi did not allow himself to be slammed off, but rather tucked his legs enough to run along the rooftop as the droid skimmed across it. Oh, he was good!

This was truly entertaining to the bounty hunter, but enough was enough.

She reached into the speeder and pulled out a long blaster rifle, casually lifting and leveling. She fired off a series of shots and explosions ignited all about the Jedi and the droid. Zam looked up from her sights, stunned that the crafty man had somehow avoided all those shots, had dodged, or had, she mused, used his Jedi powers to deflect them.

"Block this," the bounty hunter said, raising the rifle again. Taking aim at the Jedi's chest, she lifted the barrel just a bit and squeezed the trigger. The probe droid exploded and the Jedi plummeted from sight.

Sighing and shrugging, Zam tried telling herself that the cost of the probe droid was worth the show and hopefully the victory. If Representative Amidala lay dead in her room, then that cost would be a minor thing indeed. This bounty exceeded anything Zam had ever hoped to collect. Slipping her blaster rifle back into her speeder, she bent low and squeezed in, soaring off into the Coruscant traffic lanes.

Obi-wan screamed as he dropped…ten stories…twenty. There was nothing in his Jedi repertoire to save him this time. He looked all about frantically, but there was nothing—no handholds, no platform, no awning of thick and padded cloth. Nothing. Just another five hundred stories to the ground! He tried to find his sense of calm, tried to fall into the Force and accept this unwelcomed end. And then a speeder swooped beside him and he saw that cocky smile of his unruly charge, and never in his life had Obi-wan Kenobi been happier to see anything.

"Hitchhikers usually stand on the platforms," Anakin informed him, and he swooped the speeder near enough for Obi-wan to grab on. "A novel approach, though. Gets the attention of passing traffic, not to mention the ladies!"

Obi-wan was too busy clawing his way into the passenger seat to offer a retort. He finally settled in next to Anakin.

"I almost lost you there," the young man remarked.

"No kidding. What took you so long?"

Anakin eased back in his seat, putting his left arm up on the door of the open speeder and assuming a casual posture. "Oh, you know, Master," he said flippantly. "I couldn't find a speeder I really liked. One with an open cockpit, of course, and with the right speed capabilities to catch your droid scooter. And then, you know, I had to hold out for just the right color—"

"There!" Obi-wan shouted, pointing up to a closed-in speeder, recognizing it as the one behind the assassin who had been shooting at him. It soared above them, and Anakin cut hard on the wheel and the stick, angling in fast pursuit.

Almost immediately, an arm came out of the lead speeder's open window, holding a blaster pistol, and the bounty hunter squeezed off a handful of shots. Anakin was quick to start jostling, rocking, and weaving their speeder into a series of evasive dodges with one hand. The other hand slid down to his thigh and brought out his own blaster, firing off some of his own shots. And although his shots missed their target, they had the intended effect of forcing the bounty hunter to abandon his own potshots and focus more on his flying.

"If you'd spend as much time working on your lightsaber skills as you do on your wit, you'd rival Master Yoda!" Obi-wan said, trying to hold himself steady in his seat as Anakin effortlessly put them through the dodges. Seeing that the assassin wasn't returning the boy's fire anymore, Obi-wan reached out and grabbed his hand in a silent command to cease firing. The young Skywalker didn't even blink as he lowered his blaster and set it between them for later use.

"I thought I already did," Anakin said, smiling proudly. "After all, I've already developed four new fighting forms for the Royal Knights."

"Perhaps you have," Obi-wan acknowledged. "But you still lack the skill to bring any of them up to their peaks." He gave a little cry and ducked reflexively as Anakin in and out of traffic, narrowly missing several vehicles. "Careful! Hey, easy! You know I don't like it when you do that!"

"Sorry, I forgot you don't like flying, Obi-wan!" Anakin said, his voice rising at the end as he took the speeder down suddenly to avoid another blasterbolt from the stubborn bounty hunter.

"I don't mind flying," Obi-wan insisted. "But what you're doing is suicide!" His words nearly caught in his throat, along with his stomach, as Anakin cut hard to the right, then dropped suddenly, punched the throttle, pulled back to the left, and lifted the nose, zipping the speeder up through the traffic lane and back in sight of the bounty hunter. Only to see another line of blasterbolts coming at them. Scowling, Anakin grabbed his own blaster again and took a few shots of his own, reminding the bounty hunter that they weren't defenseless either.

Then the bounty hunter dived to the side suddenly, and both of them opened their eyes and their mouths wide, their screams drowned out by a commuter train crossing right in front of them. Obi-wan tasted bile again, but somehow Anakin managed to avoid the train, coming out of the other side. Obi-wan looked over to young friend to see him assuming a casual, in-control posture.

"Obi-wan, you know I've been flying since before I could walk," the boy said with a sly grin. "I'm very good at this."

"Just slow down," Obi-wan instructed, in a voice that suggested the dignified Jedi Knight was about to throw up. Anakin ignored him, taking the speeder in fast pursuit of the assassin, right into a line of giant trucks.

Meanwhile, things were very quiet back at the apartment complex. After the initial surprise and alarms had gone off and her two bodyguards had gone crashing after the assassin droid, Captain Typho had locked down the floor of their apartment level and doubled the security watch. Everyone in the building was closely monitored, identified, and scanned for potential threats to either the Representative or anyone else in the building.

Up in the apartment in question, Padme stood in one corner of the room, clutching her nightgown tightly around her shoulders as she paced about. Her mind was filled with busy thoughts, ideas, questions, and images. Though some were plausible and potentially important, many others were simply the figments of her overactive imagination due to the slight adrenaline rush she'd experienced mere minutes ago. With her mind so frantic and cluttered, she paced and tried to burn off her excess energy and worry for Anakin and Obi-wan as they tracked her assassin through the massive city.

Looking over to the nearby wall, Padme couldn't help but envy her last little bodyguard. Ahsoka sat upon her knees, hands resting upon her thigh and near her weapons, eyes closed and head slightly bowed, seemingly at peace and calm. Padme had seen the girl, Anakin, and many of the Royal Knights in similar postures quite often, so she knew that the young Togruta was meditating in the Force. Though whether she was searching for clarity of the situation or just trying to calm her own nerves was a mystery to the Naboo Representative.

Finally, after several stressful minutes of silence between them, Padme decided to ask the question that was eating away at her. "What are you doing, Ahsoka?"

"Searching in the Force," Ahsoka said in low, calm, almost detached voice. "Looking for anyone who might have an interest towards you, this room, this apartment, this building."

"How can you do that?" Padme asked, somewhat surprised. While she could never admit to understanding the Force in a manner to what her dear young friend could, she did understand the basics somewhat. "Wouldn't all of the sentient beings nearby throw off your perception?"

"Normally, yes," Ahsoka admitted. "That is why I'm looking for negative emotions, like aggression."

"Aggression? But isn't that…" she trailed off, not quite sure how she wanted to phrase her response or if she even wanted to know the answer.

"Yes," Ahsoka answered, seemingly understanding what Padme had been attempting to ask. "I'm searching for these emotions through the dark side. While the light is good for defense, it cannot locate hidden or suppressed aggression as quickly or easily as the dark side of the Force. The dark side is drawn to such emotions, making—"

She stopped mid-sentence as she detected something. A cold aggression aimed at the building, lining itself up, preparing, waiting for the right moment to strike. Then, as she felt Padme come to momentary halt to turn and glance at her in front of a window, Ahsoka felt the aggression turn into anticipation within a split second. This could only mean one thing!

Reacting on impulse, Ahsoka sprung to her feet as she snatched up her weapons. Leaping in front of Padme, a green lightsaber sprung to life in one hand, deflecting the sniper bolt that had shot through and shattered the window glass, aimed at Padme's back. In the same move, Ahsoka nudged the surprised representative roughly to the side, pushing her safely out of the sniper's line of sight. After deflecting three more shots, she managed to bring up her own blaster and took a few shots off towards where she could faintly see where the four sniper shots were coming from. Her return fire must've spooked the shooter, for the attack quickly ceased and she could vaguely see the figure of the shooter on the next building over stand up and start moving away.

Turning back to Padme, who was just watching her with a silent, contemplative stare, Ahsoka switched off her lightsaber and said, "Stay here and out of sight of the windows! I'm going after him!" Before Padme could say anything, Ahsoka had already turned and rushed out of the room. She needed to get herself a speeder and fast!

Around and around they went, cutting fast corners through the traffic, over the traffic, under the traffic, and around the buildings, always keeping the assassin's speeder in sight. Anakin took his craft right up on edge, skimming the side of one building

"He can't lose me," Anakin boasted. "He getting desperate."

"Great," Obi-wan remarked dryly. "Oh wait," he added when the speeder in front dived into a tram tunnel. "Don't go in there!" But Anakin zoomed right in, and then zoomed right back out, a huge rushing train chasing him, Obi-wan screaming about as loudly as the train was blowing its horn. "You know I don't like it when you do that!"

"Sorry, Obi-wan," Anakin answered unconvincingly. "Don't worry. This guy's gonna kill himself any minute now."

"Well, let him do that alone!" Obi-wan insisted.

They watched as the assassin zoomed right into traffic, soaring the wrong way down a congested lane. Anakin went in right behind. Both speeders zigged and zagged wildly, frantically, the occasional blaster bolt shooting back and forth between them. And then, suddenly, the assassin cut fast, straight up, a tight loop that brought Zam behind the two pursuers.

"Great move," Anakin congratulated. "I got one too." He slammed on his brakes, reversing thrust, and the assassin's speeder flashed up right beside them. And there was the assassin, firing pointblank at Obi-wan.

"What are you doing?!" Obi-wan demanded. "He's going to blast me!"

"Right," Anakin agreed, merely pointing his own blaster towards the speeder and squeezing off his own shots, denting and charring the speeder's hull under the cockpit window but doing no further damage. "This isn't working."

"Nice of you to notice," Obi-wan dodged, then lurched as the speeder dropped suddenly, Anakin taking it right under the assassin's.

"He can't shoot us down here," the Skywalker congratulated himself, but his smile lasted only the split second it took for their opponent's new tactic to register. The assassin swerved out of the traffic lane and shot straight for a building, coming in at an angle to just skim the rooftop. Obi-wan started to shout out Anakin's name, but the word came out as 'Ananananananana'. The young man was in control, though, and he slowed and lifted his speeder's nose just up over the edge of the rooftop. Another obstacle showed itself almost immediately, a large craft coming in low and slow.

"It's landing!" Obi-wan shouted, and when Anakin didn't immediately respond, he added desperately, "on us!" It came out, 'On uuuuuuuuuuuus!' as Anakin brought the speeder up on edge and zipped around a corner, clipping a flagpole and taking its cloth contents free.

"Clear that," the seemingly unshakable Skywalker said nodding down to the torn flag, which had caught itself on one of the speeder's front air scoops.

"What?"

"Clear the flag! We're losing power! Hurry!"

Complaining under his breath with every movement, Obi-wan crawled out of the cockpit and gingerly onto the front of the engine. He bent low and tugged the flag free, and the speeder lurched forward, nearly dislodging him. "Don't do that! I don't like it when you do that!"

"So sorry, Master."

"He's heading for the power refinery," Obi-wan said. "But take it easy. It's dangerous near those power couplings."

Anakin zoomed right past one of the couplings, and a huge electric bolt had the air crackling all about them. Dropping his pistol, he reached out with one hand, Anakin sent a powerful wave of Force lightning out of his fingertips. The young man's lightning intermixed with the electricity surrounding them, pushing back the raw and untamed power and creating an opening just large enough for the airspeeder to pass through. He gunned the throttle as they shot through the opening.

"What are you doing?!"

"Sorry, Master!

"Slow down!" Obi-wan ordered. "Slow down! Don't go through there!"

But Anakin did just that, his lightning raging from his upraised hand and warding off all the other electricity. At the same time, Anakin had to bank the speeder left and right numerous times to dodge the machinery that the electricity was arcing out of.

"Oh, that was good," Obi-wan admitted.

"That was crazy," Anakin corrected, somewhat rattled. He'd never tried to use his Force lightning like that before. Putting it out of his mind, Anakin spotted the assassin up ahead. The assassin was sliding his speeder sidelong around a corner between two buildings up ahead. "Got him now!"

Anakin went right around behind, only to find the lead speeder stopped and blocking the alleyway, the assassin leaning out the door, blaster pistol leveled. With no time to grab his own pistol, Anakin could only grunt out, "Ah, blast."

"Stop!" Obi-wan told him, and both ducked as a line of bolts came at them.

"No, we can make it!" Anakin insisted, punching the throttle again. He dived the speeder under the assassin's, barely missing it, then went up on edge, slipping through a small gap in the building. But there were pipes there, and no level of flying could put the speeder safely through them. They bounced sidelong, then flipped end over end, narrowly missing a giant crane and clipping some struts. The damage brought forth a giant fiery gas ball, nearly immolating them. In the uncontrolled spin that followed, they bounced off yet another building and the speeder stalled out.

Anakin winced, expecting a line of curses to come at him. But when he finally looked at Obi-wan, he saw the Jedi staring straight ahead, eyes wide and unblinking, and saying "I'm crazy, I'm crazy, I'm crazy…" over and over again.

"But it worked," Anakin dared to say. "We made it."

"It didn't work!" Obi-wan yelled at him. "We've stalled! And you almost got us killed!"

Looking down at his hands and body, he wriggled his fingers almost contemplatively. "I think we're still alive," he said, grinning back at his mentor to disarm his fuming, but Obi-wan seemed as if he was about to explode.

"It was stupid!" he roared.

"I could have made it," Anakin protested sheepishly as he worked wildly, trying to restart the speeder. His confident expression strengthened as the speeder roared back to life.

"But you didn't! And now we've lost him!" But even as Obi-wan finished, a barrage of laser bolts rained down around them, setting off explosions that rocked them back and forth. The pair looked up to see the assassin rushing away.

"No, we didn't," a smiling Anakin retorted.

He took the speeder up, the sudden thrust violently throwing them both back in their seats. They came through the area of smoke and carnage with several small fires burning on their speeder. Obi-wan quickly slapped the flames on the control panel out. Again they chased the assassin into the main travel lanes, dodging and turning fast about the incoming traffic. Up ahead, the assassin cut fast to the left, between two buildings and Anakin responded by going right and up.

"Where are you going?" a perplexed Obi-wan asked. "He went down there, the other way."

"This is a shortcut. I think."

"What do you mean 'you think'? What kind of shortcut? He went completely the other way! You lost him!"

"Obi-wan, if we keep this chase going that creep's gonna end up deep-fried," Anakin tried to explain. "Personally, I'd very much like to find out who he is and who he's working for."

"Oh," Obi-wan replied, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "So that's why we're going in the wrong direction."

Anakin took them up and around, finally settling into a hover some fifty stories up from the street.

"Well, you've lost him," Obi-wan said, disappointment and restrained anger clear in his voice.

"I'm deeply sorry, Your Majesty," Anakin replied, though it was hardly convincing. He was simply saying just what he had to say to keep Obi-wan from scolding him further. The Jedi Knight looked at him, ready to call him on it, when he noticed that Anakin, seemingly in deep concentration, was counting softly. "Excuse me for a moment," the teenager said as he lightly jumped up and dropped out of the speeder.

Obi-wan lurched over to the edge and stared down, watching Anakin drop about five stories. Then he landed atop the roof of a familiar speeder that was flying by underneath them. Shaking his head incredulously, Obi-wan couldn't help but mutter out, "I hate it when he does that."

Zam Wesell skimmed close to the buildings, staying to the side of the main traffic lanes. She didn't know whether the probe droid had successfully completed its mission, but she was feeling pretty good at the moment, having outwitted a pair of Jedi.

Suddenly her speeder shook hard. At first she thought she had been hit by a blaster bolt, but then, surveying for damage, she came to know the truth of the missile. To know that it—that he—had somehow landed on her speeder. Zam backed off on the throttle, then slammed it out full, lurching the craft ahead. The force of the sudden acceleration nearly dislodged Anakin, sending him sliding back to the tail. But he hung on stubbornly and, to Zam's dismay, even began crawling back towards the cockpit.

With a sneer, Zam hit the brakes, hard, and Anakin went sliding and bouncing past her. But the stubborn young man caught one of the twin front forks of the speeder and hung on yet again. Zam accelerated and reached out her blaster pistol, letting fly a volley of bolts in Anakin's general direction. The angle was wrong, though, and she couldn't score any hits. And there he was, crawling back stubbornly toward the roof despite all of Zam's evasive maneuvers. Her Clawdite form came back, suddenly and briefly, as she lost concentration, but she recovered quickly.

The bounty hunter cursed under her breath and swooped back into traffic, trying to formulate some plan for ridding herself of the troublesome Jedi. She went back into her evasive traffic-dodging maneuvers yet again, entertaining the thought of moving in close to some of the heavier traffic and letting the exhaust plume smoke the fool atop her craft.

She had almost convinced herself to do just that when suddenly a glowing blue blade of energy sheared through the top of her speeder and plunged down beside her. She looked up to see the stubborn Jedi cutting through the roof. Swerving all about, she fired off a shot at him, then another. Finally, to her relief, a shot took the lightsaber from his hand, though whether she had taken the hand as well or just the weapon she could not tell.

Obi-wan had finally caught sight of Zam's speeder, with Anakin scrambling atop it, when the lightsaber tumbled from the boy's grasp. Obi-wan gave a shake of his head and dived for toward the street, angling for an interception.

Anakin's hand plunged through the hole in the roof. Zam lifted her blaster pistol in his direction again. But he didn't reach for her, just held his hand there outstretched. Before she could fire, some unseen force yanked the pistol from her hand, throwing it right into the Jedi's grasp.

"No!" the bounty hunter yelled, gasping in astonishment.

She lurched in her seat, letting go of her speeder's controls to grab the pistol desperately with both hands. As the pair struggled for the weapon, Anakin hoisted himself up into a more stable kneeling position while his free hand went to his belt. When the bounty hunter tried to angle the barrel of the pistol up towards him, he jabbed his free hand forward and pressed the activation button of his second lightsaber. The green blade shot through the roof just as easily as the blue one. With only a slight flick of the blade, he heard the bounty hunter cry out in pain as her hands were severed halfway up her forearm. Yanking the blaster pistol fully out of the speeder, Anakin ignored the pair of dismembered hands still clutching at it and his hands and flung them off to the side as he retracted his saber blade.

However, while he had distracted and dismembered the bounty hunter, he had forgotten something crucial. This was made abundantly clear when the woman suddenly stamped her foot down onto the brakes, jolting the speeder to a sudden halt. It also had the added benefit of throwing the unprepared and badly positioned young Skywalker forward, this time unable to grasp ahold of the vehicle as he was flung off it. As he was falling, Anakin spun around and pointed his own blaster pistol up at the speeder. His shots penetrated through the undercarriage material due to being considerably closer than his earlier shots, damaging some pipes and electrical components in the process. The speeder careened out of control. Zam fell back over the controls, desperately but futilely trying to regain control without the use of her hands. It dived and spun, sidelong and head over. Screaming, she hung on for dear life as she spiraled towards the street below.

Below and behind her, Anakin turned his fall into a semi-controlled drop, using the Force to slow his descent and strengthen his body as he landed in a somewhat undignified rolling heap, trying to bleed off as much momentum as he could. Thankfully for him, the milling crowds below had seen him coming and scrambled out of his way. Standing up carefully, he braced himself for a moment, steadying himself. Looking upwards, he spotted the speeder as it slammed into the side of a building, sending it into a spiraling tumble before slamming into the street ahead, sliding to spinning halt before finally coming to a rest. Seeing that the bounty hunter was struggling to escape from its interiors, Anakin raced forward to reach the speeder.

The splash as he stepped into one dirty puddle woke Anakin to the harsh realities about him. This was the underbelly of Coruscant, the smelly and dirty streets. He had to push his way through the many lowlifes, mostly nonhumans of quite a variety of species. Many beings were panhandling up and down the street. He shook it away quickly, though, reminding himself of the real reason he was here, of Padme and her need for security. Spurred by images of the beautiful Representative from Naboo, the young man sprinted along the broken sidewalk, catching fleeting glimpses of the wrecked speeder ahead.

As he was finally drawing near, a familiar voice called out to him as a yellow speeder dropped to a resting place next to the wreck. "Anakin!" Climbing out of the speeder, Obi-wan walked toward the young man, pointedly holding Anakin's dropped lightsaber in his hand.

"She's stuck in the speeder, Master!"

Obi-wan patted his hand in the air to calm the boy, not even registering Anakin's surprising use of the feminine pronoun. "Patience. Use the Force, Anakin. Think."

"Sorry, Master."

"He's stuck in the speeder, he can't escape now," Obi-wan reasoned.

"Yes, Master."

Obi-wan held out the lightsaber out toward his student. "Next time, try not to lose it."

"Sorry, Master."

Obi-wan pulled the precious weapon back as Anakin reached for it, and held the young man's gaze with his own stern look. "A Jedi's lightsaber is his most precious possession. This weapon is your life"

"Yes, Master," Anakin said, once again reaching for the lightsaber and taking it back, trying to ignore the Jedi Knight's scrutinizing stare. "Don't forget I'm not a Jedi."

"As long as you wield them, you must treat these weapons as though you are a Jedi," Obi-wan stated sternly. It was a lesson he's tried to instill into Anakin for the past decade, though with only marginal success. It was a particularly difficult point to teach the boy as he grew. Having grown outside the Order and not learning many of its core tenets, Anakin had a somewhat tough time accepting the fact that the Force was much more than yet another convenient tool to use in his arsenal. The Force was too powerful to be a mere tool, and that was the problem. A tool could be used as a means to one's own ends, but a true Jedi understood that the Force was a partner on a concurrent course, a common pathway to true harmony and understanding.

After Qui-gon's death at the hands of a Sith Lord, the Jedi Council had made the tough decision to not bring Anakin into the Order. It was because they could see the potential danger that teaching young Anakin Skywalker, not even ten years old at the time. But Obi-wan, in the spur of the moment, had chosen that he would teach the boy, regardless of the Council's decision, as a means of fulfilling his last promise to his dead master. Yoda had been hesitant and resistant, but the ultimate decision to make Obi-wan in Anakin's Jedi guardian. The old Grandmaster had seemed almost resigned, as if this path was one they could not deny, rather than one they would willingly and eagerly walk. For the whispers spoke of Anakin as being the chosen one, the one who would bring balance to the Force.

Obi-wan wasn't sure what that meant, and he was more than a little fearful. He looked up at Anakin, who was standing patiently, properly subdued after the small tongue-lashing. He took comfort in that image, in this incredibly likeable, somewhat stubborn, and obviously brash young man. He hid his smile only because it would not do for Anakin to understand himself forgiven so easily for his rash actions and the loss of his weapon. Obi-wan had to disguise a chuckle as a cough. After all, hadn't he been the one who had leapt out through a window a hundred stories above the streets of Coruscant?

The Jedi Knight led the way to the speeder wreck, where the assassin had apparently given up hope of escaping the trashed speeder and was sitting in the cockpit with an extremely impatient and pained look on her face. Seeing the pair of obvious Jedi approaching, gradually, very gradually, the surrounding folk who'd gathered around the speeder crash resumed their previous activities and walked off, seemingly hardly concerned. As they approached, Anakin reached out with the Force and wrenched the speeder's door clean off the vehicle with grating and screeching of torn metal and plastics.

Obi-wan bent in and, with help from Anakin, helped hoist the injured assassin out of the speeder and onto the street. They lowered her gently to the ground, and she flinched gasping as Obi-wan started tending to her wounded arms. She growled like a feral beast, but winced in agony, all the while staring up hatefully at the two of them.

"Do you know who it was you were trying to kill?" Obi-wan asked her.

"The Representative of Naboo," Zam Wesell said matter-of-factly, as if it hardly mattered.

"Who hired you?"

Her answer was a glare. "It was just a job."

"Tell us!" Anakin demanded, coming forward threateningly as he used the Force to apply a heavy amount of persuasion to his voice, trying to force the answer from the female.

The tough bounty hunter didn't even flinch. "The Representative's going to die soon anyway. It won't end with me. For the price they're offering, there'll be bounty hunters lining up to take the hit. And the next one won't make the same mistake I did." Tough as she was, she ended with a grunt and a groan.

"These wounds' going to need more treatment than I can give here," an obviously concerned Obi-wan explained to Anakin, but if the younger man even cared, he didn't show it.

His expression angry, he leant forward. "Who hired you?" he asked again, and this time he continued throwing the full weight of the Force into his demand, a strength that surprised Obi-wan, that came from something more than prudence or dedication to his current job. "Tell us. Tell us now!"

The bounty hunter continued to glare at him, but, lips twitching, she started to answer. "It was a bounty hunter called—"

They heard a puff from above and the bounty hunter twitched and gasped, and simply expired. Her human female features twisting grotesquely back into the lumpy form of her true Clawdite nature. Anakin and Obi-wan tore their eyes away from the spectacle to look up, and head the roar as they watched an armored rocket-man lift away into the Coruscant night, disappearing into the sky. Then, from the side, Anakin caught a slight amount of movement as a small, familiar form leapt upwards, following after the jetpack as quickly as she could.

Obi-wan looked back to the dead creature and pulled a small item from her neck, holding it up for Anakin to see. "Toxic dart."

Anakin sighed and looked away. So they had foiled this attempt and killed one assassin. And while he had little doubt that Ahsoka would follow the second one to the best of her abilities, he knew that she was unlikely to catch him. Alas, it was clear to him that Padme was still in grave danger.

Tracking the second assassin after his failed attempt was both simple and difficult for the young Togruta. One of the one hand, he had a healthy start ahead of her which could give him the chance to slip away from her if she lost track of him for even a moment. On the other hand, that same considerable gap also helped calm the assassin down and make him believe he'd escaped her. Thus, if it was both easy for her to blend in with the traffic of Coruscant and quite difficult to keep track of him

The man had taken off with his jetpack, flying several buildings away to where he'd evidently parked his speeder. Ahsoka had managed to acquire herself a speeder after some quick hotwiring of the control panel and had to use the Force to follow his lingering dark emotions. But she had had faith in the Force and thus she was able to keep track of his general location. It wasn't until they reached a particular seedy part of the Lowercity that the man had parked his speeder and climbed out to wait from a building top for someone to appear.

Ahsoka followed him out of the speeder, but she didn't drop down to apprehend him. The man was clearly on edge and she had no way of knowing who'd react to a sudden sneak attack, though it probably would've been explosive. Thus she had decided to hide in the shadows and try to get some intel on who they were facing. She had been quick to realize that the man was dressed in Mandalorian armor and he had the posture of someone highly-trained and dangerous. With the Force, she could sense his anger, impatience, and annoyance. But underneath those, she sensed a cold mantle that made up his core being. This was a man who'd kill for the smallest credit chip and not a bat an eye because he saw it as a business venture.

Then the man snapped alert and Ahsoka was momentarily frightened he'd somehow detected her. But her worry was for naught as his attention was focused upon a speeder that was careening out of control. Ahsoka only needed to glimpse the green beam of a lightsaber and a dark-clothed figure clinging to the exterior to know who it was that fell from it and took a few potshots at its underbelly. Having watched and felt this man's presence for several minutes, Ahsoka was far from surprised when he raised his gauntlet and shot something into the throat of the captured assassin, preventing the being from talking to Anakin and Obi-wan. And as the man fled once again, Ahsoka was fast to follow him once again, sticking to the shadows and cloaking herself in the Force to avoid his notice.

Now she was once again weaving through the traffic as the man sped off towards one of the platforms. Upon reaching one particular landing platform, the man landed his speeder and hurried over towards the bizarrely-shaped starship that was landed there.

Rather than try to land and confront him, Ahsoka pulled her speeder up over the starship, using the lanes of traffic for cover. With one hand to stabilize the speeder, she reached into her utility belt and extracted a tracking beacon. Delving into the Force, using it to guide her arm, she threw the beacon down towards the starship just as it started to lift off. The beacon landed upon the backside of the ship, just next to the top engine, and locked itself down tightly thanks to its magnetic clamps.

Swerving away from the departing ship and merging back seamlessly into traffic, Ahsoka pulled out one of her datapads and looked down at it expectantly. The beeping signal of the beacon displayed upon its screen drew a satisfied smile from the young girl.

(Author's Note) Sorry about the wait. I've become my own worst enemy, I hate it when I procrastinate. Anyway, I hope the extended chase made up for the wait. And I wonder how many of you saw the second attempt that Jango made on Padme coming?

Also, I really hate to do this. But I just have to ask, could some of you guys please try to review a bit more? I know a lot of people are reading this story, and it's disappointing to write chapters and not get any feedback on them. Please review a bit more often, okay?