Chapter 1: Kit

He watched from his place on the floor through steadily dimming vision as Master Mace Windu and Sidious danced away from the study where they had originally found the Sith Lord in a vicious flurry of red and purple, the blades moving together through masterful strokes that the untrained eye would have struggled to comprehend, and at a pace with which even any man would have struggled to keep up.

"No wonder I ended up on the floor." Jedi Master Kit Fisto thought wryly, even as he struggled to continue observing the furious duel that had moved passed him and further down into the hall. He could just spot Sidious advancing swiftly on his adversary, unleashing blow after blow upon Windu who deflected them all with practiced ease. It appeared that at the rate they were going, Kit would soon lose sight of them. Not that it mattered. He was pretty sure his eyes would fail him even before that. "He was far too much for me from the very beginning…"

In hindsight, it was far truer than a more prideful man would have liked to admit, but Kit Fisto wasn't that kind of person. Though a respected and capable duelist in his own right, he had always known that the weakness of his preferred Form, Shii-Cho, might one day result in his downfall. After all, while its wider slices were perfect for fending off multiple blades or opponents as the case may be, it struggled to cope with singular hostiles. On top of that, from the handful of seconds that he had seen Sidious fight, it had appeared that the Sith Lord had been utilizing Ataru, which was geared towards the engagement and destruction of one particular opponent, and thus was optimal for relatively small fights such as this one had been. So, even in a contest between even two equally matched opponents using those two forms, it was perhaps only natural that the wielder of Ataru would come out on top. But much like the broader cuts of Shii-Cho, Ataru had its own weakness in that it was a deeply physical style, and so it's users often drained their energy significantly faster than other lightsaber combatants who used far more conservative Forms, leaving them utterly exhausted after a short period of time while whoever they were fighting would likely still be rearing to go.

But Sidious had no doubt accounted for that and it showed, because the fight was already halfway over before it had even begun.

On the very first move, Sidious had launched himself straight into the small gang of Jedi consisting of Master Windu, Master Agen Kolar, Master Saesee Tiin, and Kit himself, shocking all four of them. He had turned on Kolar first while the Zabrak was still trying to recover his composure and impaled him straight through the torso, bringing a rather ironic end to a duelist who was well known for striking first. In almost the same second, he had turned and cleaved through Tiin, bringing the team that had been sent after the Sith Lord down to half its original number.

To his own credit, Kit had held out longer than Kolar or Tiin had even in spite of the inherent situational disadvantage of his form, but he had also known that he wouldn't last long based on the way to things had been going regardless. To compensate, he had wheeled around Sidious while Windu distracted him and tried to take him from behind, seeking to bring the fight to an abrupt end through a well-placed pincer maneuver.

Unfortunately, Sidious had pinpointed the weakness in his tactic with ease and used the split second he had gained as Windu recovered his footing to pivot and slash through Kit's midsection while the Nautolan was gearing up for an overhead strike.

It had been a clean hit. A good hit. In fact, it was a perfect hit, for never in Kit's life prior to that moment could he remember suffering more grievous an injury. Kit had yelped as a searing pain had surged through his gut, and even before he had hit the ground, he had known he probably wouldn't be getting up again...

The fight was now officially beyond his optical capability, but Kit could still faintly hear it raging down the hallway to the Chancellor's office. He wasn't certain, but he had the feeling that the conflict was going in Windu's favor. If there was a silver lining to Kit's own imminent demise, it was that because Kit and the others were out of the fight, Windu could now fully immerse himself in the Force, and begin focusing in on utilizing his own Form, Vaapad, in the most efficient if ferocious way possible. For despite his great individual skill, the weakness of Windu's combat style was that aside from its propensity for sending practitioners on a one-way trip straight to the Dark Side, one who made use of it also tended to struggle with the prospect of friendly fire if facing off against one opponent that was engaged with another friendly force at the same time. Ergo, back when Kit was still alive enough to contribute to the fight, Windu had been forced to hold back or otherwise risk hitting his ally. Now that Kit was disabled, Windu certainly didn't need to be careful any longer, his Force signature flaring up even as Kit had falling and which even now continued to burn bright after the flow of combat had taken both Windu and Sidious out of the room.

Now at this very moment, both Kit and Windu were battling for their lives. However, while he had faith that Windu was either winning or would win soon, Kit seemed to be losing his fight with his own mortality. His eyesight had nearly completely clouded over by this point, the sounds of the duel raging nearby now seemed so distant that it might as well have been taking place on the other side of Coruscant, and by the Force, it was all he could do to just keep on sucking in air. Some distant part of him rather morbidly wondered if this was what it would like for humans if they tried to breath in water and then decided that he did not like this feeling one bit. He was beginning to feel tired now, he realized. So very, very tired…

And so as his end drew near, as cliché as it was, Kit Fisto chose to use the last of his coherency to think about his friends and colleagues, both those who had gone before him and the ones he was about to leave behind.

Perhaps not surprisingly, his thoughts immediately drifted to the people he had been speaking to not even fifteen minutes ago, some of whom were now laying dead nearby.

In truth, Kit hadn't known Agen Kolar very well on a personal level. In fact, aside from his reputation for being a Master Duelist and nearly always striking first and worrying about the questions later, Kit knew next to nothing about him. Kolar had only been elected to the Council just this year and outside of meetings, Kit could count the number of times they had met up on one hand. And even then, those private audiences had been in a strictly professional capacity. Now he regretted the fact that he had never taken the time to simply invite Kolar out for a drink and get to know him on more personal level, as he would never again get that chance.

Kit was significantly more informed about Tiin than he was about Kolar, but not by too much. The now-late Iktotchi Master had been one of the best starfighter pilots the Order had to offer after Master Plo Koon and Anakin Skywalker himself, and was on the fast track to becoming something of a legend amongst his peers. However, Kit couldn't really say that the two of them had got on extremely well. Tiin had always been reclusive and reticent even as far back as his years as a youngling and preferred to spend all his time outside of council meetings or battle either by himself or working on his starfighter. As such, Kit had always gotten the distinct impression that he did not wish to be bothered even by other council members unless it was important. In fact, Kit had only been able to draw out conclusions on what the man had been like based upon his own personal observations. For one thing, Fisto had believed Tiin to have been stubborn and rather self-righteous based on his handling of what happened with Ashoka Tano, but than Kit had dropped the ball on that one as well, so he really had no room to talk. Still, Kit had also believed that Tiin had been a fervent and ultimately well-meaning member of the Order, even if his convictions had bordered on being rather obsessive at times. They had not been what either of them could have called friends, but for Kit, there was no denying that the Jedi had lost another exceptionally strong member. If Kit had survived this fight, he had no doubt he would have mourned the man in his own way.

Kit and Master Mace Windu were more diametrically opposed than one may have realized at first glance, as while Kit was all wide smiles and easy jokes, Mace had always favored stern scowls and grim reprimands. And while Kit had focused in on perfecting his mastery of the oldest style of lightsaber combat, Mace had gone out of his way to create his own form, making his creation the newest style. Admittedly, the two of them had never seen eye-to-eye on a number of subjects, but over the course of the war a deep and considerable respect had formed between them. Deep and considerable enough in fact that when Mace had been assembling a team of Jedi to go and subdue Sidious, Kit had been the very first name on his list. Personally, Kit had considered him to be not just a wise and capable leader, but also a friend. Mace however, being such a staunch follower of the Jedi Code, had always been very cautious of creating too strong an attachment to anything and anyone. And so Kit had no reason to believe that depth of feeling was reciprocated where the pair of them were concerned. The dying Nautolan hoped once more that he would triumph over Sidious, for the Council would not be the same without him…

At the words 'the Council', Kit felt his thoughts shift to those amongst them who were currently either off waging their own war somewhere else in the galaxy, or safely back at the Jedi Temple.

He thought of Shaak Ti, whose sweet and motherly nature belied the older woman's superb willpower. A part of him was relieved when she was selected to oversee the training of the clones on Kamino for as far as Kit was concerned, those men could not have gotten better.

He thought then of Plo Koon, whose great wisdom and strength utterly eclipsed Kit's and at times could even match that of the venerable Master Yoda. He had dealt with young Ashoka Tano leaving the Order rather well all things considered, but Kit still felt the need to worry over him every now and again, even if he didn't necessarily need it.

Speaking of worrying, Kit immediately thought of Obi-Wan Kenobi, who had often consulted many of his peers for advice on how to train his new Padawan in the wake of Master Jinn's death, including Kit. He had never said it aloud, but Kit knew that the Qui-Gon's demise had always haunted Obi-Wan, and even now the memory of what transpired on Naboo hung over him like shroud, following him everywhere he went. By Kit's reckoning, Obi-Wan had always been a little different after that fateful day; He had forsaken his use of Ataru in favor of Soresu not long after Qui-Gon's funeral, became noticeably more careful and cautious in his bearing and ways of operating, and had become significantly more sardonic in his efforts to cope with the stress of the situations the Jedi lifestyle forced him to deal with. And though he hid it well, Kit had always felt that the loss had also nearly destroyed a portion of his confidence, causing him to constantly doubt his own ability as a teacher and question himself on whether or not he was adequately living up to the final promise he had made to Qui-Gon. As such, he had spent a period of time trying to learn how to teach from other Masters not long after taking on Anakin as a Padawan, including from Kit himself. Kit had been a Knight back then, same as Obi-Wan, and was not as much help as he would have liked to have been to the fledgling Jedi due to his own doubts about his teaching style, but a friendship was nonetheless born from their frequent meetings…

Obi-Wan was not the only Jedi to have a ghost or two following in his wake, for just as Kenobi had lost his master, Kit had lost his apprentice. It had been years now since Nahdar Vebb's death, but even now Kit often thought about the former Padawan that he had lost in ultimately more ways than one. He could still remember the day he heard that Nahdar had graduated to Knighthood like it had happened yesterday, and though he had unfortunately been unable to bear witness to it in person due to the war, receiving news of it had definitely turned that day into one of the finest of his life. Perhaps fittingly, the day Vebb died was also one of his worst. When they finally reunited after all that time apart, Kit was quick to notice that the war had greatly changed Nahdar, and not for the better. While even at the very end, Kit had believed that Nahdar's heart had been in the right place, that did not change the fact that his old apprentice had become vindictive, arrogant, and resentful in his absence. He had used the Force to accomplish tasks with an unnecessary amount of power, jumped at any chance to fight, used a disproportionate amount of brutality all to easily, blamed his men for his own inability to destroy Grievous, swore vengeance either implicitly or outright more than once, frequently disregarded Kit's words and advice, had the gall to accuse Kit of being unable to understand that conventional Jedi practices were obsolete in wartime while being utterly blind to the fact that he himself was nearly a stone's throw away from disregarding Jedi practices of any sort in their entirety, and attempted to take on an accomplished Jedi Killer by himself while simultaneously operating under the assumption that the aforementioned Killer would fight fair, the last of which ultimately got him and eventually all of his clones killed.

Frankly, Kit knew that what had happened on Vassek hadn't truly been his fault, but there was still a part of him that had blamed himself for the outcome of the mission. He often wondered whether or not Nahdar would have died or become what he did if Kit had simply been able to make the time to finish his training, or even just been a little bit stricter with him from a young age. Then, he would silently chastise himself for thinking such thoughts. After-all, self-recrimination could not change the past. The future, however, was still yet unwritten. Next time, he had promised himself, he would do better. However, Kit had also decided that it would probably be best to wait until the war's end before he took another apprentice. He had seen what this conflict had done to Nahdar and was in no hurry to possibly produce another Jedi who might end up carrying on his fallen apprentice's legacy. Well, that and the fact that Kit had still cared about Nahdar even after all that had happened. Taking on another apprentice still wouldn't have changed the fact that his former Padawan and friend was dead… And now it appeared he would never get the chance, but that was neither here nor there.

Even with Nahdar's passing however, Kit had managed to stick to the Code, and successfully avoided letting his grief interfere with his responsibilities as a Jedi. And yet, as Kit felt the last of his strength leaving him, his thoughts wandered to perhaps the only person he'd ever met who had truly made him waver in his devotion to the Order for even a second; one Aayla Secura.

There was so much he had to say about her, and yet when he searched for the words to describe how he felt about her, he kept drawing a blank.

Well, almost. There was one word that could describe his feelings towards her pretty accurately, but the Jedi Code was pretty clear-cut in its policies concerning emotional attachments, especially those of such a strong nature.

Eventually, they had both chose duty over love and resolved to remain close friends, but no more than that.

Be that as it may, the spark that existed between them never truly died even after years of mutually ignoring it, and even now he would feel it ignite in his chest whenever he laid eyes on her after an extended period of time apart, or when they were alone together for even just a moment, or when she got just a little too close…

She was his greatest weakness; he had realized that some years ago, for even though he could not be with her nor she with him, the thought of living in a galaxy where she did not exist utterly terrified him. He had never directly told her, but there were some days where Kit thought he would have done anything for her if she had asked it of him, up to and including leaving the Order.

Again, he knew that such sentiments conflicted directly with the code, and so he shouldn't think like that, but he also knew he couldn't help himself. She made him feel in a way that no other being could or ever had, and though he both already knew it himself and was otherwise constantly reminded by everything around him that nothing would likely ever come of it, he could not bear to leave that behind. She was like a drug a couldn't get enough of, couldn't possibly resist, and he wasn't even sure that he wanted to if he was being completely honest with himself.

Abruptly, he imagined what she would feel when his Force signature went out as he was sure it would any second now, and it was enough to break his heart. He hoped that when it happened, Commander Bly would be nearby to help console her, for perhaps the only person in this galaxy besides Kit and maybe Quinlan Vos who cared about Aayla with anywhere near the same level of adoration was her very own Clone Commander.

Bly had served under Aayla since just after the First Battle of Geonosis, and while Aayla had not had as much time to bond as with Bly as she had with Kit or Quinlan, that did not mean the feelings shared were any less intense. However the way in which both Kit and Bly adored Aayla were considerably different from each other. For Kit, his feelings towards were her very muddied, constantly threatening to blur the line between best friend and possible lover. Bly's feelings on the other hand were more... pure for a lack of a better word, for there was no romantic or physical attraction to her on his end, but rather more like the sort of familial devotion one might find between a brother and sister. It seemed to Kit that Bly had always viewed his Jedi General as something of an extended family member in the same way he and almost every other clone saw each other as brothers, and even just the thought of it had always been enough to warm Kit's heart.

He hated that he was about to leave her, to die far sooner than either of them had anticipated, but he took comfort in the fact that even with him gone, she wouldn't be alone. She would bounce back from his death eventually just as she always had before when confronted with every other major setback. Yes, he was sure she would be okay. Not immediately, true, but one day... He hoped.

With that, the darkness enveloped him, and Kit Fisto knew no more.

Hey guys, hope you enjoyed the first chapter of my first-ever story, Not Finished Yet. I would like to start by thanking each and every person who took the time out of their day necessary to read this little piece of literature, and I sincerely hope that many of you will stay with me from start to finish!

Also, no flames please! I would love constructive criticism, but much like every other writer out there who is aspiring or otherwise, there isn't much I can do with belligerent bashing of my skills even as lacking as they may be.

Just so everybody knows, I have made a few small changes to the setting (aside from the most obvious one, I mean) that I want to inform you all of.

1. For those of you who may be wondering, Kit Fisto did not train Bant Eerin in this timeline, mostly because I the writer haven't actually decided whether or not she even exists in this continuity.

2. I have changed up the approximate ages of some of the members of the Jedi Council, they are as follows.

-Kit Fisto- 33

- Obi-Wan Kenobi- 36

-Aayla Secura- 32

-Plo Koon- 43

Shaak Ti - 44

3. A good degree of this story will likely be written from the perspective of Kit Fisto, but will also feature the prospective of other characters.

I hope nobody minds any of these too much.

Also, sorry in advance for any mistakes or errors made while I was writing this! I was and still am rather wiped out by writing all this up in a day. But if you liked what you've seen so far, than please toss me a follow and favorite at your digression. And of course, I absolutely live for your reviews, so if you have an opinion to share about this story that I may use to improve my skills as well as what I create, do not be afraid post it! In the meantime, I will constantly be editing the chapters and story to better fit what I'm looking to create, so don't be too surprised if certain things change, appear, or disappear.

Finally, I may or may not be planning to drop some info on my other project real soon. So please stay tuned!

Until next time!