*Oh stars, oh stars, oh kriffing STARS!* His mind shrieked, a raw counterpoint to the silence of the deactivated sabers. Inside the mask, his breath came in ragged, panicked gasps that echoed terrifyingly loud in the cramped metal darkness. *Vader! I just kicked VADER in the chest!* The sheer, galaxy-shattering insanity of it hit him like a speeder bike collision. He was blind, scrambling backwards on hands and knees, the rough durasteel scraping against Revan's durasteel-plated gloves. *He saw the belt! He knows I targeted it! He'll tear the Temple apart beam by beam to find me!* The utility droid, miraculously functional, zipped silently into the shaft behind him, its photoreceptor casting a dim, amber pool of light that only deepened the surrounding shadows. *Calm down! Breathe! But Anakin/Vader is RIGHT THERE! That purple parry was pure luck! Pure KOTOR panic-button muscle memory! Next time he won't hesitate, he'll just crush me like a bug!* The air tasted of dust, ozone, and his own rising terror. Every scrape of his armor against the conduit walls sounded like a klaxon announcing his position.
*Focus! FOCUS!* He mentally screamed at himself, forcing the borrowed reflexes of Revan's tactical genius to override the gibbering civilian. *The belt distraction worked. Barely. Ventilation shafts. Escape. The Padawan.* The thought of the Twi'lek froze his scrambling limbs for a second. She was ahead, somewhere in this warren. Alone. *Move!* He pushed forward with renewed, if shaky, purpose, crawling deeper into the suffocating dark. The droid's light illuminated grime-covered walls and the occasional startled slicer beetle scurrying away. Distant sounds filtered through the metal – the muffled roar of Anakin's fury, the sharper cracks of blaster fire echoing strangely. *He's tearing the annex apart,* he realized, cold dread pooling in his gut. *Looking for the vent entrance.* The shaft trembled faintly, dust sifting down onto his helmet. *He's using the Force. Probing.* He froze again, pressing himself flat against the cold durasteel. *Don't think. Don't feel. Be stone. Empty.* Revan's stealth protocols flooded his mind – ancient Sith techniques for vanishing even from Force senses. He visualized himself dissolving into the shadows, becoming one with the dust and stale air. His racing heartbeat felt impossibly loud. The shaft trembled again, harder. A tortured scream of rending metal echoed faintly from behind – Skywalker ripping open the wall where the vent entrance had been. *He's close. Too close.* Sweat trickled down his temple inside the mask. The droid dimmed its light to near invisibility. *Hold. Just hold.*
His comm bead crackled abruptly, a burst of static so jarring in the silence he nearly ignited his saber. Then, a voice, strained and terrified, whisper-shouted through the encrypted channel: "*Master!* Are you... are you alive? I found... I found others! Five Initiates! We're trapped! Sector Blue-Nine! Storage sub-level! Clones... they're... they're *checking bodies*!" It was the Twi'lek Padawan. Her voice cracked with barely contained hysteria. Relief warred instantly with crushing dread. *Alive! She's alive! But Blue-Nine... deep in the Temple... near the creche wing.* The storage sub-levels were a maze of hazardous materials and dead ends. Hope shriveled. Skywalker's fury pulsed through the durasteel like a drumbeat. Going deeper into the Temple was suicide. Going *towards* trapped younglings, with Anakin hunting him? Utter madness. Revan's borrowed instincts screamed tactical withdrawal – escape the shaft, vanish into Coruscant's undercity. Survival first. But the image formed unbidden: tiny figures huddled in the dark, listening to boots step closer, closer... just like the Padawan had listened to *his* approach. *No.* The refusal was primal, his own, not Revan's. It tasted like rust and ozone inside the mask. He thumbed his comm, his modulated voice a low growl into the bead. "Hold position. Silence absolute. I... move." The shaft trembled violently. Skywalker was escalating his search. Time bled away.
The utility droid, scanning frantically, projected a flickering, miniature holomap onto the grimy shaft wall ahead. It highlighted a pulsing dot – Blue-Nine – and traced a convoluted, precarious route through ventilation arteries, maintenance crawlspaces, and a partially collapsed access tunnel. Kilometers of suffocating darkness lay between him and the trapped Initiates. Worse, the route skirted perilously close to active combat zones marked in pulsing red. *Impossible.* The analytical part of his mind hissed. *Even if you reach them unseen, extracting civilians through this chaos? Against clones... against Skywalker?* Revan's tactical archives offered grim probabilities: 0.8% success chance. Suicide. Yet... *Purple.* The violet blade hummed silently on his belt, a physical anchor to the impossibility already lived. He'd wielded it. He'd defied Skywalker. He'd spared the Padawan. This wasn't Revan's legend anymore. It was *his* choice. His burden. He crawled forward, movements deliberate, silent. The droid extinguished its map, plunging them back into near-total darkness save for its dimmed photoreceptor. Every scrape of armor, every rasp of breath inside the mask, felt like a beacon. Below, the rending metal stopped abruptly. An unnerving, focused silence followed. Skywalker had ceased tearing open walls. He was *listening*. Hunting. The Force felt like poisoned honey clinging to the shaft walls.
He navigated a sharp junction, relying solely on the droid's whispered directions and Revan's ingrained spatial awareness. The stale air thickened, laced with the acrid tang of melted plastoid and... ionized decay. Death. Sounds grew clearer: distant blaster volleys, the rhythmic thump of heavy repeater cannons, screams abruptly cut short. He was nearing a combat corridor adjacent to the creche wing. The map indicated a small service hatch ahead, offering a brief glimpse onto the main concourse before plunging back into ducts. He approached it cautiously, inch by silent inch. Peering through the grimy vent slats felt like staring into a Sith holocron. Below, bathed in the harsh glare of emergency lighting, clones moved with chilling efficiency. They weren't just hunting Jedi; they were *processing* the fallen. Squads moved methodically from body to crumpled body, administering precise bolts to the heads of any Jedi showing the slightest twitch or groan. No prisoners. No mercy. Order 66 in its sterile, horrifying execution. Revan froze, nausea warring with cold fury. Then, he saw *it*. Lying discarded against a scorched pillar, half-hidden beneath a fallen Knight's robe: a small, brightly colored plush tooka doll. Creche property. Dropped in flight. Its innocent glass eyes stared blankly upwards, reflecting the emergency lights like tiny stars. Something inside him fractured. This wasn't history anymore. It was slaughter. The violet saber vibrated faintly against his hip, humming a silent promise. He tore his gaze away. *Move! Blue-Nine!*
The service hatch groaned softly as he pushed it open just enough to slide through, landing silently in a shadowed alcove thick with the scent of burnt wiring. The concourse stretched before him, littered with debris and bodies. Clones worked methodically fifty meters away. The map indicated a narrow service corridor branching off to the left – the start of the hazardous descent to Blue-Nine. He gestured sharply for the droid to scout ahead. It zipped silently into the side corridor, its photoreceptor scanning. A microsecond later, it shot back, emitting a frantic, staticky whisper: "Hostile patrol! Two squads converging! Distance: thirty meters!" He flattened himself against cold durasteel, the violet saber's emitter cold beneath his fingers. Bootsteps echoed – sharp, rhythmic, advancing. The clones were sweeping systematically. He felt their approach vibrating through the floor, timed to the pounding of his own heart.
A stray blaster bolt ricocheted off a shattered console nearby. Sparks rained down. One clone pointed towards the alcove. "Contact possible! Sector sweep!" Rifles snapped up, targeting sensors painting the shadows where he stood. Time compressed. He saw the route to Blue-Nine vanishing behind a wall of white plastoid. The droid whirred desperately. Revan's reflexes screamed *engage*. His own screamed *hide*. Then, a thunderous explosion rocked the far end of the concourse – a collapsing walkway. Dust billowed. Clones shouted, pivoting towards the new threat. Distraction. Gift from chaos. He didn't hesitate. He flowed sideways into the service corridor like smoke, the droid darting after him. They vanished into pitch-blackness just as the patrol leader barked, "Alcove clear! Move to blast site!"
The descent was a nightmare of cramped crawlspaces and crumbling infrastructure. Gravity conduits hummed dangerously close overhead. Twice, the floor groaned ominously under Revan's weight. He followed the droid's urgent whispers, navigating by touch and the faint amber light. The air grew thicker, colder, saturated with the metallic tang of fear radiating from Blue-Nine. He felt them now – five pinpricks of terrified light huddled together in the Force, muffled by durasteel and despair. Below, the sounds of methodical searching grew louder: boots on grating, the clatter of equipment knocked aside. Clones were clearing storage pods. Sector Blue-Nine was next. He reached a final access panel above their hiding place. Peering through a crack, he saw flickering emergency strips illuminating stacked crates. Five small shapes pressed against a far wall, the Twi'lek Padawan shielding them, her green saber unlit but clutched white-knuckled. A clone voice echoed, unnervingly close: "Unit Gamma, proceed to Sub-Level Blue-Nine. Verify termination protocols."
He dropped silently into the dim light, landing in a crouch between stacked durasteel containers. The Padawan gasped, her eyes wide with desperate hope. The Initiates flinched, small faces pale with terror. He raised a black-gloved hand, palm out – *silence*. Bootsteps approached the sealed pod door. Hydraulics hissed as locks disengaged. The violet saber ignited with a resonant *snap-hiss*, casting long, defiant shadows across the younglings' faces. The crimson blade followed, bathing the cramped space in hellish light. He stepped forward, positioning himself squarely before the heavy door as it groaned open.
White helmets appeared in the widening gap, rifles sweeping inward. "Contact!" one barked, visors locking onto the twin blades. They hesitated, stunned by the impossible silhouette – Mandalorian mask, Sith crimson, and Jedi violet blazing in the gloom. That heartbeat cost them. Revan surged forward, violet blade intercepting the first volley, scattering bolts into ceiling conduits. Crimson fury arced low, severing legs at the knee. Screams filled the pod as clones crumpled. He waded into the threshold, sabers whirling, blocking the doorway with his armored bulk.
More shouts echoed outside. Reinforcements converging. The Padawan ignited her green blade beside him, trembling but resolute. He spared a glance backward – the younglings cowering behind crates, one clutching the recovered tooka doll. Acidic fumes from melted plastoid stung his throat inside the mask. He slammed his armored fist against the door control panel, sparks flying. The heavy durasteel slid shut, trapping incinerated limbs inside. Hydraulics shrieked in protest as he jammed the mechanism with his crimson saber's superheated tip. Sealed. For now.
Outside, fists hammered against metal. Cutting torches whined against durasteel. He turned, twin blades illuminating five pairs of terrified eyes. The droid projected a shuddering holomap – escape routes pulsed red with converging hostiles. Only one path glimmered faintly clear: a condemned waste chute marked "structural instability." He pointed his violet saber tip toward its pulsing symbol on the flickering map. His modulated voice cut through the pounding chaos: "Follow the droid. Move *now*." The Padawan nodded, shepherding the Initiates toward the rear hatch as molten droplets hissed from the crimson blade jammed in the door controls. Time bled faster than durasteel melted.
The door screeched. A glowing orange line burned across its surface. Troopers were cutting through. He reached out with the Force, not as Revan might – a crushing wave – but with desperate precision borrowed from the chaos within. He visualized the door itself, felt its durasteel tendons, its hydraulic locks straining against his saber's molten weld. He poured borrowed power into that fracture point, amplifying the structural stress until the metal screamed. With a psychic shove more akin to focused demolition than Sith sorcery, he *twisted*. The durasteel buckled violently inward where the torch cut met the sabotaged hydraulics. Pinched between the sabered slag and his Force-shove, the entire panel crumpled like flimsi, trapping the cutting torches and the troopers operating them in a jagged embrace of collapsing metal. Muffled screams were abruptly silenced beneath tons of twisted durasteel. The hole sealed itself in a tomb of his making. Acrid smoke poured through fresh seams.
Silence returned, thick with ozone and horror. The waste chute hatch groaned open at the Padawan's trembling command. Dank, frigid air smelling of decay and stagnant water rushed in. The Initiates whimpered, clinging to the Twi'lek's robes. His borrowed senses prickled – a cold, focused fury probing the Force nearby, ignoring the carnage, searching... *searching for him*. Skywalker. Hunting the violet echo. He deactivated the crimson saber, plunging half the pod into gloom lit only by the violet blade's defiant hum. He gestured sharply toward the chute's yawning darkness. "Go. Do not stop. Do not look back." The Padawan hesitated, her green eyes meeting his mask's impassive gaze. Gratitude warred with terror. She pushed the first Initiate into the icy blackness. The droid zipped in ahead, its amber light swallowed by the depths.
He waited until the last small form vanished down the chute. The violet saber remained ignited, a solitary beacon in the suffocating gloom, casting long, dancing shadows across the sealed tomb of durasteel and the jammed crimson saber hilt. Distant boots pounded closer – reinforcements bypassing the wrecked door. Above, the durasteel ceiling groaned under sudden, immense pressure. Skywalker knew he was here. Revan stepped backward toward the chute's freezing maw, violet blade held high like a final, solitary defiance. The Force screamed a warning as unseen power gathered overhead, preparing to peel the storage pod open like a rotten fruit. He dropped into the darkness just as the ceiling above him buckled inward with the shriek of tortured metal.
Freefall. Cold, damp air rushed past Revan's mask. Below, only the droid's faint amber light shimmered on rushing black water far beneath the chute. Above, silhouetted against the jagged hole of light torn from the pod's ceiling, stood Anakin Skywalker. Molten gold eyes burned through the gloom, locking onto the falling armored figure. Skywalker's hand snapped out, fingers rigid with hate. Blue-white lightning, raw and untamed, erupted from his fingertips like a living thing – a torrent of pure annihilation aimed unerringly at Revan's plummeting form. It illuminated the slick, waste-strewn chute walls in strobing flashes, casting Anakin's snarling face in sharp relief.
Instincts older than the Temple flooded Revan. He twisted mid-air, violet saber whipping upward in a desperate, spiraling defense. The lightning crashed against the violet plasma not with a crackle, but a deafening *roar* – a physical impact that slammed him downward faster. Pain screamed through the gauntlets despite the armor's insulation; ozone scorched his respirator filters. He poured borrowed will into the blade, the violet light flaring blindingly bright as it *absorbed*, *redirected*, forcing the searing energy into a sizzling halo around him. Molten droplets of conduit lining rained down from the chute walls where stray forks of discharged lightning struck.
The violet blade trembled violently, threatening to shatter under Skywalker's sustained onslaught. The dark water rushed closer, a freezing grave. Revan pushed harder, feeling Revan's ancient shields fraying under the assault of Skywalker's newborn, monstrous power. He couldn't hold. He didn't try. Instead, he *channeled*. Drawing the searing energy coursing around his blade deep into himself, he aimed not upward at Skywalker, but downward. With a guttural shout amplified by the mask, he unleashed the redirected lightning *beneath* him – a focused, blue-white spear stabbing into the churning water far below. Steam exploded upward in a scalding geyser. The impact blasted Revan sideways away from the killing lightning beam, slamming him hard against the chute wall. He hit slick durasteel, bounced, and plunged into the shockingly cold, steam-choked water just as Skywalker's furious lightning ceased, leaving only echoing thunder and the fading silhouette above.