The silence on the rycrit hill was gone, replaced by a city screaming.
Kaito moved through Theed's burning outskirts like a shadow through fire. The distant, rhythmic thud of heavy artillery had replaced birdsong. The cloying scent of blooming lumiblooms was now buried under acrid smoke, ozone, and the coppery tang of spilled life. His head was a ball of throbbing agony, each heartbeat a fresh hammer blow against the crack in his skull from his failed shunpo. The scaffold of Naboo's Living Force trembled around his soul, strained by the planetary trauma.
He followed the tributaries of misery.
Where civilians fled in panicked streams, he went against the current. Where the droid patrols were thickest, he found the collection points: walled courtyards, public squares, and finally, the broad plaza before the Theed Royal Palace. Not to liberate it, but because the logic was inescapable. The invaders would centralize control. The ones giving orders would be inside. The orders would include manifests, destinations.
The palace was a fortress under siege, but the siege was internal. Its beautiful spires were choked with smoke from internal fires. The main gates were a choke-point of chaos, not with invaders forcing their way in, but with a furious knot of battle droids firing inward, trapping someone inside.
From his perch on a scorched gallery roof, Kaito saw them.
Two men in simple tunics, moving with a fluid, impossible grace. Their weapons were blades of pure, solidified light, one green, one blue, that spun and flashed, deflecting a storm of red blaster bolts back at their source. They were covering the retreat of a group of young women in simple, sturdy gowns, one of whom carried herself with a regal tension that belied her handmaiden's disguise.
They weren't trying to take the palace. They were trying to get out.
Kaito's eyes narrowed, his analytical mind pushing past the pain. These were the warriors with the green blade he had seen before, the luminous torrent in the Force. They were powerful. They were also trapped. The droid cordon at the side entrance was too dense for even their skill to break without devastating loss.
His goal lay behind that cordon. The command center. The data.
Their problem was his solution.
He didn't descend to join them. He became a variable from an unexpected angle. Sliding down a drainpipe, he emerged in a narrow service alley behind the droid platoon. They were focused entirely on the Jedi and the fleeing queen, their backs to the city's chaos.
Kaito didn't charge. He walked.
His asauchi left its sheath with a soft, metallic sigh. The first droid, a B1 model, jerked as the blade passed through its mid-section. It didn't explode; it simply came apart in two clean halves, sparking briefly before going dark. The second turned, its photoreceptor whirring. "Hey!" The word died as Kaito's blade, in a short, upward flick, severed its head from its neck assembly.
He moved down their line, a silent reaper in the droid's blind spot. He didn't fight them; he dismantled them. A leg severed at the joint. An arm holding a blaster cut cleanly away. A diagonal strike through the central torso. It was methodical, efficient, and utterly silent compared to the cacophony of blaster fire.
The cordon's integrity broke. Confusion rippled through their ranks. The press of fire against the Jedi slackened.
It was the opening the warriors needed. Kaito saw the green blade flash in a wide arc, clearing a path. The group surged forward, bursting through the compromised line. They were out.
Kaito didn't watch them go. He slipped through the gap he'd created and into the shadowed grandeur of the palace.
---
Inside was bedlam. Alarms wailed. The sound of distant blaster fire echoed through marble halls. Kaito moved with a predator's focus, following the trails of scorched marble and fallen droids, the signs of the warriors' passage. They were a spearhead, and he was a shadow clinging to its shaft, using the chaos they created to penetrate deeper.
He almost collided with them at a four-way junction. The taller one with the green blade, his presence a calm, deep well in the raging Force, was dispatching the last of a patrol. Their eyes met over the sparking wreckage.
The man's gaze was like a physical pressure. It didn't just see Kaito's black robes and sword; it seemed to brush against the ragged edges of his soul, the makeshift scaffold, the deep, cold poison in his arm. Kaito felt seen, not in the way Lena saw a lost patient, but in the way a healer sees a wound, its nature, its depth, its danger.
The Jedi said nothing. He gave a slight, acknowledging nod, his eyes holding a question he did not voice. Then he turned, gesturing to his companion and the handmaidens. "This way! To the hangar!"
Their paths diverged. They went left, toward the sound of ship engines. Kaito went straight, following a thicker concentration of communication cabling laid hastily along the floor, toward the heart of the beast.
He found the command center in a vaulted chamber that had once been a botanical atrium. Now, it was a nest of humming holoprojectors and tactical displays. Several Neimoidians in rich robes cowered behind a console. The Viceroy, a taller one with a face like a worried prune, was barking into a comm.
"—confirm the Zygerrian Barge is loaded! It leaves at nightfall, no delays! Is the Eastvale youth consignment aboard? Good. The extra premium for 'unspoiled primitives' had better be worth it. Have it break orbit the moment the Queen's ship is pursued. Let the Jedi chase shadows; the profits will already be on their way to Ord Mantell!"
The words drilled into Kaito's brain, colder and sharper than any blade.
Eastvale.
Youth consignment.
Aboard.
Ord Mantell.
The Viceroy's words were a map to a specific hell.
Kaito didn't attack the cowering officials. He moved to the main holocomm console. His asauchi descended once, twice, cutting through the housing. He reached into the sparking guts, his fingers closing around a warm data crystal chip. He yanked it free.
As he turned, the green-bladed warrior was there, standing in the shattered doorway. His companion was covering the corridor behind him.
"You seek something more than escape," the Jedi said, his voice deep and measured.
Kaito held up the data chip. Its glow reflected in his eyes. "They took a child. To a ship. To Ord Mantell."
The Jedi's gaze softened minutely. He saw it now, the driving force behind the silent, brutal efficiency. It wasn't vengeance. It was retrieval. A singular, personal crusade etched in spiritual scar tissue.
"Our path leads out," the Jedi said, gesturing back the way he came. "Yours may as well, for now. The north hangar still holds ships."
He didn't wait for a response. He faded back into the corridor, a beacon of calm retreating into the storm. Kaito followed, not as a follower, but as a fellow creature using the same escape route.
---
The north hangar was a scene of desperate haste. A sleek, chrome starship, a royal Naboo vessel, was being prepped, its engines whining to life. The handmaidens and several guards were boarding, firing covering shots at the droid squads pouring in from service tunnels.
The Jedi were a whirlwind at the foot of the ramp, their lightsabers creating a zone of impossible defense. Kaito joined that zone not for them, but because the ship represented mobility. It was the only vector off this planet, toward the fading trail on the data chip.
He fought beside them, his style a stark contrast. Where their lightsabers were shields and deflections, his asauchi was pure, undefended offense. He didn't block blaster bolts; he moved inside their trajectories, his blade cutting the droids that fired them. He was a dark echo to their luminous dance, just as effective, twice as terrifying to the Naboo guards who saw him work.
As the last droid before the ramp fell, the queen, the real one, Kaito realized, seeing the authority in her eyes despite the soot on her face, paused before boarding. She looked from the Jedi to Kaito.
"You fight for your own reasons," she said, her voice clear over the engine whine. "But you have fought for us. Come with us. The Senate will hear of this. You can have justice."
Kaito looked past her, at the hangar. His eyes landed on a pair of small, agile patrol speeders, the kind that sat one pilot and a gunner, sleek and built for speed. A plan, brutal and simple, crystallized.
"Justice is a debate in a distant city," he said, his voice rough. "A child is a fact on a departing ship. I need that." He pointed to the nearest speeder. "And someone who can make it fly. To the Eastvale depot. Now."
The Queen stared at him, taken aback by the refusal and the specific demand. She saw the absolute, unshakeable focus in his eyes. This was not a negotiation. It was a statement of need.
She turned to her head of security, a hardened man with a grim face. "Captain Panaka. Give him the speeder. Assign your best pilot. Clear him a path to the eastern sector. That is the debt we pay."
Panaka didn't hesitate. He barked an order. A guard, older, with a weathered face and calm eyes, named Roren, broke from the defensive line. "With me, sir."
Kaito followed him at a run. Roren didn't ask questions. He slid into the pilot's seat of the speeder, a sleek N-1 auxiliary craft with a distinctive red fuselage. Kaito climbed into the rear gunner's seat, facing backward.
"Hold on!" Roren shouted, and the speeder lifted with a throaty repulsor whine. He shot them toward a secondary hangar door, blasting it open with the speeder's light laser cannon.
Then they were out, in the smoke-choked Naboo sky.
---
The flight was a gut-churning ballet of violence. Roren was a master. He weaved through dogfights between N-1 starfighters and droid tri-fighters, dove into canyon streets to avoid anti-aircraft fire, and used the city's spires as cover. Kaito watched, his analytical mind absorbing every move. The way Roren thumbed the repulsor lift controls to bounce over obstacles. The way he banked, using momentum rather than just thrust. The touch on the steering yoke that was more suggestion than force.
Kaito didn't touch the rear blaster. His world narrowed to the view ahead, the map on the speeder's nav-display Roren had pulled up, and the burning need in his chest.
"Eastvale depot!" Roren yelled, pulling a hard turn that slammed Kaito against his restraints. Below, a sprawling, fortified complex of Naboo architecture, now defiled by droid patrols and landing pads. One pad was empty, scorch marks indicating a recent, hurried departure.
The Zygerrian Barge was gone.
Roren brought the speeder down in a screaming, offensive landing, skidding across the main courtyard, scattering droids. "I'll hold this courtyard! Find your people!"
Kaito was already moving, leaping from the speeder before it fully settled. He hit the ground running. The depot was still active. Droids marched lines of dazed, traumatized adults from holding pens toward larger transports. He cut through them, a black scythe. He didn't duel. He erased. He moved with a speed that was entirely physical, born of desperation and a body pushed beyond its limits. He shattered the lock on the main pen's door with a kick.
Inside, he found them.
Tef was using his own body as a shield, holding back two B1 droids trying to separate a group. Lena was behind him, her face bloody but fierce, holding a piece of broken pipe. They were the last ones.
"Kaito!" Lena's scream was equal parts relief and anguish.
He crossed the distance in a heartbeat. Two flashes of his blade, and the droids became scrap. He caught Tef as the big man stumbled, the fight leaving him.
"You came," Tef gasped, gripping his arm with crushing strength.
"Mara?" Kaito asked, the single word feeling like glass in his throat.
Lena's face collapsed. She pointed a trembling finger toward the empty landing pad, visible through a high window. "They took her. An hour ago, maybe more. A different ship. For the… the young ones." She began to sob, deep, wrenching sounds. "She fought them. She was so brave. They called her 'prime stock.'"
Tef pulled a small, soft shape from his pocket. It was Loola, Mara's tooka doll, one button eye missing, the fabric stained with dirt and a single, dark droplet. "She dropped this."
Kaito took the doll. It was impossibly light. He fumbled the data chip into the console by the door. The screen flickered, displaying the official manifest.
Consignment ZYG-778-B.
Cargo: High-Viability Youth (Lot 17).
Contents: 12 units. Species Mix.
Departure: 18:30 Local.
Destination: Ord Mantell (Primary Auction House).
A footnote next to Lot 17: "Notable: One Human female, 12, high-spirited. Prime Zygerrian auction material. Recommend fast-track to VIP block."
The time stamp glowed: 45 minutes ago.
The math was a cold, final weight settling in his gut. Forty-five minutes. The failed flash-step at the farm. The stumble through the city. The fight through the palace. The flight here. A cascade of delays, each one a consequence of his broken power, his unfamiliar flesh, his weakness.
A single, clean shunpo, a technique as basic as breathing to the man he had been, would have collapsed all that time. He would have been here before the ship left. He would have stopped it.
His power was broken. The cost was Mara.
He didn't feel rage. He felt a hollowing cold, so absolute it burned. The doll in his hand was the only point of warmth in a suddenly frozen universe.
Outside, the sound of blaster fire intensified. Roren was holding, but barely. Kaito looked from the broken parents to the data on the screen. Ord Mantell. Zygerrian Auction. The path forward was the only thing left in the world that had any shape.
He handed Loola gently back to Lena. "Get to the speeder. The pilot will get you to safety."
"What will you do?" Tef asked, his voice raw.
Kaito looked at the empty landing pad, then up through the shattered roof at the emerging stars. One of those points of light was a ship, growing colder and more distant with every second.
"I will follow," he said, exhausted and aching, but determined. The words were not a promise of hope. They were a statement of fact, as cold and hard as the void between worlds. "No matter how far."
He walked out of the pen, past the grieving parents, toward the courtyard where Roren fought a losing battle. The galaxy was no longer a place he was stranded in. It was a hunting ground. The hunt began now.