"How many?" Ahsoka reached for her weapon and cursed under her breath when her hand met empty air. Of all the times to lose track of her lightsaber...

"I sensed nine in the building across the street, but there may be more," Shaak Ti said before producing Ahsoka's lightsaber from her belt. "Looking for this? Ventress left it for you."

Sheepishly, Ahsoka took it from her and clipped it to her own belt. "Thanks." She had been starting to think that Asajj had ran off with it, but even Ahsoka's backpack of Jedi relics was still there, dumped next to the tank she had used.

Rex slid onto his feet, and any sign of his earlier breakdown vanished. "Is there another way out of here?" In this way, clones and Jedi were surprisingly alike: both would ignore their own pain in the face of a new threat.

"Back exit, into the alley," Qhorin said.

"We need to leave before their friends show up," Jinx declared. He readied his borrowed weapon, and Gungi nodded in agreement.

Qhorin frowned. "It will take a few minutes to run Katooni's wake-up cycle."

Shaak Ti moved towards the tank containing the Padawan. "How many is a few?"

"Ten, fifteen, no more than that."

Ahsoka stood up and quickly went over to her bag, motioning for Rex to follow her. "We'll have to fight, then," she said, reaching into it. Rex's blasters sat on top of the lightsabers where she had left them.
He took them from her with an appreciative nod. "Thanks for saving them."

She felt guilty for leaving Rex's armor behind. Even though he was covered neck-to-toe by the black bodysuit that went underneath, she thought he seemed almost naked without the armor plates.

Qhorin coughed to bring their attention to him. "Lyra and I won't be much help in a fight, I'm afraid. Can use a blaster well enough, but if they think they can take on Jedi-"

"Then they're either the best of the best," Rex interrupted while he checked the power cells on his blasters. "Or complete idiots."

"Let's hope for the second," Shaak Ti said, showing the barest hint of a smile before pulling out her lightsaber, leaving it unlit in her fist. "Gungi, you'll be the last line of defence here. Rex, you and Jinx give covering fire. Ahsoka, let's pay these bounty hunters a visit."

Even if she wasn't a Jedi anymore, Ahsoka wasn't about to argue with a Jedi Master who had as much experience in battle as Shaak Ti. She put her bag down, rethought it, and pulled one of the lightsabers out. "Any of you want spares?"

Shaak Ti considered it for a moment, then shook her head. "I'm more comfortable with one." She gestured at the bandage on the arm that was now out of a sling. "Besides, this still isn't in the best shape, even with Qhorin's help."

She didn't seem surprised by the collection of lightsabers; Ahsoka figured that Asajj must have told her about them. Jinx also declined the offer. "I can barely use this one."

Gungi shook his head, and his demeanor was suddenly mournful. Ahsoka was confused for a moment before she realized why: the spare lightsaber she had chosen was Petro's. Before she could say anything to him about it, Shaak Ti indicated for Ahsoka to follow her. "Doctor, get Katooni awake. This should not take long."

"Already on it, Master Jedi," the Nautolan said from where he stood hunched over a control panel along the back wall.

Ahsoka felt a reassuring squeeze on her shoulder and looked up to see that it was Rex. "Ready?" he said.

She grinned back at him, feeling almost nostalgic. It was like they were about to go into battle against the Separatists again, back when the world made sense. "Always."

The two Togruta stepped out into the seemingly deserted street, lightsabers deactivated but at the ready. The only sound was the buzzing of a nearby flickering streetlamp, but when Ahsoka reached out with her mind she felt the hunters that Shaak Ti had sensed. She scanned the windows of the building across the street - a diner, by the looks of it - but they were nowhere to be seen. She quickly glanced sideways at Shaak Ti, who returned the look and nodded.

If Shaak Ti had been a second slower igniting her lightsaber, the first shot would have gone through her heart. A rain of scarlet bolts came down from the diner's roof, and in an instant Ahsoka's lightsabers were out deflecting them.

Ahsoka called out for Rex's benefit, "Snipers!" There were three of them: two directly opposite her and one firing from an odd circular turret-like structure at the right corner of the building. Countering them was easy enough, though the cover of the roof's safety wall made it all but impossible to for them to actually hit them. They could keep this up all day. Ahsoka knew this couldn't be all of them, but even so she couldn't keep a smirk off her face. This almost felt normal. With the semi-darkness concealing their features, she could pretend for a moment that they were fighting droids.

And that it was Anakin's lightsaber by her side instead of Shaak Ti's.

But it wasn't, and if they didn't end the stalemate then the fight was bound to attract attention soon. Ahsoka made a motion to move forward, but she didn't make it one meter before the first floor windows exploded in a hail of blaster fire. The rest of the hunters had made their appearance, springing up from cover inside the diner. Ahsoka's smirk disappeared. It had suddenly gotten deadly serious, even as two of Rex's shots took down a Rodian who was too close to the window. They couldn't fight fire coming from two directions for long.

She shouted "I'll take the roof!" She aimed for a spot between the two center snipers, and jumped straight up as soon as Shaak Ti acknowledged her. Ahsoka held each of her sabers away from her body and caught a glimpse of them scrambling to raise their rifles before she shot past them, her blades resisting briefly as they seared through each of their necks. The corner sniper turned his fire on her, but she rolled ahead of the blaster shots and behind an air-conditioning unit, only to find herself face to face with a huge Twi'lek. Before he could shoot her Ahsoka severed his weapon hand with a flick of her primary saber, and when he recoiled in shock she stabbed him in the gut with her shoto, angled upward through his body.

The man fell without another sound and Ahsoka turned her attention to the corner sniper, whose suppressing fire had left the cooling unit a mess of sparking metal. She could hear the sounds of fighting below her as Shaak Ti made her assault. Ahsoka took a deep breath and closed her eyes, focusing on her opponent. There was something vaguely familiar about his Force signature, but Ahsoka didn't press further. She had run into a lot of bounty hunters, after all. Instead she focused on his blaster rifle and threw her shoto away from her in a wide arc, guiding the spinning weapon towards the enemy. The moment she heard it make contact - and the bounty hunter's curse - she jumped on top of the air conditioner and launched herself towards him. She caught Petro's lightsaber in mid-air and spun herself to slash the bounty hunter across the chest.

But he dropped his now-useless rifle and managed to duck under Ahsoka's swing and grab her legs, tackling her to the ground. She slipped out of his grasp and scrambled to her feet, but her lightsabers had disappeared. The bounty hunter was on his feet a second later with a short vibroblade.

"Not so tough without the lightsabers, are you?" he said, panting in exertion. He was a light-skinned human male, and between the his and his facial tattoo, Ahsoka remembered exactly where she knew him from.

He swung at her and Ahsoka dodged under the strike. "I thought you were in jail, Hardeen."

"I got released. Turns out killing a Jedi isn't a crime anymore," he said before lunging at her. She sidestepped him at the last second and roundhouse kicked him in the back. Hardeen crashed into the safety wall on the edge of the roof and nearly fell over, but he regained his balance and came at her again.

Ahsoka avoided that attack too and scoffed at him. "Which you never did." She tried to find one of her lightsabers, but as soon as she looked away he rushed for a third time. Ahsoka prepared to move again, wondering how someone so predictable as Rako Hardeen had gotten this far. But he moved faster than the first two times, and grazed her leg hard enough to send her to the ferrocrete roof. Then Hardeen was on top of her, pinning her to the ferrocrete with his knees.

"And I'm fixing that now!" he snarled, raising the dagger to finish her off. Ahsoka didn't have time to think. She focused on the hand holding the knife and it stopped scant centimeters from her left eye.
"Two problems with that," she said as Hardeen struggled to pull his wrist out of her telekinetic hold. Her voice strained with the effort. "One, I'm not a Jedi." With her opponent distracted, she reached down to where Chuchi's holdout blaster rested on her belt. "Two, do you really think the Council would have hired someone who could actually kill a Jedi?"

If Hardeen had an answer to that, she never heard it. Three blaster shots tore through his torso and he fell limply on top of her with a final cry of surprise. Ahsoka grunted and shimmied out from under the body. She stood up and leaned against the cooling unit to catch her breath. The sounds of fighting had ceased from below her, and she could sense Rex and Shaak Ti coming up to the roof. It was over. Ahsoka looked from the blaster to her hand to Hardeen's body, then replaced it on her belt with a disgusted noise. She would need to get used to using them, but it still felt so...uncivilized.

"Not bad," a familiar voice said loudly. Ahsoka jumped and looked around for the source. Asajj Ventress was standing with her arms crossed on the roof of the next building.

"Have you been there the whole time?" Ahsoka asked, incredulous. "I could have used some help!"

Ventress leaped the small gap and looked down at Hardeen's body. "I showed up in the middle of it. You looked like you had it under control." She poked the corpse with her foot. "Surprised you shot to kill."

Ahsoka supressed another shudder of revulsion. "We couldn't let them get away with our location." The truth left a bitter taste in her mouth.

Asajj grinned and walked over to slap a hand on Ahsoka's shoulder. "You're learning!"

Before Ahsoka could retort she heard the loud bang of a door being thrown open. Rex ran out on to the roof, followed at a slower pace by Shaak Ti.

"Over here," Ahsoka said as she brushed Asajj's hand off. Rex saw her and looked relieved for a moment before his eyes widened with shock. Belatedly, she remembered that he had no idea of Ventress' involvement in all this. "Rex, don't-" she started, but he already had his blasters out.

"Ahsoka! Beside you..." Rex's alarm trailed off as he noticed her lack of concern.

Asajj rolled her eyes. "Tano, please call off your clone."

Ahsoka glared hard at her before turning to Rex. "She's with us. Sort of."

Rex looked between the two of them uncertainly before finally lowering his blasters. "I guess it's that kind of day."

Ahsoka snorted. He could say that again.

Shaak Ti crossed her arms and gave Ventress her own skeptical look. "I thought you didn't want us to slow you down? What made you you come back?"

Ventress scowled at the Jedi with even less reverence than she had given Hardeen's corpse. "I still don't. But I thought I would pass along some news: Palpatine's put up a travel ban. We're all stuck on this stinkhole." She looked around some more and disappointment showed on her face. "What, did you ditch the kids?"

"They're in the clinic across the street," Ahsoka said.

"Ah. I figured they were nearby. You did threaten to kill me over them after all," Ventress said, and she winked.

Ahsoka ignored the barb and knelt to search Hardeen's body. She wanted to see if what information he had on them. She quickly found his datapad and tucked it under her arm.

"Let's talk in the clinic," Shaak Ti said. "We need to make a plan before anyone else shows up."

Ahsoka furrowed her brow. "Should we do something about the bodies?"

At that, Asajj laughed. "No one looks twice at a body down here."

Rex coughed to get their attention. "If it's all the same to you 'm going to get some gear from these bounty hunters." He gestured down to his bodysuit that was emblazoned with the symbol of the Republic. "This is a bit conspicuous."

"I'll give you a hand with that," Shaak Ti cut in before Ahsoka could respond. "Katooni should be awake by now. Ahsoka, can you fill her in on the-" her voice stuttered and she finished the thought with a hand gesture.

Ahsoka had nearly forgotten just how much Katooni had missed in her day-long healing trance. The prospect of explaining the victory of the Sith yet again made her stomach roil, and Rex was more than capable of armoring himself on his own. What was Shaak Ti up to?

"Sure. Here, hold on to this," she said, a bit more curt than she had intended. Asajj was observing the exchange with a bemused expression. Ahsoka was expecting a typical cutting remark, but instead she shook her head and silently jumped down to the street. Ahsoka followed her without another word, her frustration quickly mounting.

If Shaak Ti wanted to talk to Rex by herself, she could just say so.

As soon as Ahsoka had left, Shaak Ti clapsed her hands behind her back and fixed Rex with a deep, steady gaze. "Captain."

Rex crossed his arms and matched her stare, noting that the eyes he had thought to be black were actually a deep purple. "It's just Rex now, General."

Ti quirked her brow. "In that case, I'm not a general anymore, correct?"

"Fair enough." Rex moved away and knelt beside the body of one of Ahsoka's kills. The Rodian's gear looked like it would fit him - a dark grey chestpiece, gauntlets and greaves. It was similar to what Rex had worn on Onderon, but had a big more coverage. Not on par with the Phase II suit, but not bad either. And thankfully undamaged, thanks to Ahsoka's clean decapitation.

As he went about methodically stripping the armor off, he did not need the Force to know that Shaak Ti was still watching him. "What's this about, then?"

"Skywalker."

Rex froze in the middle of removing a gauntlet, and slowly turned his head to look at her. The older Togruta regarded him cooly, with the ease-less elegance that his shinier brothers found unnerving.
"What about him?" Rex asked, unable to keep a slight waver out of his voice. The name of the man who he had once trusted above anyone who was not a brother now sent a chill down his spine.

"I heard Ahsoka tell you what she knows of his fate. What do you know?"

Rex was on his feet now. "I know that he sure as hell isn't dead," he said, clenching his fist in anger as he advanced on her. "Unlike what you've got Ahsoka believing."

Shaak Ti closed her eyes and let out a long, weary sigh. Rex had stopped barely more than a meter away from her, and for the first time he noticed the deep shadows under her eyes.

"You know why I have not told her."

"Enlighten me." Rex crossed his arms.

Ti sighed again - impatiently, this time - and reopened her eyes. "Going into the Temple was hard enough on her." Her expression softened. "I understand your frustration, Rex. But we all have to keep our heads clear if we are going to get off this planet. We must not tell her the truth until then."

Rex made his disgust plain on his face. "How dare you. After what you and your Council put her through, how can you stand there and claim to know her well enough to make that decision for her?"

Her expression did not change, but from the way her eyes darted down before she replied Rex knew that he had wounded her. "You're right. You know her better than anyone here. Look past your emotions and tell me how you feel she would handle learning what her Master has become at this critical moment?"

Rex wanted to shout in her face that Ahsoka deserved to know, but he held his tongue and did as the Jedi asked. She was right about one thing at least: making decisions from emotion was a dangerous game, especially now.

Rex had not seen Anakin before the operation, but what he saw him do inside...Rex had never seen anything like it. Not even on Umbara. Anakin had cut down every Jedi in his path without so much as a word. He had not hesitated once, and he had shown no mercy. Old teachers who could no longer fight and young students who had never gotten the chance to learn how to, all of them had died at his hands. It was a brutality only matched in Rex's experience by General Grievous. And even he was a poor imitation of what Anakin became in that Temple.

And Ahsoka trusted the man who had committed that atrocity more than any other in the galaxy. She loved him the way Rex loved Fives, or Cody, or any of his brothers. Maybe even more so. The words Skywalker and Tano went together in his mind as naturally as Kenobi and Skywalker did to the rest of the galaxy.

The thought that he was dead had shattered her; he could hear the sorrow in every word she spoke. When he told her what he had truly become...

It would destroy her.

"Fine," Rex said, bowing his head to stare at the ground. "You're right. I'll tell her after we get off world."

Shaak Ti inclined her montrals. "That would be for the best. She trusts you." More than she trusts me, was the unspoken implication.

Rex went back to removing the bounty hunter's gear, and Shaak Ti continued to wait on him. After a moment of awkward silence, he spoke up. "Ahsoka told me, about the Chancellor and the Sith. About how Dooku was his apprentice."

"Yes," was all that Shaak Ti said.

"Skywalker is his new apprentice, isn't he?"

"Undoubtedly." Out of the corner of his eye, Rex saw her sit down against one of the cooling units and draw her knees up against her chest. "I should have stopped him from going...I thought he was going to helpMace."

Rex stopped again for a moment and looked over at her. "You couldn't have stopped him."

She looked back at him without speaking for a moment and then looked away. "You're right," she said while she rubbed her upper arm, wincing at a sudden pain. "I couldn't have."

He finished stripping the body and set about putting the gear on. He finished with it quickly, and began to head back to the stairwell. But Shaak Ti had not noticed him leave. She was staring off into space, wrapped up in her own thoughts and regrets.

"Anakin Skywalker is a Sith Lord," he heard her whisper. "Qui-Gon must have been wrong."

Rex coughed to get her attention. "Shaak Ti?"

She looked up and grimaced. "Palpatine was always close to him. We should have seen it."

That was a bit too harsh on herself. "You didn't know what the Chancellor was."

"We should have!" Shaak Ti shot to her feet. "A Sith Lord is not supposed to be able to hide in front of the entire Jedi Order! The entire Republic!"

"You should have seen a lot of things," Rex snapped, and he instantly regretted it. But once he had started he had to keep going. "You should have seen that Pong Krell was a sadistic monster on the battlefield. You should have noticed that Barriss Offee was planning to blow up your Temple right in front of you. Oh, and you should have believed Fives when he told you what that chip in our heads was for!" Rex had meant the Jedi in general the first times he said you, but the last one was on Shaak Ti herself. "But you didn't, and now we're here. So let's move on."

Shaak Ti recoiled like he had slapped her, and he supposed that in a way he had. After a moment, she inclined her head toward him. "You're right. I'm sorry. Here I am worrying about Ahsoka's control while I am not able to keep my own."

The two of them hurried down the stairs. As they reached the destroyed ground floor, Rex had a sickening thought. "He could be after us right now."

"The thought had occurred to me," Shaak Ti said, gravely serious. "We had best find a way to get out of here before we find that out."

Rex went out onto the street, careful not to trip over a bounty hunter's body. He could not agree with her more. The last thing he wanted was for Ahsoka to find out about Skywalker from Skywalker.