Just a wee bit late but i got it out. not much to say, go buy my p@treon to see what bat shit stuff is happening with Anakin.
P@treon Hermit47
https://discord.gg/YDh7Zpneay
...
The music was gone. The laughter was gone. The glittering pretense of celebration had been swallowed by hushed panic and the constant movement of armored boots over marble. Clone troopers were everywhere now, locking down halls, repositioning barricades, checking servants against staff lists, sealing balconies, and sweeping outlying galleries in coordinated sections.
Ahsoka ran a hand briefly along one of the carved walls as she followed Luminara and Gree through a long upper corridor.
The stone was cold.
Too cold for a place that had held so many people only an hour earlier.
A platoon of clones moved past them in the opposite direction, rifles shouldered, visors reflecting the low golden light of the palace lamps. They split at the next intersection without hesitation, disappearing into parallel hallways with the kind of smooth discipline Ahsoka had come to expect from good soldiers.
She looked at Luminara, who was walking quickly but without any visible rush, and finally asked the question that had been building in her chest for the last several minutes.
"Why aren't we running?"
Luminara didn't slow.
"Why would we be?"
Ahsoka stared at her for half a second, then quickened her pace so she stayed level. "Because the Prime Minister's dead, someone got through a heavily guarded capital building, and now we're sweeping a palace full of nobles while half the planet's leadership is trapped in one ballroom."
Luminara's expression remained perfectly composed.
"Exactly," she said. "And if the assailants were in these halls right now, the Force would not be this quiet."
Ahsoka frowned.
Luminara glanced at her, dark robes moving softly with each measured step. "Listen."
Ahsoka obeyed.
She reached outward.
Past the polished walls and gilt trim. Past the fear in the ballroom, where guests were still being contained and calmed. Past the alertness of clone troopers checking every corridor and balcony. Past the tight, disciplined focus of Commander Gree and the men around him.
Nothing.
No sharp presence. No active malice. No predatory edge moving through the palace like a blade in the dark.
Ahsoka opened her eyes again.
"I don't feel anyone."
"Which means," Luminara said, "whoever struck at the capital building is not moving openly through the palace."
Gree touched his wrist comm. "Orbital command, report any signs of incoming Separatist movement. Fighters, transports, stealth signatures, anything."
The fleet admiral's voice answered through a wash of static and disciplined calm. "Nothing so far, General. Perimeter remains stable. No unauthorized ships entering atmosphere, no Separatist fleet movement, no signal traffic we haven't already flagged."
Luminara inclined her head slightly, though the admiral could not see it. "Understood. Maintain full watch."
She lowered her arm and turned back to Ahsoka and Gree.
"No signs from orbit. No immediate presence in the Force. Which leaves us with the most likely answer."
"They were already here," Ahsoka said.
Gree's jaw tightened. "Before we ever landed."
Luminara gave a small nod. "I believe so."
That sat badly in Ahsoka's stomach.
It meant planning. Preparation. Time. It meant whoever had killed the Prime Minister had not slipped through a gap in the blockade or chanced their way into the palace by luck.
They had been waiting.
Barriss's voice burst through the tension a moment later.
"Master."
Luminara raised her wrist at once. "Go ahead."
Barriss sounded controlled, but there was something tight beneath it now.
"A number of the guests have left the ballroom."
Ahsoka stopped walking.
Luminara did too. "Explain."
"In the confusion after the lockdown," Barriss said, "some of the nobles slipped through service exits and side galleries before all the clone barriers were fully in place."
Luminara's eyes narrowed very slightly. "Who?"
"Several minor nobles from the outer districts. A merchant lord and his wife. Two provincial governors. But…" Barriss hesitated for the first time. "Most importantly, the Queen and the Prince are no longer in the hall."
Ahsoka swore under her breath.
Luminara's voice stayed calm, but the chill in it could have frozen the corridor.
"You let the Queen and Prince walk out under your watch?"
"I tried to stop the movement," Barriss said quickly, and for once the poise in her voice was cracking. "There was panic, half the room started pushing at once, and the palace guards interfered. I was containing the crowd and by the time I realized which corridor they'd taken—"
"That is not good enough," Luminara said.
It was not shouted. It was not theatrical. That somehow made it harsher.
Then she was moving again.
"Gree," she said, "with us. We find them first, then we sort out the rest."
The three of them broke into a run.
No more calm pace. No more measured sweep.
Now their boots struck hard against the marble and their robes and armor snapped behind them as they cut through a succession of galleries and side halls leading back toward the inner palace wing.
The first scream reached them halfway there.
It was a woman's voice. High, sharp, and utterly broken with hysteria.
They rounded the next corridor at full speed and found the Queen.
She stood in the middle of a broad side hall, one hand clutched to her chest, the other shaking violently as she pointed toward the floor. Her face had lost all royal control. She was white with terror, jewels trembling at her throat.
Three nobles lay dead at her feet.
All three had been shot cleanly through the head.
No struggle. No warning. Just execution.
The Prince stood several paces behind her, pale and rigid, his expression somewhere between shock and dawning horror. Two palace servants had collapsed against the wall, staring at the dead as if they could not understand what their eyes were showing them.
Luminara closed the distance first.
"What happened?"
The Queen could barely get the words out. "There were footsteps—someone was there—I turned and they were—"
The Prince swallowed hard and forced himself to speak. "I heard movement down the hall. More than one person."
Gree was already pointing to a squad of clones coming up behind them. "Two men stay here. Lock down this junction and don't let anyone near Her Majesty or the Prince without my order."
The troopers moved immediately.
Ahsoka was already looking down the corridor the Prince had indicated.
There.
Faint traces of movement. Disturbed air. A pressure in the Force too slight to be a clear signature, but enough to tell her they were still close.
She looked at Luminara. "They're moving."
Luminara didn't waste a second. "Then we follow."
They ran again.
This time the trail became obvious almost immediately.
A dead nobleman at the next archway, one hand still clutching the side of his formal jacket. A body farther on near a side door, slumped half across the threshold with a blaster wound burned black through the temple. Another two corridors later, another corpse—this one a palace guard who had never gotten his weapon all the way out.
The attack path was too clean for chaos.
It was methodical.
Whoever was doing this wasn't just killing at random.
They were moving with purpose, eliminating whoever happened to be in the way—or whoever had been intended from the beginning.
Ahsoka's pulse pounded harder as they pushed deeper into the private wing.
Then the corridor opened into a long gallery lined with mirrored arches.
And there they were.
Four figures stood at the far end in matte black armor that swallowed the palace light. Their helmets were angular and severe. No insignia marked their chests. No planetary colors. No Separatist symbols. Each carried a blaster rifle already raised and ready.
The moment they saw the Jedi, they opened fire.
Bolts ripped down the corridor in a dense red stream.
Ahsoka and Luminara ignited their sabers in the same breath, green blades flashing to life as they deflected the first barrage. Gree and the clones behind him dropped into firing positions, sending blue bolts back downrange.
Then another figure stepped into view behind the first four.
This one was larger, broader through the shoulders, and carried a heavy rotary cannon braced against blacked-out armor.
The weapon spun.
Then unloaded a torrent of fire so thick it became a wall.
"Back!" Gree shouted.
The three of them fell behind the nearest corner just as the hall exploded into sparks, shattered stone, and splintered decorative metal.
The gunner didn't let up.
The whole section of wall they'd just left disintegrated under the barrage.
Ahsoka crouched low, one hand braced on the floor, heart hammering.
"Who are these people?"
Gree was peering around the edge of cover, measuring angles. "Doesn't matter right now."
Luminara touched her wrist comm sharply. "Barriss, report."
Barriss answered instantly, breathless now. "General, there's movement near the royal wing. Clone teams are engaging. They're trying to get to the Queen and Prince again."
Luminara's expression hardened.
She looked from Ahsoka to Gree and made the decision in an instant.
"You two hold here. I'm going back."
Ahsoka stared at her. "General, there are at least five of them."
"And if there are more moving on the royals, then they are my priority."
She turned and touched her comm again. "Barriss, reinforce the Queen and Prince. Do not let them move."
"Yes, Master."
Another burst of clone voices erupted through the shared channel—shouting, blasterfire, someone barking for reinforcements.
Then one of the clone captains near the royals came through, voice strained and ragged. "General, they're cutting through us—we need—"
The line dissolved in blasterfire and a scream.
Luminara didn't wait for more. She was already gone, robes cutting back down the hall as she ran toward the royal wing.
The heavy gun stopped.
Not gradually.
All at once.
The silence that followed was almost worse.
Ahsoka and Gree exchanged one hard look.
Then they edged around the corner together.
The corridor was empty.
No black-armored riflemen. No heavy gunner. No bodies except the nobles they'd passed. Just smoke, drifting debris, and the echo of a trap sprung perfectly.
Something inside Ahsoka went cold.
Then the Force hit her.
Not as a whisper.
As a scream.
Every instinct in her body seized at once.
"Run," she said, though she wasn't sure whether she was saying it to herself or to Gree.
From the darkness ahead, two red blades ignited.
They cut through the hall like wounds opening in reality.
Ahsoka's wrist flew to her comm. "Master, there's a Sith here!"
Luminara's voice came back immediately. "Fall back and regroup with me."
Ahsoka planted her feet instead, saber up. "I can take them."
Gree snapped his head toward her. "No, you can't. We regroup, that's an order."
Before she could argue again, the red blades moved.
Two massive figures rushed out of the darkness.
Wookiees.
Not like any she had ever seen.
They were larger than most Wookiees by far, hulking and broad, their fur one black as void-shadow, the other white as stormbone, and each carried a crimson lightsaber with terrible confidence.
They came on fast.
Too fast.
And the corridor suddenly became far too small.