Qui-Gon stood near the boarding ramp of the Nubian cruiser with Obi-Wan at his side, Anakin a few paces ahead of them both. The wind on the landing platform pulled at robes and hair alike. The boy had his arms wrapped around himself against the high altitude's chill, watching the endless streams of traffic weave between the towers below.
Obi-Wan turned to Qui-Gon, and whatever restraint he'd maintained inside the Temple had worn through during the walk. "It is not disrespect, Master. It is the truth."
Qui-Gon regarded his apprentice with the particular patience of a man who had felt this argument forming for the last hour. "From your point of view."
"The boy is dangerous. They all sense it. Why can't you?"
"His fate is uncertain, Obi-Wan. Not dangerous. The Council will decide Anakin's future. That should be enough for you."
Obi-Wan's jaw worked, but he said nothing more. He stepped back, folding his hands into his sleeves, the picture of a dutiful Padawan who disagreed with every fiber of his being.
Qui-Gon crossed the platform to where Anakin stood. "Master Qui-Gon, sir." Anakin looked up at him. "I don't wish to be a problem."
Qui-Gon lowered himself to one knee so they were eye to eye. "You won't be, Anakin. I'm not allowed to train you, so I want you to watch me and be mindful. Always remember, your focus determines your reality." He set a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Stay close to me, and you will be safe."
Anakin nodded, quick and earnest.
Tyson leaned against the ramp, Meetra and Bastila flanking him. Meetra had her arms crossed, her attention split between the Master-Padawan pair and the city beyond the platform's edge. Bastila stood with her hands clasped behind her back, posture rigid, her face carefully, deliberately neutral.
"Focus determines your reality," Tyson repeated under his breath. "That's actually pretty good. I'm stealing that."
"You would," Bastila said.
Anakin stood at the base of the ramp, his head tilted back to watch a line of speeders streak across the gap between two towers. The wind tugged at his tunic. He turned to Qui-Gon, who had come to stand beside him again.
"Master, sir... I've been wondering." Anakin chewed his lip. "What are midichlorians?"
Meetra let out a short breath through her nose. "Midichlorians." She said the word like she was tasting something stale. "A biological explanation for the Force. The Order spent centuries debating the nature of the living Force, and someone decided the answer was a blood test."
Qui-Gon glanced at her, unbothered. "I understand your skepticism, Knight Surik. But there is some truth to it." He turned back to Anakin and lowered himself so the boy could see his face without craning his neck. "Midichlorians are microscopic life forms that reside within all living cells and communicate with the Force."
"They live inside of me?" Anakin asked.
"In your cells. We are symbionts with the midichlorians. Without them, life could not exist, and we would have no knowledge of the Force. They continually speak to you, telling you the will of the Force."
Anakin's mouth fell open. "They do?"
"When you learn to quiet your mind, you will hear them speaking to you."
"I don't understand," Anakin said.
Qui-Gon set his hand on the boy's shoulder again. "With time and training, Annie... you will."
Meetra said nothing more, but her mouth pressed into a line.
"So how does that work, exactly? If midichlorians are the mechanism," Tyson said, "if they're what let us sense the Force, then how do I feel the Force in a rock? In durasteel? In the hull of this ship?" He knocked his knuckles against the cruiser's landing strut. "There's nothing alive in there. No cells. No midichlorians. But I can feel it. The Force runs through it the same as it runs through you or me or the kid."
Anakin looked between them, following the exchange with rapt attention. Qui-Gon looked out across the platform, past the traffic lanes, past the towers, toward something only he seemed to see.
"The midichlorians are not the Force, Tyson. They are our connection to it. Our way of listening." He turned back, and there was something in his face that went beyond a teacher reciting doctrine. This was a man who had spent decades sitting with these questions himself. "The Force is generated by all living things. It surrounds us. Penetrates us. Binds the galaxy together. The rock does not contain the Force within itself, but the Force flows through it nonetheless, because the Force flows through everything. The midichlorians simply allow us to hear what is already there. They are the ear. Not the music."
"A fine answer, Master Jinn," Bastila said from Tyson's other side. "He's good with the boy. He has a gift for making the incomprehensible sound simple."
"That's either a compliment or an insult," Tyson said.
"It's an observation."
Qui-Gon answered another question about the Force with the same unhurried patience. The boy was talking faster now, the rejection in the Council chamber already fading under the weight of simple curiosity. Qui-Gon let him talk. Didn't redirect, didn't dismiss, didn't lecture. Just listened, and when Anakin ran out of words, offered something back that made the boy think harder than he had before.
Bastila was right. Qui-Gon had a gift for it.
And that thought snagged on something Tyson had been turning over since the moment he'd looked at a nine-year-old slave boy and known what he was supposed to become. Qui-Gon Jinn was the variable. Not the Council, not the training regimen, not the Jedi Code or the war that would come after. Qui-Gon. The man who saw a frightened kid from the Outer Rim and didn't see a risk. He saw a person. He would have raised Anakin differently than Obi-Wan did. Not better or worse in the ways that mattered to the Order, but differently in the ways that mattered to a boy who'd left his mother behind and needed someone to tell him that it was allowed to hurt.
If Tyson was genuinely worried about a future Darth Vader, the answer might be simpler than he'd been making it.
Keep Qui-Gon Jinn alive.
Two air taxis descended from the traffic lanes above and settled onto the platform with a hiss of repulsors. The doors opened, and a procession emerged. Handmaidens in flame-colored robes, including Shmi Skywalker, moved around a central figure. Queen Amidala walked among them wearing an elaborate headdress. Captain Panaka flanked her, one hand resting on his holstered blaster. Behind them, Jar Jar Binks loped along.
Amidala stopped before the Jedi. Her attention moved across the group, cataloging each face.
Qui-Gon bowed. "Your Highness, it is our pleasure to continue to serve and protect you. I will not let harm come to you. We have additional Jedi joining us. Knight Shan and Knight Surik."
Bastila inclined her head formally. Meetra gave a shorter nod, less polished but no less sincere.
Amidala regarded them both for a moment, then returned her attention to Qui-Gon. "I welcome your help. The Senate will likely be unable to assist us. I fear for my people, and my place is with them."
"Your Highness!"
The voice cut across the platform. Tyson's stomach dropped before he even turned to look.
Senator Palpatine crossed the landing pad at a pace that was almost undignified. His face was arranged into an expression of deep concern. Fatherly. Warm. The kind of face that made you want to trust it.
Tyson stepped sideways into the shadow cast by the Nubian cruiser's swept wing. He activated his Scaling Cloak within his Grey Goo Suit and vanished from sight, from sound, from every sensor that might have been pointed at the platform. His heartbeat stayed level, only because he forced it to.
"Senator Palpatine." Amidala's voice was flat, displeased. "Where have you been?"
Palpatine slowed his approach. The concern on his face didn't waver. He stopped before her and bowed, deep enough to be respectful.
"Your Highness, I must apologize. I was detained by circumstances beyond my control. I assure you, every moment away from your side has weighed heavily on me."
"Detained." Amidala let the word sit between them. "Naboo is under occupation. The Trade Federation has blockaded our planet, invaded our cities, and imprisoned our people. I came to Coruscant to plead our case before the Senate, and the Senator representing Naboo was nowhere to be found."
"You are right to be upset," Palpatine said. "I was pursuing diplomatic channels on your behalf. Backchannels, Your Highness. The kind that do not survive exposure to the Senate floor. I had hoped to present you with allies when you arrived, not excuses." He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice dropped, quieter, meant only for her. "I failed. The channels proved... unproductive. And by the time I learned you had already departed for the Senate, the vote was underway."
Amidala studied him. The white paint on her face made her expression impossible to read, which was, of course, the point.
"You look tired, Senator."
"It has been a difficult few days."
That much, at least, appeared to be true. There were shadows under Palpatine's eyes that his composure couldn't quite conceal, and a stiffness in the way he held his left shoulder that suggested he'd dressed carefully that morning to hide something underneath. His robes were disheveled.
"I should have been here," Palpatine said. "I know that. I will not offer further justification. Only my continued service, if you will still have it." He bowed deeply. "I must implore you to reconsider, Your Highness. Stay here, and I will aid you in your quest for justice."
Amidala's face eased, but only on the surface. Beneath the white paint and the careful composure, she was steel. "I appreciate your offer, Senator Palpatine, but I must return to my people. They need me."
"But the dangers, Your Highness." Palpatine let the precise tremor of a man who cared too much creep into his voice. "You cannot return to Naboo without the protection of the Republic. The Trade Federation will not stop until they have what they want."
"I am well aware of the risks, Senator," Amidala replied. "But my place is with my people. I will not abandon them."
Palpatine read her face. Whatever he found there made something behind the mask go flat for just an instant. Then the warmth was back, seamless. He bowed once more. "Very well, Your Highness. I wish you a safe journey."
Amidala turned and ascended the ramp, her handmaidens flowing around her like water around a stone. Jar Jar bounded up after them, his voice carrying across the platform. "Wesa goen home!"
Palpatine watched her go. His hands were clasped behind his back. From where Tyson stood, invisible, the man's right hand closed into a fist. The knuckles went white. The tendons stood out beneath his papery skin. There was no warmth in that fist. No fatherly concern. Just rage, compressed and controlled, the kind that could crack a planet's crust if it ever found its way out.
This was the moment.
Palpatine was the most dangerous on his list of Sith Lords, and exposing him wasn't something you got a second attempt at. Miss the shot, and the man would bury himself so deep into the Republic's infrastructure that no amount of evidence would pry him loose. He'd write the narrative before anyone could blink.
But right now, standing on this platform, the Senator from Naboo looked like a man who'd had a very bad day. The shadows under his eyes couldn't be faked with an act. That stiffness in his shoulder wasn't age. Someone had gotten to him, or close enough to leave marks. The bounty Tyson had placed was doing its work, and whatever Palpatine had spent the day dealing with, it had cost him. He was off-balance. Diminished. Still the most dangerous man alive, but operating at less than his best.
And he hadn't been exposed yet. Whatever had happened to him, he'd managed to keep his cover intact. Which meant the window was still open.
Tyson could feel them. Other presences, watching from vantage points he couldn't see. The Jedi felt it too. Qui-Gon's hand had drifted to his belt. Palpatine's head had turned, just slightly, toward a tower to the east.
Master With Your Hands drew his phase pistol. The weapon appeared in his grip. The Jedi were still outside the ship, Qui-Gon speaking quietly with Obi-Wan near the ramp. Bastila and Meetra had moved to the ramp. Anakin was already inside.
Something was off. He held it tighter than he should have. He made himself ease the pressure. Was he afraid? No. Fear wasn't the right word, because fear implied uncertainty about the outcome, and Tyson knew exactly what was going to happen. He was going to shoot a Sith Lord in the back, and the Sith Lord was going to react, and in the space between the bolt leaving the barrel and whatever came after, fifty years of careful scheming would collapse. Palpatine would stop being a senator whether Tyson's shot landed or not. Sidious would become what he had always been, and everyone on this platform would see it, and then there was no scenario in which the next five minutes didn't involve lightsabers and blood and the very real possibility that some of the people behind him would die.
If he was afraid, it was of that. Not for himself. For them. For Qui-Gon, who couldn't keep pace with Maul on Tatooine. For Obi-Wan, who was good but not great, yet. For the boy inside the ship who had no idea what was about to happen.
But this was the window. And windows closed.
He steadied his hands and his breathing. A part of him said this was cold. This was standing invisible behind a man who didn't know he was there, watching the wind pull at the hem of dark robes, and choosing to end the longest con in galactic history with a bolt to the spine. Assassins did this. Not Jedi. Not heroes. The Council would never have sanctioned it. Qui-Gon would have called it wrong.
This was why he couldn't be a Jedi in their eyes.
He was doing it anyway.
Tyson lined up the shot. Center mass on the most dangerous man in the galaxy, who had no idea he was there.
He fired.
The bolt left the barrel in a streak of compressed energy, silent and fast, aimed at the space between Palpatine's shoulder blades.
Palpatine spun.
The movement was too fast, too fluid, too precise for a man who presented himself as a career politician with a gentle smile. He turned like a viper uncoiling, and from somewhere inside his sleeve a cylinder dropped into his palm and ignited. The crimson blade caught the phaser bolt and batted it into the platform floor, where it punched a smoking crater into the duracrete.
The lightsaber hummed. Palpatine's face was no longer warm. No longer fatherly. For one naked second, the thing behind the mask looked out at the world with yellow-rimmed fury.
Then he lashed out.
The air itself became a fist. It slammed into Tyson's chest, and the impact sent him skidding backward across the platform. He could have activated the shield in the Grey Goo Suit. It would have absorbed the kinetic energy. He had the reaction time.
He didn't use it.
The Force push caught him square and launched him off his feet. He hit the platform hard, shoulder first, and tumbled twice. The impact knocked the air out of his lungs. The edge of the platform rushed up to meet him, and then there was nothing beneath his feet but a thousand meters of open air and the endless vertical city below.
He went over.
His fingers caught the lip of the platform. The jolt nearly tore his arms from their sockets. His legs swung free over the abyss, wind howling up from the depths, speeders screaming past close enough that their wake buffeted him against the platform's edge. He hung there, teeth gritted, the muscles in his forearms burning.
Above him, the platform erupted.
A career politician from Naboo had just drawn a red lightsaber and thrown a man twenty feet with the Force.
Qui-Gon had already turned. Obi-Wan was half a step behind him, his own saber in hand but not yet ignited. Bastila stood frozen at the top of the ramp, her lips parted. Meetra had dropped into a fighting stance, one hand reaching for her green lightsaber. And Palpatine stood in the middle of the landing platform with a Sith blade burning in his fist, his chest heaving.
"Senator." Qui-Gon's voice was calm, but the calm was a thin shell over something harder. "What was that? Is the Jedi Order aware that you're Force-sensitive? That use of the Force was... aggressive."
Palpatine's red blade had already vanished. The hilt disappeared back into his sleeve like a magician's sleight of hand. His smile returned, wide and disarming, as if the last five seconds had been a misunderstanding at a dinner party. "My apologies, Master Jedi. The heat of the moment got the best of me."
Obi-Wan stepped up beside his Master. His hand rested on his own saber hilt, his jaw tight. "That was no mere use of the Force, Senator. I've seen adults who were overlooked as children access the Force, but that was... something more."
Qui-Gon nodded. "We are Jedi, Senator. We can tell the difference."
Palpatine raised both hands, palms out. The picture of innocence. "I assure you, Jedi, I have never been trained in such... practices."
"And yet," Qui-Gon said, "you knew exactly how to use them."
"We demand an explanation, Senator," Obi-Wan said.
Palpatine opened his mouth to respond, and whatever he was about to say would have been smooth and reasonable and entirely convincing, because that was what Sheev Palpatine did. He convinced. He soothed. He made the unreasonable sound perfectly natural.
A hand slapped onto the edge of the platform. Then another. Tyson hauled himself up over the lip. He rolled onto the duracrete, got one knee under himself, and stood.
"He's just upset because some bounty hunters ruined his plans."
Palpatine's composure cracked. First, the smile faltered. Then the warmth drained from his face like water through a sieve. His attention snapped from Tyson to the phaser burn in the platform, to the Jedi with their hands on their hilts, and then back to Tyson. The calculation was almost visible, gears turning, timelines reconstructing, every setback of the last five hours snapping into a single coherent picture.
"It was you."
The words came out as a hiss, low and venomous, stripped of every pretense of senatorial grace. Sparks crawled across his knuckles like living things. Blue-white light arced between his fingers, building, crackling, the air around his hands ionizing with a sharp ozone stink.
The lightning came in a single vicious bolt.
Tyson was already moving. He pulled on the Force and felt it answer, flooding his legs with speed that turned the world into a smear of color and wind. The lightning scorched the duracrete where he'd been standing, leaving a blackened trench that glowed orange at the edges. He circled wide across the platform, putting distance between himself and the Sith Lord, buying seconds.
Qui-Gon didn't need seconds. His green blade was already lit and humming before the lightning dissipated. He closed the distance to Palpatine in three long strides, his saber sweeping in a low arc that forced the Senator to pivot. Obi-Wan was half a beat behind, his blue blade igniting with a snap-hiss as he flanked right, cutting off Palpatine's retreat toward the platform's edge.
The red blade met Qui-Gon's green in a shower of sparks. The impact rang across the platform like a bell struck with a hammer. Palpatine redirected the momentum into a spinning backhand that caught Obi-Wan's thrust and turned it aside. The Sith moved between them with precise footwork, no wasted motion. Every parry flowed into a counter, every counter into a repositioning that kept both Jedi in front of him and neither at his back.
Tyson drew his lightsaber and entered the fight from the Sith's blind side. His green blade came in high, aiming for the junction of neck and shoulder. Palpatine sensed it without looking. He ducked under the strike, drove an elbow into Tyson's ribs, and unleashed a pulse of Force energy that shoved all three of them back two steps. The platform cracked beneath his feet.
Qui-Gon recovered first. His Ataru form carried him forward in a leaping overhead strike that Palpatine caught on his blade and held, the two sabers locked and screaming. Obi-Wan swept low. Palpatine kicked him in the chest, hard enough to send the Padawan stumbling, and broke the lock with Qui-Gon by twisting his wrist and redirecting the green blade into the platform floor.
Three on one, and the Sith was winning.
Tyson stretched his awareness outward, letting the Betazoid empathic sense spread out. The platform was supposed to be empty except for their group and the Queen's retinue inside the ship. It wasn't. Two presences lurked at the edges of his awareness, cold and professional, watching from elevated positions on adjacent structures. He'd felt them earlier. He knew who they were.
"I put out the bounty on Palpatine!" Tyson shouted, parrying a vicious slash that numbed his fingers to the wrist. "If we take him down, I'll make sure you're both paid the full amount!"
A beat of silence. Then the shooting started.
Jango Fett dropped from the roof of a maintenance tower thirty meters to the east, his jetpack firing in a controlled burst that brought him down to platform level. His twin WESTAR-34 blasters were already barking, each bolt aimed at Palpatine's torso. From the west, Cad Bane stepped out from behind a ventilation stack, his wide-brimmed hat casting his red eyes in shadow, his LL-30 pistols spitting blue bolts.
Palpatine's blade became a blur. He deflected Fett's shots into the platform, sent one of Bane's bolts screaming back toward the Duros, and still managed to keep Qui-Gon's saber from finding his throat. But the geometry had changed. Two Jedi and an armed Force-user in melee range, two of the galaxy's deadliest bounty hunters pouring fire from opposite flanks. The Sith couldn't face every direction at once.
A blaster bolt from Fett's right pistol grazed Palpatine's left arm. The Senator snarled, and for the first time, his footwork stuttered.
Bastila and Meetra closed ranks beside Tyson, blades up, the three of them forming a loose triangle that gave them angles on the Sith without crowding each other. Bastila's stance was textbook-perfect, every line of her body disciplined into the Soresu form she'd drilled a thousand times. Meetra held her green saber low and loose, weight on the balls of her feet.
"He's fast," Bastila said, keeping her focus on Palpatine. "The dark side pours off him like heat off a fire. I can feel it."
"Less feeling, more cutting," Meetra said.
Cad Bane and Jango Fett hurled themselves at the Sith Lord as one. It was less a coordinated strike than a collision of intentions, with the Jedi dancing in between blaster strikes. The air filled with the scream of crossed sabers and the bark of blaster fire.
Palpatine met all of it.
He moved through the assault like a man walking through tall grass, brushing aside what would have killed anyone else. Qui-Gon's overhead cleave met crimson and slid away. Obi-Wan's thrust found empty air where the Sith had been a half-second before. Bane's bolts cooked the duracrete around Palpatine's feet without touching him, and Fett's careful, methodical fire vanished into deflections that sent the energy whining off into the abyss below the platform.
Tyson didn't join the press. He stepped back and held out his hand. The portal bloomed into being three feet off the ground, a circle of rippling air that opened onto a different place entirely. Through it, the High Council chamber of the Jedi Temple was visible, the curved walls, the ring of chairs, the wide windows looking out over the spires of Coruscant. Masters sat in their seats mid-deliberation.
And then they saw it.
They saw Sheev Palpatine, Senator of Naboo, the man who they all knew, one who wore the patient smile of a public servant, holding a red lightsaber and carving his way through two assailants and a pair of Jedi like a… Sith Lord.
Mace Windu was on his feet. His chair scraped backward across the polished floor. "That's the Senator from Naboo." His voice was flat with disbelief.
"Hello there," Tyson called through the portal, not turning his head. "Sorry to interrupt. I figured you'd want to see this in person, before someone decides it never happened."
Yoda went very still, his ears drawing back against his skull. His small hand tightened on his cane. "Clouded, the Senate has been. Clouded, the Force itself. And here, the source. A Sith Lord. On Coruscant. Beneath our noses, hiding in plain sight, he was."
"The two we have been searching for," Ki-Adi-Mundi said quietly. "Master and apprentice. If this man is the Sith Master..."
Through the portal, the chamber dissolved into motion. Masters rose from their seats, robes billowing, sabers in hand.
Palpatine saw it too.
His head snapped toward the portal, and for a fraction of a heartbeat, his composure broke entirely. Whatever shred of deniability he'd been clinging to, whatever escape plan he'd already begun assembling in the back of that vast and patient mind, evaporated the instant he saw the Jedi Council watching him through a hole in the world.
"No," he breathed.
Tyson grinned. "Cat's out of the bag, Senator. Or the Sith Lord's out of the Senate, I suppose. Doesn't have the same ring to it."
The Sith answered with fury.
Cad Bane and Jango Fett fired in the same instant, perfectly mirrored, blue bolts and red lancing in from opposite sides of the platform in a crossfire designed to give the target nowhere to go. Fett's left gauntlet snapped up and a whipcord shot out from his wrist launcher, arcing toward Palpatine's torso to bind his arms to his sides.
Palpatine didn't even look at it.
A flick of two fingers, almost lazy, almost contemptuous, and the Force gathered into an invisible hand that swatted the snare aside in mid-flight. The cable veered, snapped taut against nothing, and wrapped harmlessly around a mooring stanchion at the platform's edge. The anchor clanged against metal and dangled there, useless.
In the same motion, Palpatine spun the crimson blade into a backhand that caught Fett's follow-up shots and hurled them straight back at the Mandalorian. Jango threw himself sideways, his jetpack coughing fire as he killed his momentum against the side of the Naboo cruiser. Bane ducked behind a cargo loader and kept firing through the gaps.
Qui-Gon used the opening. He drove forward with the surging, leaping aggression of Ataru, his green blade coming in from above in a strike meant to split the Sith from crown to sternum. Palpatine caught it, the sabers locking in a shower of sparks that lit both their faces. For a moment, they stood frozen, blade against blade, the old Master and the older Sith straining against each other while the city howled in the gulf below.
"You cannot win this," Qui-Gon said through gritted teeth. "It's over."
"It is never over, Master Jedi."
He broke the lock with a snarl and a pulse of telekinetic force that flung Qui-Gon backward into Obi-Wan, the two of them tangling and tumbling across the duracrete. Lightning crackled to life around Palpatine's free hand, blue-white and writhing, and he turned, searching for the man who'd dragged him into the light.
Tyson was already moving, though the portal stayed open behind him, the Jedi Council pouring out of it into the open air of the platform.
The Council came through the portal like a tide.
Mace Windu hit the platform first, his purple blade igniting before his boots touched duracrete. Yoda followed in a single leap. Ki-Adi-Mundi, Plo Koon, Kit Fisto, and the rest spilled out behind them, robes snapping in the wind off the city, a dozen blades flaring to life in as many colors.
The Baseless Accusations had done their work. There was no hesitation in them, no demand for evidence, no measured deliberation. The truth he'd handed them now landed in soil already tilled. They saw the red blade, and they did not pause to wonder. They simply moved against the thing holding it.
"Surround him," Windu said. "Do not let him reach an edge."
Palpatine turned in a slow circle, taking the measure of what had become of his day. Twelve Masters. Two Padawans. Two bounty hunters whose reputations were currency across the Outer Rim. And the man who had unmade fifty years of patience in five minutes of chaos. For the first time, something other than fury crossed his ruined face.
Tyson didn't give him time to find another path.
Qui-Gon was still on one knee, one hand pressed to his ribs, Obi-Wan hauling him upright by the shoulder.
Tyson felt that if the Sith slipped this net, there would not be another one. Men like Palpatine did not get caught twice.
He sheathed the phase pistol and pulled the Laser Blade into his off hand, the green Lightsaber burning steady in his right, and he charged.
He came in low and fast, Ataru carrying him across the cracked duracrete in a leaping diagonal slash that forced Palpatine to wheel and parry. The Sith caught it, redirected it, swept the crimson blade toward Tyson's exposed flank. Tyson wasn't there. He'd already converted the momentum into a spinning second strike, the Laser Blade hissing in from the opposite angle, and Palpatine had to break his counter to block it.
For a moment, just a moment, they matched.
It was a strange, terrible kind of beauty, the two of them moving in the eye of the storm while a dozen Jedi closed the ring. Green met red and slid away. Red lashed out and found only the afterimage where a body had been. Tyson fought with the loose, surging aggression of a form built for relentless motion, never planting, never giving the Sith a fixed point to strike, and for a handful of heartbeats Palpatine could do nothing but answer him, blade for blade, deflection for deflection, the contemptuous ease draining out of his movements with every exchange.
Then the others came.
Windu struck first, his purple blade hammering in from the right while Tyson held the Sith's attention. Palpatine twisted to meet it, and Kit Fisto's green saber lashed in from the left, and Yoda was suddenly above him, dropping with a strike that drove the Sith back a full step. There was no longer any rhythm Palpatine could ride. There were only blades, from every angle, faster than even he could turn.
A blaster bolt from Fett's pistol punched into his shoulder. He grunted, the first sound of pain Tyson had heard from him, and his guard dropped a fraction. Tyson's green blade found the gap. It bit into the Sith's chest, not deep, the cauterizing heat searing through layers of cloth and flesh, and Palpatine staggered.
His defenses, the impossible, contemptuous defenses that had held off four melee fighters and two of the deadliest gunmen in the galaxy, finally cracked.
Tyson did not press the obvious advantage. Instead, he let his momentum carry him past the Sith's shoulder, slipping in directly behind him. In the space of a single stride, he sheathed the Laser Blade in favor of the phase pistol.
Palpatine, half-turned toward Windu, never saw it.
The phase bolt took him square in the back. The Sith Lord lurched forward, arms flung wide.
Palpatine's boot caught the edge. His body swayed at the lip of the platform, hunched and shuddering, one hand groping at empty air for a balance the Force could not give him. His head came up. His yellow eyes found Tyson across the smoking duracrete.
Then gravity took him.
He fell without a sound, his black robes flaring like broken wings, and the depths of Coruscant swallowed him. A thousand meters of vertical city, of streaming speeder lanes, opened beneath him and closed over the place where he had been.
Silence fell over the platform, broken only by the distant scream of traffic and the low hum of a dozen lightsabers.
Then, one by one, the blades went dark.
Qui-Gon let out a long breath and sagged against Obi-Wan. Bastila lowered her yellow saber, her arms trembling, the discipline that had held her upright finally allowing itself to shake. Meetra rolled her shoulder and said nothing, but her focus was still on the empty edge of the platform like she had survived too many battles to trust such a quiet ending.
"It's done," Plo Koon said softly. "A Sith Lord. Here. For how long?"
Mace Windu deactivated his blade and clipped it to his belt. "Too long. We will need to examine everything he touched. Every vote. Every appointment."
Tyson holstered the phase pistol, his attention still on the spot where Palpatine had vanished into the bowels of the city. The others were already relaxing.
He knew better.
In a galaxy where a man could shoot lightning from his fingertips and lift a starship with his mind, falling off a building was an inconvenience, not an ending.
Tyson stared at the edge of the platform where Palpatine had gone over. His sensors were already working, the tricorder functions built into the Grey Goo Suit tracking the life sign through the vertical sprawl of Coruscant's levels. The Sith was falling, but not dead. Not yet. Every second that ticked past was another hundred meters of distance.
"We need to go after him," Tyson said. "Right now. He's wounded, he's exposed, and he's getting further away every second."
Meetra stepped into his path. "I understand your desire to take action," she said. "But have you considered the consequences? A cornered Sith Lord, wounded and desperate, in the undercity of the most populated planet in the galaxy. What do you imagine that looks like?"
Tyson bristled. "It was my plan that set up his defeat. The bounty hunters, the portal, the Council seeing it with their own eyes. All of it. I didn't stumble into this."
"No one is questioning your plan. I am questioning what happens after you catch him."
Qui-Gon had managed to get both feet under him, though he was leaning on Obi-Wan more than either of them would have admitted later. His face was grey with exhaustion, his breathing shallow, but his eyes were clear. "Masters," he said, addressing the Council members still gathered on the platform, "what do you suggest we do now?"
The Council had arranged itself in a loose semicircle near the portal, deliberation so deeply ingrained that they'd formed something close to their chamber's seating arrangement without thinking about it. Windu stood at the center, his arms crossed, his expression carved from something harder than the duracrete under their feet.
"You were reckless," Windu said. "You engaged a Sith Lord without Council authorization. You hired bounty hunters. You opened a portal into our chamber without warning or permission. You risked not only your own life but the lives of every person on this platform."
Tyson looked back at him without flinching. "We had a chance to stop him. We had to take it. If he hadn't been exposed, the damage he could have done to the Republic as a senator would be immeasurable. Every committee he sat on, every vote he influenced, every appointment he made. You want to talk about reckless? Letting him keep that seat for another decade would have been reckless."
Windu's jaw tightened, but he didn't respond immediately. The silence that followed was the kind that came from a room full of people who knew the young man was right and resented him for the way he'd proven it.
Yoda planted his cane against the platform and leaned on it with both hands. "Reckless, yes. But wrong, he was not. Blind, we were. Blind for too long. The question before us now, what to do with the Sith who fell, it is."
"He's not dead," Tyson said flatly. "I guarantee it."
"On what basis?" Plo Koon asked.
"On the basis that he held off three Force-users and two of the best bounty hunters in the galaxy. A man like that doesn't die from a fall. He lands somewhere dark and quiet and starts planning his next move."
"Then perhaps the young man and Master Surik should pursue him," Ki-Adi-Mundi suggested. "They know his condition. They have the means to track him. And they have already demonstrated a willingness to act decisively."
Every head on the platform turned toward the Cerean.
Tyson pointed at him. "Now you're just trying to get rid of me because I pointed out your hypocrisy."
Meetra's hand closed on his shoulder. "Hush."
"I am suggesting," Ki-Adi-Mundi continued, unruffled, "that the pursuit of a fleeing Sith Lord requires speed and adaptability. Qualities this Council has never been accused of possessing in excess."
Kit Fisto's mouth twitched. "He has a point."
"Sending two after a wounded Sith is not the same as sending two after a cornered one," Plo Koon said. "If Palpatine reaches the lower levels and finds allies, or simply finds enough space to recover, two pursuers may not be sufficient."
"And sending the full Council into the Coruscant undercity would create a panic that serves no one," Windu said. "We cannot leave the Temple unguarded. Not now. Not when we don't know how deep this corruption runs."
Bastila, who had been standing at Meetra's flank, spoke for the first time. "Master Windu is right about the corruption. If Palpatine had allies in the Senate, he almost certainly had allies elsewhere. Pursuing him is necessary, but so is securing what he left behind. His offices. His records. His contacts."
Yoda nodded slowly. "Three tasks, there are. Pursue the Sith, we must. But also, unravel his web, we must. And protect Queen Amidala, we must. Wait, none can."
"Then split the effort," Qui-Gon said. He had straightened slightly, color returning to his face, though his hand still pressed against his ribs. "Send Tyson and Master Surik after Palpatine. They're fresh enough, and the boy's tracking equipment gives them an edge none of us have. The rest of the Council secures his Senate offices and begins the investigation. Obi-Wan and I will go with the Queen."
"Fresh enough," Obi-Wan murmured beside him, glancing at Tyson and Meetra. Neither of them looked particularly fresh.
"Master Qui-Gon requires rest," Ki-Adi-Mundi said. "As does his Padawan. They fought well, but they are spent."
Qui-Gon opened his mouth to argue, but settled back against his Padawan's shoulder and said nothing. Ki-Adi-Mundi, however, was not finished. "The Queen needs protection, but she does not need a pursuit team. She needs defenders. Send Knights Surik and Shan with her to Naboo. If the Trade Federation truly attacks, Knight Shan's Battle Meditation will make a difference that no number of additional sabers can replicate." Bastila said nothing, but the shift in her posture said she'd heard and that she agreed. Mundi turned toward Tyson. "Young Tyson has professed to have killed Darth Revan. Darth Malak. Darth Sion." He let each name land with its full weight, three impossible claims stacked like stones on a scale. "Surely he can defeat another Sith Lord who is already gravely injured and falling through the lower levels."
Windu's arms uncrossed. "You cannot be serious."
"He was tested by this Council," Plo Koon said. "We know he is strong in the force, but we have no solid proof for those claims."
"We have the testimony of two Knights who traveled with him," Mundi replied, inclining his head toward Meetra and Bastila. "And we have what we just witnessed with our own eyes. He engaged Palpatine in single combat and held. He created the opening that broke the Sith's guard. He put the bolt in his back. I am not suggesting we trust him blindly. I am suggesting we trust what he has already done."
"Sending one person after a Sith Lord is not a plan," Windu said. "It is a death sentence."
"Sending a full team delays the pursuit by hours we do not have," Mundi countered. "And strips resources from the tasks Master Yoda has already identified. The boy claims tracking equipment that none of us possesses. And he has already demonstrated that he is willing to do what needs to be done without waiting for permission. That last quality is, I suspect, precisely why you dislike him, Master Windu. But it is also why he is suited to this."
Kit Fisto looked between them. "He makes a compelling argument."
"He makes a reckless one," Windu replied.
"I'll do it." They turned toward Tyson who stood at the edge of the semicircle. "I'll go alone. Track him down. Finish it."
"Tyson," Meetra said. There was a warning in it.
He looked at her, then back at the Council. "Let's be honest with each other for once. None of you wanted me to be a Jedi. Not really. I showed up out of nowhere with a story that sounds like a lie, powers you can't explain, and a habit of doing things my own way. I've been a problem since before I walked into your Temple." He spread his hands. "So let me be useful. If I succeed, there's one less Sith Lord in the galaxy. If I fail..." He shrugged. "Then I'm not your problem anymore."
Yoda's ears flattened. He stared at Tyson for a long time, and whatever he saw in the young man's face made him close his eyes. "Speak so lightly of your own death, you should not."
"I'm not speaking lightly about anything," Tyson said. "I'm being practical. You need your Knights for Naboo. You need your Masters for the investigation. And you need someone crazy enough to chase a Sith Lord into the guts of Coruscant alone." He tapped his chest. "I'm right here."
Meetra stepped forward. "This is foolish. You fought well today, but Palpatine is not Sion. Sion was broken. Palpatine wants to live, and a Sith who wants to live is the most dangerous thing in the galaxy. You go down there alone, and he will use everything against you. You will not get a clean fight."
"I know."
"Then you know you could die."
He looked at her. "Master Surik. I know."
She looked at him for three long seconds. It was him calling her Master that did it. Her jaw tightened, and she stepped back.
"The Council should consider that delay serves the Sith more than it serves us," Bastila said, "Every minute we deliberate, Palpatine moves further from our reach. If Tyson is willing and able, the strategic calculation favors action."
Windu looked at Yoda. Yoda looked at Mundi. Mundi looked at no one in particular, because he had already said what he intended to say and saw no reason to repeat himself.
"Agree to this, the Council does not," Yoda said slowly. "But prevent it, we cannot. A Jedi, young Tyson is not. Bound by our decisions, he is not. Go, he will. Whether we wish it or not."
"That's the spirit," Tyson said.
Windu's expression could have etched glass.
"I can see your hubris has decided for you. It is a dangerous trait." Plo Koon paused, studying Tyson through the lenses of his antiox mask. "But one that may serve you well in the trials ahead." He turned to walk back toward the other Council members, then stopped. Over his shoulder, almost as an afterthought, he added, "Remember this lesson. Not every opportunity is the Will of the Force."
Tyson bowed his head. The sardonic edge left his face for a moment, replaced by something that might have been genuine. "I understand. And I will mind my actions in the future." He straightened and looked at the Council one last time. "Masters. May the Force be with you."
Yoda's ears shifted. He said nothing, but he followed Tyson as the young man turned away from the semicircle.
Tyson stopped in front of Meetra. She stood with her arms crossed. He put a hand on her shoulder. "I won't waste your Ataru lesson. I'll see you on Naboo."
"You had better," she said quietly. "Because if you die in a sewer chasing a politician, I will be furious with you. A padawan for an hour and you're already disobeying."
He grinned. Then he turned to Bastila.
She had that particular look she got when she disapproved. Her lips were pressed into a thin line. Her posture was immaculate.
"Thanks for the vote of confidence." Tyson winked at her.
Color flooded Bastila's face. Her mouth opened, then closed. "That is entirely inappropriate given the circ—"
He was already running. Tyson subvocalized, "Vicky, get the Iconic Interceptor here. Keep a sensor lock on Palpatine."
Three strides took him to the edge of the platform. He didn't slow down. He didn't look back. Planting one foot on the lip, Tyson launched himself off, the wind swallowing him whole as he dropped into the vertical maze of speeder lanes that stretched a thousand levels below.
Obi-Wan stared at the empty edge. "Did he just..."
"Yes," Qui-Gon said wearily.
Kit Fisto stared after him with something between admiration and disbelief. "He is either very brave or very stupid."
"In my experience," Qui-Gon said, lowering himself carefully onto a cargo crate and pressing both hands against his ribs, "the two are rarely distinguishable until after the funeral."
Meetra had not moved. She stood where Tyson had left her, staring at the platform's edge, her arms still crossed. Bastila stepped up beside her, the flush still visible on her cheeks.
"He'll survive," Bastila said.
Meetra said nothing for a long moment. Then, very quietly added, "He'd better."