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"It's the Jedi who keep my brothers enslaved."
Anakin looked like he'd been slapped across the face — he had always struggled to conceal his emotions like a good Jedi. But inside, the Force was screaming in his ears: Listen to him!
Cody ordered for Slick to be locked up, but just before he could be marched off to prison, Anakin interrupted:
"I'll take him. I'd like to speak to Slick personally."
Obi-Wan shot him a disapproving look. Anakin ignored him: this felt right in his bones — in the Force. "I know there are thousands of battle droids on their way, Master, but… this is something I must do. Rex, with me. Master, Cody… I'm certain you have it handled."
In a cell in the Republic base on Christophis, a decade-old scanner, looking like it had been cobbled together from junkyard scrap, buzzed against Slick's temple. Rex learnt how to curse in five new languages.
"Why are you doing this?" As much as Slick resented the Jedi, he would have never expected any one of them to react as strongly as his "general"'s former apprentice did, let alone defy orders, claiming to want to help the vod'e.
The rogue Jedi could only reply with haunted eyes, quiet as the whistling winds of a desert sandstorm: "There is always a chip."
A standard month later, CT-3733 was reported to have been killed in action on Christophis. On an unrelated note, twenty nigh-identical men from various battalions found themselves applying for sanctuary on Naboo, claiming that there were slave chips in their heads.
Six months later, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine of the Galactic Republic found himself removed from office. Having one's head hacked off with a lightsaber tends to do that to someone.
