Disclaimer: Last time I checked, I don't own anything pertaining to the Star Wars universe. (I'm only eighteen, so if you do the math, you'll see that's logically impossible.) In case, however, you believe that I did, I'll dissuade you of this notion by reminding you that George Lucas owns it all and I own nothing. (Makes you want to become a socialist, huh? Look at the inequity!)

Author's Note: I owe some of my ideas to the novelization of Episode III by Matthew Stover, so I'm also indebted to him.

On the subject of the rating, I am going with K plus for now, because I really don't think there is anything here that would upset my eleven year ols sister. However, if you feel differently, let me know and I'll bump it up to T.

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Near Misses

All around me in a pyrotechnic display that would have instilled envy in any self-respecting sentient who made his or her living in the fireworks or explosives industry, anti-fighter beams streamed about my starfighter. The brilliant, combustible flares pierced my eyes, and, when they traveled onwards to strike some unlucky clone pilot at the speed of light, they left vivid streaks of their complementary colors gleaming in their wake for a handful of seconds.

It was disconcerting to contemplate that civilians on Coruscant below, clustering on the balconies of their conapts, might be gazing slack-jawed at the smears of luminescence trailing through the sky like multi-hued comets as though they were watching an entertainment at a festival organized by an august political figure whose term had almost. expired and who was seeking re-election. These citizens wouldn't see the desperate battle for survival and civilization that was really unfolding, I noted as I maneuvered my ship to evade the laser beams that were assaulting Anakin, the clone pilots around us, and me.

Actually, though, it was even weirder to reflect on the fact that trillions of beings― specifically the Coruscanti― still bustled about their daily business as if there was no war raging across the galaxy, when, ever since Geonosis, there had scarcely been a minute when the strife with the Separatists had not been stationed somewhere in the forefront of my brain. Force, I even dreamed about the conflict. My nocturnal musings were nearly always centered around blood, clones, droids, blasters, and grenades.

However, such thoughts were a distraction, I reprimanded myself, as I dove into a swarm of droid tri-fighters approximately as numerous as a hive of gnatflies. For some reason, the droids did not appreciate my arrival and fired at me. As I responded to their attacks with laser beam shots of my own, I remarked with a twisted inner smile that Intel had lied to Anakin and me again for at least the seven thousandth time since the Clone Wars commenced with several bangs when they had estimated that the Separatist armada was half the strength we were currently pitted against. Ah, well, at least we both had learned not to credit Republic Intelligence anymore than we would a meteorologist who had declared that Tatooine was in imminent peril of freezing over like Hoth by this point in our illustrious careers in the Grand Army of the Republic. Still, I added judiciously, I liked Intel. After al, it was marvelous for satisfying my innate thirst for heroic fantasy, which, in the present jaded galaxy, there was a shortage of, and, since my former Padawan and I couldn't fulfill such an inherent desire through the Holonet articles of our exploits as we realized just how much of our successes was a function of fortune as opposed to skill, we had to rely on Intel to meet that need. Good thing Intel was always willing to oblige in that regard….

Blast it, space is supposed to be empty, I grumbled to myself through the haze of dodging proton torpedoes and lobbing my own at my foes. A nanosecond later, I snorted at the folly of my own mind.

Never, in the past few millennia, had the space surrounding Coruscant been anything approaching vacant. Typically, ever since I had been a youngling figuring out how to ignite my lightsaber without impaling myself upon it, the capital of the Galactic Republic had attracted thousands of vessels everyday, bearing diplomats, Senators, tourists, immigrants, refugees, food, and goods from hundreds of diverse star systems from both spiral arms of the galaxy. Now, though, the crafts that clogged the atmosphere were warships, not cargo and transportation ones.

At least a lot of the battleships are ours, I reminded myself, attempting to put a positive turn upon a situation for once in my lifetime. The feeble, temporary flame of hope this notion installed in me evaporated more rapidly than a fair weather friend on Kamino when my vessel was jolted as a droid's ship exploded a few centimeters to my side.

Obviously, Anakin had scored a hit. Not for the first time, I observed inwardly how lucky I was that my former apprentice had an impeccable aim. Otherwise, I would be cinders by now. It was, also a plus that I was his ally. After all, I wouldn't think it was so lovely if I was the one he was shooting at. In this particular universe, everything was relative.

I despised this part― the frantic navigation through hostile and friendly fire alike while trying to destroy opponents, I complained to myself as a laser beam whizzed past the transparisteel viewport of my craft way too close for comfort. Flying was a nightmare that I had when I was awake, and an infinitely worse method of torture than many devised by beings who prided themselves as sadists. Flying was for droids.

It seemed that I had expressed this last sentiment aloud, because the comm system in my console cackled, and the next second Anakin's voice, which was filled with new depths of maturity after his experiences in the Clone Wars, flooded the cockpit. "There isn't a droid made that can outfly you, Master," he informed me, displaying his usual messed up sense of humor, since I suspected that there was at least ten factories' worth of droids in the galaxy that could outfly me.

"Sorry," I muttered absently as I dropped into a dive that slipped a turbolaser burst by a discomforting less than a meter's breadth. The steepness of the drop caused my stomach to scream in protest at this cruel mistreatment. Yes, if many explorers had possessed my stomach, the known galaxy would have been notably smaller, and hyperdrives allowing interstellar transportation at the speed of light would never have been invented. On a whole, I did not comprehend whether or not that would have been a bonus or not; I just recognized it for the stark fact that it was and saw no profit in denying it. Then, as if the answer to my question wasn't obvious, I added, "Was that out loud?"

"It wouldn't matter if it wasn't." I could practically see his head shake dismissively. Privately, I conceded he probably had a point. There was precious little in the way of thoughts, emotions, or intentions that we could conceal from each other. At times, it even felt like we weren't two people merging together to work as a flawless team, but rather one sentient who had, by some hoax of nature, come to reside in two different bodies, which explained how our names were always jumbled into one word whenever anyone spoke of us and nobody ever mentioned one of us without the other's name showing up in the statement as well. If future generations read about us in old Holonet articles, they would probably imagine that we were one being who was afflicted with an extreme case of multi-personality disorder. "I know what you're thinking."

I opened my mouth to reply to this, but my comment was chopped off as the fireball that had engulfed us a second ago when a proton torpedo broke nearby cleared enough for me to discern another squadron of droid operated vehicles lancing at us through the obsidian sky.

"Look out," I warned him reflexively, although I suspected that he probably had glimpsed them already. "Four droids inbound."

As I established as much, I swerved sharply to avoid the oncoming tri-fighters. Off to my side, Anakin's vessel made the same maneuver, inverted, in perfect unison. Paralleling each other, we whipped around the enemy formation and then swooped unexpectedly close to the two ships nearest us.

One droid spotted us and sent its craft whizzing after us. However, the droid in the vessel behind it, demonstrating the inherent lack of creativity or contingency planning that plagued our metallic adversaries, doggedly maintained the original course. Consequentially, the two fighters collided and went up in a hideous combustion that at this close range could almost be mistaken for a nearby star suddenly going nova. Such a dance worked miracles like that every time.

Two down, two to go, I noted grimly, keeping a tally of our progress because minor tasks like that kept one sane in the mayhem of battle. Unfortunately, the remaining droids would not fall victim to the same trick, because, much to my frustration, our alloy opponents were getting cleverer and cleverer ever passing day we spent attempting to disable each other permanently. Apparently, as unpatriotic as it sounded even to my own conscience, the Separatist thinktanks were more ingenious than their counterparts in the Republic, since they were capable of creating increasingly smart droids, whereas the best our brainiacs could do was invent Ready Rations that contained more and more nutrients for humans and became correspondingly inedible, as evidenced by the fact that our the outset of the conflict they had been the consistency of old rubber boots, but now were so unpalatable that even Neimoidians would gag as they consumed them, and, since their cuisine mainly consisted of a variety of fungi and algae, Neimoidains were not renowned for their culinary splendors. Perhaps our failure to match the scientific ventures of the Separatists could be accounted for by our plummeting educational standards in the Republic combined with the fact that ninety percent of our population would rejoice if math and science disappeared forever down a black hole. Whatever the case was, it made dealing with intelligent enemy droids no simpler.

"We've got to split them up!" I shouted at my companion through the comm.

"Break left," ordered Anakin. With the same placid air as if this was a perfectly rational proposal, he expounded, "Fly through the guns on that tower."

"Easy for you to say," I griped. Despite my complaint, I sent my fighter hurtling toward the artillery towers of the closest cruiser, ignoring every brain cell in my body that yelped at me that if I didn't lock myself up in a mental institution soon, I would end up killing myself. "Why am I always the bait?"

"Don't worry," he soothed. "I'm coming in behind you."

Even though I was busy fiddling with the controls so that I would not murder myself in this enterprise, I managed to muster the energy necessary to snort.

How exactly I always was the one performing the most dangerous feats when I was undoubtedly the worse pilot of the pair of us was a mystery to rival why poor people always ended up paying more taxes than the outrageously wealthy. Flying without crashing this close to a colossal battleship was a challenging endeavor to say the least, even with the Force for assistance. However, in an example of my typical luck, the droids weren't having much trouble at all. Both of them had stuck with me like warts, and they were actually gaining upon me. Burn it, where was my best friend when I required him the most? Probably daydreaming about Padme Amidala. Well, he could see her again if we survived this fiasco― the operative word being "if."

"Anakin, they're all over me!" I hollered, struggling to maintain my composure under this pressure.

"Go dead ahead," he commanded me cheerily, his upbeat manner implying that this whole dreadful affair was a hilarious practical joke played upon us all. "Move to the right so I can get a clear shot at them. Closing…Lock onto him, Artoo!"

In the background, I heard a faint beep of acknowledgement from Anakin's astromech, R2-D2, who was as precocious as its owner, through the comm system as I complied with my former Padawan's directives. A moment later, one of the tri-fighters around me exploded, staining the atmosphere vibrant crimson and orange in a brief dying throes before winking out of existence entirely.

That was a relief, but I would have been noticeably more elated if the second vessel had ceased firing at me. Unfortunately, its aim was improving as well, because it was manned by a droid who evidently subscribed to the noble doctrine of bettering oneself through dedicated, never-ending labor. That was the vexing thing about mechanical foes: it was nearly impossible to distract them, as I was well aware from too much firsthand experience.

"I'm running out of tricks here," I broadcasted to Anakin tersely. If he was planning on rescuing me again, now would be the ideal moment to do so before I became stardust.

As I made this announcement, the cruiser receded behind me. Out in open space, I was a sitting diki bird. Wonderful. Circumstances were just getting better and better for me. Today was definitely my day.

I needed something else to hide behind before I was blown to smithereens. As this idea occurred to me, a Separatist battleship loomed in my viewport. Granted, it wasn't the best thing in the known universe to take cover behind, but it was the only one available to me at the moment, and I wasn't in a position to be fussy about what I sheltered behind.

"I'm going down the deck," I educated Anakin, swinging my fighter toward that destination and narrowly evading another barrage of laser canons.

"Good idea," he agreed, still sounding merry. "I need some room to maneuver."

What space isn't big enough? I wondered. Once again, though, I was too preoccupied with skimming the surface of a gargantuan starship to voice this sarcastic inquiry aloud. Great. The ship was shooting at me now, along with the droid navigated craft hot on my tail. This was indisputably not among my top hundred brightest strategies for survival or thousand, for that matter, I concluded as I wove away from blasts charging at me from all directions.

"Cut right." For the first time, Anakin's tone was a tad harried, something which only prompted my innards to perform still more astonishing acrobatics. "Do you hear me?" The comm crackled as if plastiwrap was being rubbed over it, but it did not switch off completely, thank the indifferent Force for its microscopic mercies such as that, and I could still hear my comrade as he repeated his instruction and commanded R-2 to get a fix on my pursuer.

"Hurry up," I gritted as an enormous laser beam rammed into one of my wings, and my vehicle buckled in response like a bantha anxious to unseat a rider. "I don't like this."

"Don't even try to fix it, Arfour," I directed it when it whirred emphatically, announcing, as if I hadn't noticed from the flashing machinery on my console, that we'd been hit. "I've shut it down." Something, which, obviously, rendered evading enemy attacks harder since that was exactly what I needed in this situation. If Anakin didn't get a move on soon, there would be nothing remaining of me to save.

The telepathy that bound us must have alerted Anakin to the nature of my ruminations, because he asserted, "We're locked on. We've got him."

An instant later, the droid tri-fighter went up in a gigantic smoking flare that must have provided quite a spectacle for the citizens below on Coruscant.

"Good going, Artoo," congratulated my former apprentice.

"Next time, you're the bait," I pronounced to him. After all, air was his element, not mine. Mine was the solid, dependable, and utterly underappreciated earth. I could envision his answering smirk as I exhaled a quiet gust of relief. It looked as if, thanks to him, I might just survive another starship fight― only to get entangled in another one in the imminent future, no doubt. It was a charmed life I led. Returning to the business at hand, I went on, "Now, let's find the command ship and get on with it."

"It's straight ahead," he responded. Evidently, R2 had solved that conundrum while I had dodged death by droid tri-fighters. Well, at least my sacrifice would not have been in vain if I had perished when I had served as the bait to lure the Separatists in. "It's the one crawling with vulture droids."

"I see them," I confirmed dryly. After all, for any sentient who wasn't blinder than a dingbat, they were virtually impossible to miss, for dozens of the broad, half-flattened shapes crouched ominously behind the cerulean force field that shielded the open hangar from invasion by hostile aircraft. "Oh, this should be easy."

"Come on, Master," Anakin urged, and I pondered just how much of his exuberance was bravado― a warrior's way of spitting in the face of death to convince himself that it had no domination over him because it could never claim him or anyone dear to him― and how much of it was simply him trying to loosen me up before my jaw broke from all the clenching I was putting it through. I had never asked him, because I suspected that he didn't know the true answer to this question himself, either. "This is where the fun begins."

Watching Anakin ram on ahead, I shook my head, thinking that my best friend's definition of fun was pretty eclectic, considering that what he constituted as entertainment, most beings would regard as terrifying, a fact which suggested that Watto had walloped his head too much and too hard when he was his slave. That was my theory, anyway.

On another occasion, I might have followed him, but not this time. Not when our failure might mean that the Separatists were able to hold Supreme Chancellor Palpatine captive for a very long time, employing him as a hostage to sue for the Republic's surrender until we could devise another plot to rescue him. Not when everyone was relying on the two of us to save the day like the Holonet insisted we always could.

"Not this time. There's too much at stake. We need help," I countered. As I made this contention, I fiddled with my comm settings and called in the nearest squad of clone pilots for backup.

A moment later, I was glad that I had the foresight to do so, for the vulture droids had lifted off the battleship, surging like a dark cloud from the hangar and heading straight for Anakin and me. I had just enough time to note the arrival of a configuration of ARC-170 starfighters to the rear of Anakin and me when the vulture droids engulfed us.

After reducing one vulture droids to a floating mass of spare parts, I whipped around to reinforce Anakin as more droid fighters materialized from behind the cruiser. I fired at one droid, twisted away from a volley of laser blasts from two others, and warned, "Anakin, you have four on your tail!"

"I know, I know," grunted Anakin, as his vessel swept into a series of awe-inspiring defensive motions that any one of which might have been the death of a lesser pilot.

"And four more are closing in from your left," I added, since he might be so focused on dealing with the other four that this had escaped his notice, something that could be fatal. The last thing we needed was for our best pilot to be blown up before we had even reached the Chancellor.

"I know, I know!" he repeated, his clipped tone indicating that he was feeling no small amount of pressure. Seeing his craft sway wildly from side to side as it avoided laser fire, I understood his stress, even though it was remarkable to find my former Padawan flustered in a cockpit. For the most part, he was the epitome of confidence and composure when he was flying, but even the best of us could be shaken if the circumstances were harrowing enough. "I'm going to pull them through the needle."

Positive that the garbled comm connection had caused me to mishear him, because surely even he could not be so foolhardy, I gawked at him when I spotted him soaring through the long trench on the Trade Federation battleship toward a towering conning station that was propped up by two metallic leg-like struts that had a narrow slit between them, which, as Anakin had reasoned, droid fighters could not fit through. The only downside to his scheme was that even a Jedi pilot of his caliber couldn't do it without crashing either.

"It's too dangerous," I told him, hoping that he would heed me and elect to devise a better solution to his current crisis. "First Jedi rule: survive."

"Sorry, no choice," stated Anakin, his voice tight with the intensity of his concentration. Another burst of proton torpedo erupted around his vehicle, narrowly missing it, and causing it to shudder. "Come down here and thin them out a little."

Well, I did owe him one for saving my life earlier, and what were best friends and brothers for if not to try to prevent one another from dying because of their own idiocy? Sighing as I determined that Anakin Skywalker was going to be the death of both of us, I plunged toward the eight vulture droids, feeling as if what I was doing was comparable to a mankirat imprudently paying a social call upon a nexu. Clenching my jaw, I stared at Anakin's vessel as it faded in my viewport, speeding toward the needle, as Anakin ignored R-2's squealing that he required repairs on his cognitive module if he believed that this was an acceptable maneuver.

Personally, I was inclined to agree with the feisty astromech. In fact, based on his recent behavior I was reflecting that Anakin should have been referred to not as the "Hero with No Fear" but as the "Hero with No Commonsense" who, instead of possessing nerves of durasteel, had brains of the substance. Still, maybe he would prove me wrong. Maybe he would survive to tell the tale, after all. Doing the impossible by sheer force of will was Anakin's forte, and I had never hoped so much to be proven incorrect.