11 | PLAN B

Anakin and Tara were secretly married thereafter the battle at the arena. They lived together in Naboo, by the grace of Padme, for a while until their services as Jedi were needed again when Chancellor Palestine was kidnapped.

War! The Republic is crumbling under attacks by the ruthless Sith Lord, Count Dooku. There are heroes on both sides. Evil is everywhere. In a stunning move, the fiendish droid leader, General Grievous, has swept into the Republic capital and kidnapped Chancellor Palpatine, leader of the Galactic Senate. As the Separatist Droid Army attempts to flee the besieged capital with their valuable hostage, two Jedi Knights lead a desperate mission to rescue the captive Chancellor....

Anakin and Tara were racing during the Republic Attack. R2 was in Anakin's ship squealing noisily out of fear from how fast Anakin was going. Tara looked over at him from her own starfighter and shot him a daring look. "You're not going to win!" Anakin chuckled into their comms.

Tara rolled her eyes. "That sounded like a bet." Tara snickered.

She sped her ship up to maximum velocity and zoomed right past him. She managed to get to the Republic's Attack Cruiser before Anakin did. "This is not a time to be fooling around!" Obi Wan shouted as he caught up with Tara and Anakin in his own ship.

"We're fine." Tara brushed him off with a light laugh. All three of them breezed past the enemy ships, laser beams and explosives.

"Master, General Grievous's ship is directly ahead the one crawling with vulture droids." Anakin pointed out to Obi Wan.

"Oh, I see it. Oh, this is going to be easy." Obi Wan sarcastically mentioned.

Tara looked over and saw the ship covered in those horrible droids. They were so difficult to kill and obnoxious to have around. The droids noticed their ships coming toward them and began flying toward them to attack. "This is where the fun begins, T." Anakin smiled over at her through his windshield.

She sighed, then saw their own allies line up in formation behind them. "Let them pass between us." Obi Wan instructed Tara and Anakin, and they moved their ships over.

"They're all over me. Get them off my-" One of the other pilots began speaking as he flew ahead and the vulture droids attacked his ship. But his communicator was cut off as he was speaking.

"I'm gonna go help them out." Anakin grew worried that the others were getting killed so that he, Tara and Obi Wan could get to the main ship.

"No. They are doing their job so we can do ours." Obi Wan reminded him.

"Missiles. Pull up!" Anakin barked at Obi and Tara.

"They overshot us." Obi Wan shouted into the comm.

"They're coming around." Anakin notified the two. Tara maneuvered her ship to be a bit high up than Obi Wan's and Anakin's.

She saw two missiles tailing her and began spinning her ship so that the missiles would twirl around as they tracked her. Eventually, the missiles twirled too closely and hit each other.

"I'm hit! Get to the command ship. Get the chancellor. I'm running out of tricks here." Obi Wan commanded Tara and Anakin.

"The general's command ship is dead ahead." Anakin informed Tara.

"Have you noticed the shields are still up?" Tara groaned.

"Sorry, Tara." He quickly flew ahead to blast the side of the ship to take down the shields so that they could land in the hangar. The door to the hangar instantly began to shut.

"I have a bad feeling about this." Tara muttered to herself. But, pushed her ship to move as fast as it could. Anakin made it into the hangar easily while Tara barely scraped into the building as the door almost shut on her ship.

Their Landing was abrupt and rough, but the moment they opened up their cockpits they jumped out with their lightsabers in hand ready to fight the enemies inside. Tara took out the majority of the enemy droids in one swipe while Anakin took care of the few others in a breezy motion. "R2, locate the chancellor!" Tara ordered him.

Anakin walked over to Tara and wrapped his arms around her while R2 locates Palpatine. "You think Obi Wan knows?" Anakin asked about them two.

"I hope not." Tara began to fret.

"He was barely hit and left us to complete the mission on our own? It seems fishy to me." Anakin shook his head.

"Even if he did know, he wouldn't tell. He had fallen in love before, too." Tara reminded Anakin.

Anakin smiled down at her and planted a sweet kiss on her lips, taking in her scent so carefully. Tara broke the kiss and walked over to R2 to see where the Chancellor was. "The chancellor's signal is coming from right there, the observation platform at the top of that spire." Anakin pointed out.

"And we are here." Tara pointed to the holographic map.

"I sense Count Dooku." Anakin placed a finger to his lips.

"I sense a trap." Tara whispered.

"Next move?" Anakin asked her.

"Spring the trap." Tara smugly smiled.

"R2, go back. I need you to stay with the ship." Anakin directed him, then the two walked off into the ship.

They made their way to an elevator, but as soon as they began to wait for the lift to come down, more droids rolled on in to attack Tara and Anakin. "Destroyers!" He shouted, grabbing Tara and taking cover from the destroyers' blasters.

The elevator doors opened and they bolted to the lift. They used their sabers to block all of their shots until the doors of the elevator finally closed. "Drop your weapons." A robotic voice was heard from behind the two in the elevator.

Tara huffed and slowly turned around to see the enemy droids with their blasters in hand. "I said drop 'em!" The droid pressed.

Tara looked over at Anakin. He shot her a smirk. Simultaneously, the two turned around and killed all of the droids in the lift with them within seconds. The lift continued to go up until it halted suddenly. "Did you press the stop button?" Anakin inquired.

"No. Did you?" Tara asked Ani.

They looked around for an escape, knowing that what they were walking into was probably a trap. "There's more than one way out of here." Anakin began to cut a hole in the roof of the lift.

"We don't want to get out. We want to get moving." Tara was quite annoyed with the situation.

"R2, activate elevator 31174." Tara spoke into her communicator. But there was no response.

"Come in, R2."
"R2, do you copy?"
"R2, activate the elevator number 31174."

He never answered, but Anakin managed to cut the hole and jump out of the lift in that time. Tara followed pursuit and jumped on top of the elevator. Then, suddenly R2 wanted to activate the elevator going up, making the two have to get back into the lift. Once they reached the floor that they wanted, they scanned the room for any hostiles. "Chancellor." Anakin greeted when he saw Palpatine sitting there, bound to a chair.

"Are you all right?" Tara questioned him, since he looked so calm.

"Count Dooku." Palpatine stated then nodded over to another entrance to the room. And there marched in Count Dooku with two guarding droids next to him.

"This time we will do it together." Tara told Anakin.

Anakin leaned over to speak right into her ear, pushing her hair out of the way. "I was about to say that." He muttered.

"Get help. You're no match for him. He's a Sith lord." Palpatine was quite cynical of the entire situation.

"Chancellor Palpatine, Sith lords are my speciality. Why do you think Dooku ran away from me the first time, years ago?" Tara snarked.

Tara and Anakin unsheathed their swords in unison and ran after Dooku who opened up his own lightsaber. "I've been looking forward to this." Dooku smiled over at Tara, a bit terrified.

"My powers have doubled since the last time we met, Count." Tara warned him.

"Good. Twice the pride, double the fall." Dooku chuckled.

"Perhaps you have forgotten you're the one who fled?" Tara growled.

"I sense great fear in you, Skywalker. You have hate. You have anger. But you don't use them." Dooku spoke as he battled Anakin and Tara at the same time.

"Don't listen to him, Ani." Tara grunted as he reached out her hand and flung Dooku aside, giving way to Anakin to go over and chop his hands off.

Anakin held his lightsaber to Dooku's throat, ready to slaughter him. "Kill him. Kill him now." Palpatine instigated.

"I shouldn't." Anakin seemed to be having a conflict within his own mind.

"Do it." Palpatine pressed, then Anakin listened and chopped Dooku's head off.

Tara watched the entire thing and was quite shocked at how brutal he was. He knew Dooku was practically done for without hands, yet, he still accepted Palpatine's pressure to murder him. Anakin looked over at Tara who looked quite disturbed with Anakin. She spun on her heel to walk away. He was an unarmed prisoner. There was no need to kill him, yet he did. Out of revenge. "Tara!" Anakin called after her. But she kept walking.

"Elevator's not working." Tara sighed as she continued to press the button over and over.

"R2, activate elevator 3224." Anakin spoke into his comm as he neared Tara with Palpatine at his heels. But, suddenly, the mother ship began to tilt. It's stabilizers must've been blown. Tara held onto the elevator at the ship turned and their artificial gravity pointed at a different direction of the ship.

They managed to get down back to the hangar bay, but their ships were now destroyed. "Let's see if we can find something in the hangar bay that's still flyable. R2, get down here. R2, do you copy?" Anakin spoke aloud.

Suddenly, ray shields were placed around them and they were entrapped in a tiny circle with Palpatine. "Wait a minute. How did this happen? We're smarter than this." Tara looked around at the trap.

"Apparently not," Anakin replied, then stepped closer to Tara who was still quite disturbed with what he had done earlier, "I say patience."

"Patience?" Tara scoffed.

"Yes. R2 will be along in a few moments... and then he'll release the ray shields." Anakin nodded, confident of his answer. Suddenly, R2 came speeding into the room, shrieking.

"See? No problem." Anakin noted. Except, there was a problem. A dozen droids hurried in after R2 and surrounded him. "Do you have a plan B?" Tara folded her arms across her chest.