A/N: Hi, everyone. More life updates at the end of the chapter.

Summary of the arc so far: Obi-Wan goes to Korriban with Dooku and find a decades-old journal belonging to an unknown author whose only signature is an old basic S in crimson ink. In the process they witness the slaughter of dozens of workers by terentateks and skeletal Sith-creatures, despite the best efforts of Obi-Wan to stop them. Separatism has started to simmer in the Republic. Huei Tori reports this to the Jedi Council and is ordered to act as Senate spy on their behalf with no backup, something his master, Feemor, finds difficult to accept. In the process they witness the slaughter of dozens of workers by terentateks and skeletal Sith-creatures, despite the best efforts of Obi-Wan to stop them. Ezhno overhears rumours of a possible uprising and revolution against the Republic and reports his findings to Mace Windu. Obi-Wan does not admit it, but he is disturbed by a conversation with Dooku where Dooku infers that Obi-Wan is destined for greater things than his peers and must change his morals to fit with the necessity of stamping out darkness in the galaxy.

And onwards!

Music for this chapter: Your Choice, Detroit Become Human

The moment the hover-train doors open, Ezhno is out and sprinting across the duracrete platform as if he has a stratt pack on his heels. He dodges a gaggle of ancient-looking Dresselian women shuffling along at a rheumatic pace, nearly trips over an Aqualish couple whose shorter forms had been concealed in the crowd, shoulders his way up the steps, and wrenches his arm around in a painful angle to brush his Coruscant Transport chip against the sensor at the gates.

Ezhno risks a glance at the chrono on his belt as he darts out of the station foyer and winces; despite his best efforts, he will be a full half-hour late. If only that blasted respiratory physiology professor hadn't gone blathering on about his own research for a full hour after the appointed tutorial was supposed to finish.

The bustle of the Coruscant Entertainment District swallows him whole; great glittering towers of neon lights flicker into luminance in the early evening air as Ezhno sprints down the duracrete streets, the thudding vibrations of synth-music he cannot otherwise hear shuddering up his booted feet as he races past.

Heads turn to stare after the lithe, young male Togruta with gold head stripes, dressed in the smart high-collared uniform of a Ward of the Order with the Jedi starbird glimmering at his collar and sleeves; but Ezhno ignores them all and slides to a gasping halt at his destination.

Ahead, through a durasteel gate wreathed in a labyrinth of flashing neon lights, the heady scent of nerf-meat cooked over tibanna-fueled open grills, spun sugar and warm caf.

Fighting to get his breath back, Ezhno sags against the outer wall of the night market and looks about, searching. The longer he stands in his little bubble of solitude, the more he squashes down on the frantic voice within him – what if she–

Familiar white-blue montral stripes dart into his field of vision and suddenly that is all he sees as lean-muscled arms wrap around his middle and a familiar nose digs into his neck.

He stumbles back a little from the force of Fyrnock's embrace and very nearly laughs; the tension drains out of him all at once.

She jumps back a pace before he can think to hug her back.

"I'm so sorry!" Fyrnock says – with her hands, and not her mouth, because she is struggling too hard to draw breath, just as Ezhno was a moment ago. "I was handling an incident at the Centre. Lost track of time. I ran all the way from the station, I hope you weren't waiting long – why are you smiling so much?"

Ezhno looks away for a moment, grin still on his face. He had been smiling because of the irony of them both missing their appointed meeting time – then the flush over her white-marked cheekbones had proved a distraction and turned the smile into a beaming grin.

In the three and half years since he first met her he has grown from a gangly-limbed adolescent Togruta to a young man; she had been a quick-fingered hacker who spent nearly every waking hour in holo-game dens, but now she runs the Centre for the Empowerment of Young Persons, a place for Coruscant's wandering youth to find shelter.

But despite their changes, they are bonded by their experiences above all else; both unwillingly pressed into the service of the Cruorven, Xanatos DuCrion's militant group. That had ended in Ezhno thrown onto the Senate boulevard with a kilogram of tibanna strapped to his waist.

Under Fyrnock's nerf-hide jacket lie silvery scars, Ezhno knows – criss-crossed across her back where she had shielded him from the explosion. He has watched her rebuild her life after the death of her older brother at the hands of the Cruorven. In Ezhno's humble opinion, she has done more than brilliantly.

She is still looking at him, one eyebrow raised in bemusement over bright blue eyes.

"It's nothin'," he replies with his mouth, the smile still tugging at his lips. "Let's go."

She grins in return, takes his hand, and tugs him into the night market.

The evening passes in a blur; they muck about with the carnival-like games, eat at a myriad of stalls with questionable hygiene practices, and watch a hologram show from nosebleed seats far up in the durasteel rafters – the show has no subtitles, but Frynock provides a running translation in sign and Ezhno finds himself following the story quite well.

Later, when they are both stuffed so full that even the most delectable stalls no longer tempt them, Ezhno watches Frynock laugh at something stupid he said, and finds a familiar twinge in his chest. He would like to be able to listen to her laughter – not just recognize it in the flash of her white teeth in her animated, orange-skinned face and the shudder of her breath as she buries her head in his shoulder, but to hear its music properly.

It occurs to him then that he does not even know her real name – it is no secret between them that Fyrnock is not the name she was born with, but she has never offered up her real name and Ezhno has not pressed. He respects her too much to do so.

So Fyrnock remains his dearest friend outside of the Order – a different friend, one who does not live in service to the Republic, who cannot free-fall a hundred metres into a run, but who can mess about with him on holo-games, watch stupid holos with him late at night in her office at the Centre, and run about free in a Coruscanti night market with nobody staring at lightsabers or Jedi cloaks or worrying about the state of the galaxy.

They amble down to the hover-train station together, with the luridly shaded stuffed bantha Ezhno won in a single-player boloball game clasped tight to Frynock's side.

Fyrnock's cramped apartment is several sectors away and two hundred levels below the Temple district, so they say their goodbyes at the ticket gates.

"Whaddaya think of caf at Dex's tomorrow?" Ezhno says. "Noon? I've a break 'tween lectures."

"Can't," Frynock says, a distracted look creeping over her features. There is a change in the shapes of her lips as they form the words that suggests a tone of sudden unease, shuttered syllables. "Something I've got to handle at the Centre."

Ezhno pauses. "Fryn," he says, with her name-sign instead of his lips, because that way she has to look at him when he is speaking. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." She shakes her head. Her hands dig into the material of the stuffed bantha in her grasp. "At least…probably nothing."

Ezhno waits a little while, like he has learned from watching Feemor speak to Huei when Huei requires time to process things, and eventually she raises her head to speak.

"You know what you told me a few days ago? About how a few idiots at your medical school were talking about revolution?"

Ezhno nods, and lip-reads her next words with careful focus.

"I overheard a few of the newer members at the Centre today. It didn't sound just like talk, though. More like actual plotting. It wasn't to the level of the things that the Cruorven would have gotten up to, but I was planning on snooping little more tomorrow and possibly reporting it." She tilts her head back, lekku flopping at her waist. "But you know how it is with the Centre. If word gets out we're snitching on anything nobody will ever come to us anymore." Her lips press into a pale line.

Ezhno reads the uncertainty in her expression and reaches out to take her hand. "Fyrn," he says. "I've got 'n idea, like. Why don'tcha tell Master Windu 'bout this?"

She looks at him, brows furrowed. "The Jedi Master who arranged my brother's funeral? The one that looks out for you?"

"Yeah," Ezhno says. "E's on the Council, 'igh-up 'n all. E'd know wha' to do. And 'E's Jedi, not Coruscant Guard. E'd be able to sort it out quiet-like. Why don'tcha come to the Temple tomorrow afternoon? I'll take you to 'im."

A moment, where Fyrnock stares. Then a relieved smile spreads across her features. "Thank you, Ezhno," she says, lips flickering over his name, and leans forward to peck him on the cheek.

"I'll see you tomorrow," she adds as she draws back, and Ezhno very nearly misses the words, because the part of him not occupied with breathing and staying upright is currently taking hold of his heart and squeezing it fit to burst, and lip-reading is not high on his priority list right now.

All of a sudden she is already a dozen paces away and through the gates; she turns to wave at him before flying down the steps, stuffed bantha bouncing in her grasp.

Ezhno stands there like a dolt for the most part of five minutes before he gathers his wits enough to scrounge for his transport chip.

(:~:)

"What in the galaxy was the Council thinking?"

"Feemor," Qui-Gon says placatingly, sharp eyes flickering between his former padawan and the door.

Qui-Gon had been hoping that his tone might calm Feemor somewhat – but the younger man only paces the short length of Qui-Gon's living quarters faster. Qui-Gon's hand darts out to save his teacup from a preamature end as Feemor storms past, long cloak-sleeves lashing across the empty space where ceramplast had been a moment before.

Feemor turns blazing eyes onto his former mentor. "They've sent him in with no support–"

"Feemor," Qui-Gon repeats.

"–No extraction plan, should anything go awry–"

"Fee–"

"–Are the Council out of their blasted minds?"

"Feemor," Qui-Gon says, gently but firmly, "Sit down."

It is a testament to the strength of their former master-padawan bond that Feemor folds himself onto the meditation cushion beside Qui-Gon and grudgingly accepts the fresh cup of tea handed to him.

A beat.

"See, now, isn't this better?" Qui-Gon says, smirking a little over the rim of his cup. "Keep that up and you'll have more grey hairs than I do."

Feemor snorts into his tea, but the levity is brief; the set of his shoulders drop into sobriety. "What am I to do, Qui-Gon?" he murmurs in a voice hoarse with shouting. "It's Huei's choice to put himself in danger for the sake of the Order, and the Republic. It still doesn't stop me from worrying, and when I ask the Force for aid all I sense is that something will go terribly wrong."

Qui-Gon glances at the younger man sitting beside him. They might have ben master and padawan once, but the gap in their ages is small enough that Qui-Gon had always thought Feemor to be more of a younger brother. They have remained equals for a long while now, both Jedi Masters in their own right and with their padawans on much the same level of training.

And yet here they are – Feemor having sought out Qui-Gon like a weary sailor might seek the familiar lighthouse of his childhood waters – for assurance.

And Qui-Gon can offer none, because he is experiencing precisely the same thing.

"I recall that last year, during my struggles with Obi-Wan's independence, you told me to trust him as you did Huei," Qui-Gon begins quietly. "I would hazard a guess that trusting Huei in this matter pales under the weight of the very real danger he is facing."

"Yes," Feemor says hollowly, hunching over his tea.

Qui-Gon tightens his fingers around the cup in his hands – tightens his hold, until the warmth turns to an ache in his knuckles. He can hear Feemor shifting to look at him.

"Obi-Wan's mission to Korriban has taken him away for only a few days so far," Qui-Gon finally murmurs, "and yet I…I find myself…wandering. Unsettled. There is no training in the galaxy that can prepare a Jedi to face the works of the Sith without risk."

"But that is different," Feemor sighs, kneading his face with the heel of his hand. "The struggle against darkness is something all Jedi have known to expect from our youngest days in the initiate clans. And as loath as I am to admit it – Master Dooku has the most experience in the Order in dealing with the vestiges of the Sith Empire. Obi-Wan will be well watched. Huei, on the other hand, is gathering intelligence alone, with no support save for a comm-line to me or the Council."

Here, Feemor pauses.

"Oh," he says faintly, "I suppose that is why I feel such anger."

"Feemor?"

"He's disposable," Feemor breathes, and the clack of ceramplast against wood echoes around the small space like a blaster shot. "If Huei were ever caught and publicly charged for illegal political surveillance – what do you think the Council would do?"

Qui-Gon opens his mouth. Closes it again.

They lapse into a dark silence. Each is aware of the other's train of thought. Neither wishes to dwell on it.

Then, unexpectedly – the chime of an entry-code and a hiss as the door to the Temple corridor slides open.

Both Jedi masters look up to find Obi-Wan standing on the threshold – dressed in clean cream tunics but lacking his cloak, his mission pack slung over one shoulder. His boots, while freshly-scrubbed in appearance, nonetheless have a faint pink tinge to the leather.

"Obi-Wan!" Qui-Gon exclaims, making no effort whatsoever to hide his relief as he darts forward to take his padawan's pack. "You should have commed me when you entered realspace – Obi-Wan?"

Obi-Wan is staring at a point in the ether, vacantly, a little over Qui-Gon's shoulder; everything about his frame cries exhaustion, from the curl of his neck to the set of his mouth. There is a half-healed cut on his cheek.

Qui-Gon drops the pack to his side as Obi-Wan takes one last step forward into Qui-Gon's space and lets his face drop onto Qui-Gon's shoulder. He feels his padawan exhale; a shuddering, tightly furled thing. His arms come up automatically to rest against Obi-Wan's back.

It has been a long while since Obi-Wan, now almost grown, had sought his master's comfort like this.

Qui-Gon twists his head to his right to stare at Feemor over Obi-Wan's mass of russet-spiked hair. Feemor stares right back, his shoulders tilted in a half shrug as if to say: I don't know either.

Qui-Gon had thought he would be relieved to see his padawan's return. Now he is not so sure.

(:~:)

Obi-Wan spends that night and most of the next day dead to the world, in a sleep so deep that he dreams of impossible things; of green fire and durasteel moons and enormous wolves loping through tall grass and fading into the whispers of the Force. The shadow of a crimson S overlays it all, like an almost-faded watermark at the edge of his vision.

He wakes late afternoon, curled on his sleep-pallet. The first thing he sees is a cup of tea by his head on a little portable warmer, silvery steam curling into the golden light. Beside it is a neatly folded russet bundle – a new cloak.

Qui-Gon.

Obi-Wan drinks the tea slowly, cleans himself up a bit, and steps out into the Temple. At this hour Qui-Gon will be teaching an initiate class on diplomacy and attempting not to tear out his beard in frustration. Despite himself Obi-Wan smiles at the thought.

Three steps out of his quarters he decides that the mission is complete and he is done with it. Dooku had insisted on taking the journal found on Korriban to the Council and making the mission report alone; Obi-Wan had initially chafed at that, but now the relief settles in his stomach like the warm Sapir Qui-Gon had left for him.

The mission is done. The journal will be discussed among the Council, Dooku, and the Jedi Sentinels, and Obi-Wan will have no part in it.

A small part of him knows he is also relieved because he will no longer have to spar words with Dooku – no longer have to rally against Dooku's difference in principles.

Start thinking like a Sentinel, Obi-Wan Kenobi.

The smile slips off Obi-Wan's features. He sets his jaw.

Don't be surprised you are better than Huei or your peers, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You would be a fool if you did not use that to your advantage.

Shut up, Obi-Wan thinks very hard at the corner of his mind still occupied with Dooku's words.

At the sunlit main concourse that leads from the wide Temple entrance to the Processional way, Obi-Wan spies gold-white head stripes and breaks into a jog, all thoughts of Dooku, Korriban, and the Sith dissipating at once. He smiles.

"Eyy!" Ezhno's magnificent hunter's teeth bares in a fearsome grin as he lowers his hand – he had been waving at a fading, leather-jacketed figure down the processional way. "You're back, lil' Obi!"

Obi-Wan cranes his neck to look down the towering colonnades that line the blue-carpeted entranceway for the figure Ezhno was waving at, but finds nothing.

Ezhno follows his line of sight. "Oh, that was Frynock, is all. Y'know those rumours 'bout revolution? She spotted summat unsusual at the Centre, like, and I thought she'd better tell Master Windu. They were in the meeting for a while, but she says it's sorted now."

"Sorted?" Obi-Wan says, brows furrowed over his signing. "How?"

Ezhno shrugs. "She didn' seem to want to talk 'bout it. She didn' like finding talk like that at the Centre anyway. If it makes 'er uncomfortable then I'm not gonna press 'er." Something seems to occur to him, and his brown eyes brighten. "Say, we should go kidnap 'Uei from the Senate, like. Evenin' meal at Dex's."

Obi-Wan's stomach chooses that moment to growl loudly. He blithely dodges Ezhno's teasing punch and sets off at a fast trot, grinning.

They jog down the steps together, their shadows thrown out behind them in the setting sun in parallel to the giant statues that guard the entrance to the Temple.

(:~:)

Huei grits his teeth and sinks deeper into the Force.

He is almost there. He can feel it – that whispering, shadowed nexus he sensed the last time he searched the Senate building for a disturbance. But there is something slippery and dark about the presence – like a quasar flickering in and out of sight. Huei must have circled the Senate building twice now – and here he is back where he started. Warm air to his right and the murmur of the City-planet beyond: the main entryway of the Senate building, and the Senate boulevard below. Huei can hear the murmur of many voices from above grow closer with the muted sound of many steps against carpet – the Senate's many aides and day-workers moving down to the entranceway proper, having finished the day's work.

Huei quickens his step a little. It is difficult enough tracking something in the Force without the cacophony of chattering life-signatures that draws closer with every moment.

The disturbance in the Force is a little ways to the right and behind him now, and he moves carefully into the warmth the dusk air. Roughly sixth hour antemeridian, he can tell by the sun's warmth that runs just up to his waist as his boots leave the hushed carpets of the Senate Building for the marble floors of the Senate Atrium.

Huei makes for the a point ahead where sound dulls, and knows he has found what he seeks when his outstretched fingers find the smooth, curved stone of one of the great pillars that he knows stretches from the marble floor up to the vaulted transparisteel ceiling. The small, compressed black hole is closer now, slippery and unfocused, around the curve of the pillar itself. The faint scent of iron trails after it in the Force, as though it is tainted by old blood.

Breath thunder in his ears, Huei presses himself flat to the pillar and slips further anticlockwise around its length, until the warmth of the setting sun leaves him and he slips into cool air – the shadow of the pillar itself. His headtresses strain to scent the air ahead, but find nothing but the scent of sun-warmed stone.

But the shatterpoint is close, now. So very close. Knees bent, breath shuttered, Huei edges further around the pillar, one hand dropping to his primary lightsaber at his belt, pulling his own Force-presence tight around himself to mask his presence.

Two more steps, and Huei's lightsaber buzzes to howling life in his hand as he leaps into the warmth on the other side of the pillar–

Nothing, in the Force.

Huei catches himself, boots sure on the stone floors. The Force around him is peaceful. Unsullied. He can sense the first group of Senatorial staff exit the great doors a dozen metres behind him, beyond the pillar he had just edged around.

A sudden, piercing cold in his side.

Huei gasps. His lightsaber is wrenched out of his grasp, and even as he registers its clatter against the ground he finds burning liquid bubbling up over his lips, and hot droplets land against the back of his hands where one automatically presses around the steel in his right side and the other clenches around an unfamiliar wrist – trained muscle and bone under his grasp, an unknown assailant's fist thrusting the sharp blade further between Huei's ribs.

The blade twists in the person's grasp, and Huei falls to his knees in a burst of agony. Dimly, he is aware the dark shatterpoint is back – a black hole that he has strayed too close to and which now threatens to pull him over its event horizon and swallow him whole. His headdresses scent iron in the air – but beyond this, the Force is drenched in blood around this unknown entity, in a sanguine haze.

Fingers numb and slick with pulsing liquid – some part of his mind registers that it might be his own blood – Huei's left hand drops away from the blade in his side and slips with perfect memory down to the shoto at his belt.

A flare of fear that is not his own in the Force – the hand lets go of the blade in his side and the assailant's wrist rips itself out of Huei's fingers as Huei activates his shoto lightsaber and surges up from the ground with a snarl on his lips.

His lightsaber meets air, and the subsequent stretch of the wound in his side brings a wave of nausea and pain so severe that Huei screams. But that, too, causes the icy blade to shift between his ribs, and Huei feels his gorge rise and the taste of bile join the iron between his lips.

Staggering to his feet, Huei backs up with shuddering steps until his back meets the solid curve of the pillar; the flickering, shadowed quasar has halted a few steps away in the Force, seemingly observing him. Something like morbid curiosity seeps into the Force between them.

Huei retreats into the cool air around the pillar, hands pressed around the cold blade in his flesh – oh it is cold, so cold, colder than Ilum and ice and Dooku's withering stare the first time he had failed his Makashi velocities – and this is almost more shocking the pain, the iciness of the blade, the wrongness of something so foreign in his body.

"Master," he whispers. Feemor.

He emerges from the cold air into the warmth again, closer to the murmur of voices near the great door to the Senate, and hears the screaming begin as he falls to his knees and crumples to the floor.

(:~:)

"Do you think Huei's finished up yet?" Ezhno signs to Obi-Wan as they climb the stairs up from the Senate boulevard together, Coruscant's setting sun sending brilliant golden bars of light lancing from their left to warm their faces and those of passersby. The press of people makes it difficult for Ezhno to judge his voice volume, hence the choice of Galactic sign language.

"Knowing him, he's probably already digging through Bail Organa's med cabinet to stave off his post-work headache," Obi-Wan replies, fingers flicking mischievously. But then the Force flares once ahead, like a warning light flashing on and off in one instant, and he stops in his tracks.

"Obi?" Ezhno says beside him.

Obi-Wan stares up at the Great Doors of the Senate building, through which sentients of various species are beginning to mill onto the stairway, chattering amongst themselves after a day's work.

A short, sharp howl. A familiar voice, almost–

Some of the crowd begins to murmur uncertainly, drawing closer together as they look around for the source of the scream. Others startle a moment at the sound, then shrug it off and continue their conversations, feet leaving carpeted floors for marble.

And then there is another scream, more shrill, a civilian's cry of horror – then a cacophony of shrieking as people break away from the crowd's furthest edge and run down the steps, shoving others out of their way in their haste to get away.

Obi-Wan tears up the steps. He hears Ezhno call out after him, the confusion evident in his voice, being unable to hear the cause of the chaos – but Obi-Wan hurls himself through the crowd shoulder first in a blaze of determination and staggers out onto the edge of a spreading pool of crimson.

He looks down at his friend Huei Tori, the silvery glint of the vibroblade in his side, and all that blood.

Somewhere beyond the roaring of the Force and the thunder in his ears there is a dark nebula ahead, moving at speed further and further away.

He does not recall sliding to his knees but before he is aware of what he is doing his hands are pressed into Huei's cream tunics, already matted with scarlet, fingers threaded through his friend's webbed ones as Obi-Wan leans his whole weight into the wound to fight the pulsing blood–

Huei gives a sharp scream as his ribs bend under the pressure. The sound almost makes Obi-Wan want to weep, but he grits his teeth and presses harder.

"Obi, wha– Stars an' galaxies, 'Uei!"

Orange hands slide over Obi-Wan and Huei's, and now four hands are interwoven with Huei's weakening fingers, and Huei gives a little shake of his head, as though clearing it for the first time. Recognition settles on his features as the Force simmers.

"Obi-Wan," he chokes, a horrible, guttural sound as blood bubbles over his lips. "Ezhno." His eyelids blink once over his scarred eyes, silver-white and opaque. "Behind – the pillar," he rasps. "Obi-Wan. Go."

Obi-Wan frees a hand, scrabbles for his comm, and keys in the code for an emergency squad of Jedi healers. That done, he slips bloodied fingers into his utility belt, finds his medkit, and flings it, blood-smeared white packaging and all, at Ezhno's direction.

"Obi-Wan!" Huei's teeth are gritted in inexpressible pain, the navy hue of his skin blanching into a horrible pale grey-blue. "Go. Now."

Obi-Wan squeezes Huei's hand once.

Then he lets go.

Ezhno looks up at Obi-Wan in incomprehension, lip-reading failing him in the blood and the grimacing and the clenched teeth – and Obi-Wan shakes his head, scrabbles his wet hands across the floor to get the worst of the blood off them, and pushes himself off the ground and into a dead run around the pillar.

The dark star flashes a questing beam in his direction, as if acknowledging his pursuit, and dims into an almost-undetectable scent of blood.

Obi-Wan's lips curl into a snarl as he races past the pool of congealing blood on the other side of the pillar, with Huei's lovingly-polished primary 'saber stained and neglected within it. Every part of him is screaming to turn back, turn back – but there, ahead, the faint track of sanguine scent in the Force – Huei's attacker.

His quarry might think they have disappeared; but the blood-scent they carry in the Force is familiar to Obi-Wan, soaked into the very atmosphere of Korriban. Obi-Wan narrows his eyes darkly, and zeroes in on the far-off point like an asharl panther on the kill.

He vaults the railing and plunges into Coruscant's oncoming night like a russet-cloaked wraith.

(:~:)

Down in the gutters between Coruscant's glittering towers, a race like none other dances in the fading dusk.

Obi-Wan's quarry is swift and cunning and very nearly formless; it darts down backlit alleyways and across open sewers with ghostlike speed. Obi-Wan forces down another breath of stale air and closes in with dogged determination. The air here is tinged with old exhaust and lit with the green-blue glow of neon lamps and ancient strip-lights; Obi-Wan sprints between the roots of two enormous towers, risking a glance upwards kilometres-high to the strip of lonely sunset of which rays do not reach him, and skids under a dripping industrial pipe as the figure ahead drops into the shadows of an open grate that almost seems to swallow them whole.

Down, down, chasing the ragged edge of this stranger's cloak – that darkened hood turns once to look at Obi-Wan as they both tumble, a dozen meters apart, out of the access pipe and onto the rooftops of a lower level, the ramshackle glow of the underlevels below and a labyrinth of pipes above, with huge, crystalline buttresses jarring through between them where the roots of Coruscant's towers spear into this level. A kilometer away, a solid cylinder of golden light shafts down to the undercity below – a transport access tunnel.

They both halt for a moment, breathing hard, each with one hand pressed to the grimy surface of the tower below, half-raised on one knee; the glowing yellow of giant Aurebesh letters on the building beside them drenches the roof in a unidirectional glow that throws half their hoods in sharp relief. The other side of the roof is a sheer drop, a hundred levels down or more where this tower guards the edge of a descent yet deeper into Coruscant's underbelly. The scream of airtraffic surrounds them on all sides.

And there, the echo of the blood-scent Obi-Wan sensed on Korriban – the same that enveloped the leather bound journal he and Dooku recovered on the ancient Sith world. The assailant's Force-signature is a blurred, indistinct outline, but the aura of blood settles around its shoulders like a secondary cloak.

Then Obi-Wan glimpses a red and black mouth twist in a smile under that shadowed hood as the assassin darts to the edge of the roof and makes a running leap for the girder that holds the glowing aurebesh letters. There is a sharp shriek of metal giving way as gloved hands meet rusted durasteel, and the figure hauls itself up on the nearest letter with a grunt of effort.

The grey durasteel roof clatters under Obi-Wan boots as the Force roars under his fingertips and catapults him upward. He lands catfooted on the groaning girder and glimpses the flickering edge of the assassin's cloak as the assassin dives headfirst into the traffic lanes below.

Skidding to a stop by the edge of the drop, he spots the black-hooded figure land hard on the windscreen of a passing speeder and miraculously hold on. The part of Obi-Wan not intently focused on catching this assassin is quietly agape at this – to make such a jump without the aid of the Force is quite plainly ridiculous.

The assassin is getting away.

Obi-Wan grits his teeth. Huei.

He tamps down on the thunder in his heart and leaps out into nothing.

For a moment the Force screams and the wind turns into knives in his skin – then he crashes painfully onto the roof of a twin-repulsored speeder and gets dazedly to his feet on the roof, dimly noting the beserk screaming of the pilot through the transparisteel windshield.

Ahead, his target's cloak streams out behind him like a ragged, dark pennant as the assassin rips the transparisteel cover off the bottle-green speeder, takes a fistful of the pilot's collar, and flings the poor Twi'lek man out into thin air, blithely ignoring the man's terrified shrieks.

Obi-Wan watches, cold, as the man slams against a girder a dozen levels down and smashes in ragdoll fashion against a landing platform below.

The assassin pauses in the act of getting into the speeder. The dark hood faces Obi-Wan for a moment, and Obi-Wan knows for a single, disconcerting moment that their eyes have met.

Then the assassin has strapped himself in and is gunning the engine, and Obi-Wan twists in place and slams a fist against the windshield of the speeder he stands on.

The pilot's spittle is flying from his mouth, his furred, Bothan face contorted in rage. Obi-Wan palms his lightsaber and slams the hilt flat against the transapristeel so the pilot can see it, and the Bothan halts mid-curse to stare wide-eyed at the unmistakable weapon of a Jedi.

The pilot opens the windshield, and Obi-Wan shoves the Bothan into the copilot's seat, straps himself in, and guns the repulsors, sending the speeder corkscrewing in a searing loop down after the assassin's craft.

As though the assassin can sense Obi-Wan coming, the green speeder banks left into an impossible drop-roll and flies straight between two arcing energy bolts into the coil-field of an energy plant, weaving through the bolts of energy like a leaf in flotsam.

"No! No!"

The Bothan pilot's screaming is becoming rather distracting, so Obi-Wan darts a hand out from between shifting repulsor gears and sends a powerful sleep suggestion straight into the back of the Bothan's head. The pilot slumps like a sack of fern potatoes as Obi-Wan turns the speeder on its side and threads the needle between two arcing energy bolts, so close and so hot that he tastes ozone; but then they are through and the whole area is full of energy transformers and electricity coils and coiling pipes, and the assassin's speeder a green speck beyond, bobbing and weaving on superheated air between the arcing energy streams, and Obi-Wan is too busy trying not to die to care.

Flying. Is for droids.

Ahead, the assassin's speeder clips a transformer tower as it blasts past, knocking one repulsor from its side, and sending the whole tower crumbling in a retort of groaning metal and lancing fire, so loud and bright that Obi-Wan flinches away from it. But as Obi-Wan's speeder emerges from the flame and burning air he finds that victory might be in his grasp at last – the assassin's speeder is trailing smoke now, a gap in its ventral stern where the lost repulsor used to be spitting sparks.

As Obi-Wan's craft speeds closer, the hooded figure looks up from its efforts to bat out the flames, and Obi-Wan catches a glimpse of black-tattooed red skin, and burning, rage-filled yellow eyes–

The figure reaches out a hand towards the closest transformer tower right as Obi-Wan's speeder reaches it – and the assassin's hand gestures–

And a heavy girder tears itself off the transformer tower and drops directly onto the front of Obi-Wan's speeder, crushing the engine and sending the fuel lines ablaze in a great gout of flame.

The speeder falls.

Gasping for breath in the superheated air, Obi-Wan wrenches himself free from the straps binding him to the pilot's chair and undoes the Bothan pilot's crash webbing. The ground spins closer at terrifying rate, but Obi-Wan looks away from the rapidly-approaching duracrete, heaves the pilot over his shoulder, and leaps.

He hears the explosion first as a cracking retort, then, as he and the pilot tumble onto a rusted industrial catwalk, the shockwave from the speeder's rupturing fuel tank thudding into his eardrums as a wall of fire lashes up past the lip of the durasteel railing.

When Obi-Wan is finally able to choke in a breath of oily air and raise his head, the assassin is nowhere to be seen.

He staggers to his feet, cloak charred at its edges, face smeared with engine oil and smoke-stains, and coughs raggedly over the catwalk edge. The bile is sour in his mouth – but worse still is the knowledge that the assassin is gone, and Obi-Wan had failed in capturing him. And Huei. Huei–

His comm chimes on his belt. Obi-Wan detaches it with numb fingers, and jars in place when he looks down and realises there is dry rust-red ground into the valleys between his sword-callouses. Huei's blood.

"Obi-Wan," Qui-Gon's voice says, tinny and compressed by distance. "Are you well, and safe?"

Obi-Wan's eyes are beginning to water where they stare into the smoke of the fire below. He leans both arms against the rail before him, drops his head into the crook of his elbow, and taps his safecode against the comm. His breath is coming quicker now, in short, rapid bursts.

"Good," Qui-Gon says. "We'll debrief later. You must return to the Temple." There is an edge of unspoken steel there that belies the masking of something else. "Come as fast as you can, padawan."

An icy hand of fear grasps Obi-Wan's insides. He makes to tap a rapid question, but the comm channel clicks off.

Obi-wan stares at the silent comm in his hands as dread settles in the place of ice in his guts.

Oh, Huei.

Next up: Anger, grief, and duty.

*Dodges flaming pitchforks* I'm sorry? I'm the first to admit I do horrible things to my characters. I know how much everyone loves Huei but this is something I'd planned since the first chapter of this arc...and its consequences. On the upside, cute and oblivious Ezhno!

A few life updates: There was a gap between the last update and this one because I was on the dirty team at my hospital on the frontline against the virus for two weeks before I rotated out as per normal practice. I'm in another hospital in orthopaedics rotation right now (the last of my first year as junior doctor). I have two days compensatory leave as I had to work over Easter so I whipped this up in a day and a half.

Hope you're all well and healthy. Hugs and thank you for all the reviews - I haven't had time recently to reply to many of them but I treasure each one and they bring light into my day whenever I see a new one. Thank you for reading, as always.