FFFX author reveals

[extrapenguin]

I wrote a thing for fffx (the Five Figure Fic Exchange):
Daybreak (10444 words) by ExtraPenguin
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Katooni & Mace Windu
Characters: Mace Windu, Katooni (Star Wars), Anakin Skywalker, Original Clone Character(s)
Additional Tags: Order 66 Happened Differently (Star Wars), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, POV Mace Windu
Summary:

Palpatine is dead, but then the Coruscant Guard turns up in his office and starts shooting. Mace discovers that Sidious has left a final trap for the Jedi, and now it's a race against time to dismantle it and free the clone troopers before they break through the Temple doors.

The title was originally something different, then I decided that I'd swap it for Daybreak – a placeholder, I thought, but a better one – and spent 10 minutes explaining to my rubber duck just why Daybreak was the best title and better than the alternatives I'd come up with. Oops? (Order 66 is codenamed Operation Knightfall, and while I couldn't get anything as nice as the night/(Jedi) knight pun, I could flip nightfall on its head and get daybreak.)

This was not my original idea! I originally planned to do a different canon divergence AU, where the events of RotS happen as shown but Mace lives. I made roughly 900 words into my draft before I stopped and ignored it for months. When the deadline breathed down my neck, I realized I couldn't finish that – I needed Sidious to get rekt – and canon diverged two minutes earlier. (Also, ambiguously had, in the meantime, written a much better post-Order 66 Mace and Katooni fic in You'll find that the world has changed forever, and I'd used the concept of the second half of my originally outlined work – Mace teaming up with Maul – to much better effect in Undertow.) Nonetheless, I did do some outlining, even if I didn't mark off a wrap-up point, and write a few hundred words, so here's the entirety of take #1 for posterity:

Pain throbbed over Mace's cheekbone and jaw. He blinked, winced at the way his eyelids seemed glued shut, then winced again at the jolt of pain that shot through his body as the first wince moved something.

There was a war going on, though, so he could not stay down and let Neyo worry. A brief check of his surroundings with the Force revealed no immediate threats. He didn't remember what had brought him down, which alarmed him, as did the absence of his clone troops.

He rolled to his side after determining that his spine was intact. No stabbing pain in his ribcage, either; no need to worry about a punctured lung. He rubbed the gunk out of his eyes with his left hand, the right one somehow being absent. Nerve issues?

The surroundings that greeted him were unmistakeably Coruscant's lower levels. His right hand hadn't responded because it was gone below the elbow. His clothes looked like he'd made out with a high-voltage transducer.

"It's treason, then."

Mace inhaled sharply. The Sith. The Chancellor had been the Sith Master they'd been searching for for so long.

The fight itself was mostly blank gaps so far, but Mace now knew what he'd been doing, and from the circumstances he'd found himself in, had not succeeded. This left him with a clear interim goal: find his lightsaber. It was an extension of his now-absent arm, but if he got the drop on a Sidious who thought him dead, he could finish the job left-handed.

The Force was weeping. Mace had a very bad feeling about this.



By the time the Force had led him to his crying kyber crystal, lightsaber still in the grasp of his severed hand, the entire fight had returned to him. They'd been caught criminally underprepared by Sidious's skills with the lightsaber. And Anakin... Much as Mace might want to believe he'd simply been sleep deprived enough to take out Mace's hand by accident and had course corrected immediately, the darkness in the Force made clear Sidious yet lived.

His current attire was unusably charred. He limped down a dark alley in search of corpses to strip.

Mostly decomposed and already looted, but one corpse had a mostly-intact jacket in his size. He shook it out and replaced his charred cloak.

He climbed his way up the levels, stripping corpses left in dark alleys as he rose toward civilization and the clothes on the corpses became less threadbare rags and more things that might pass as respectable. Once he recognized where he was, in the nine hundreds, he started making his way toward the Jedi Temple. There were entries at the lower levels; he could get in and maybe get some bacta for his wounds. Perhaps Anakin might help with the-

No. Anakin Skywalker was, at best, dead, and would not be in a place to help Mace fit on a mechanical hand.

The Force was tense and turbulent. Mace slowed his pace. He was only a dozen levels or so beneath the lower exits of the Temple. Cin Drallig and the Temple Guards must've been off to do what Mace had failed at, but Vokara, Vokara should still be there, Mace could get himself into a bacta tank-

Acrid smoke hit his nose. He noticed how the civilians were all moving away from the Temple. The pain he felt in the Force was steadily growing. Was Sidious using the Dark Side against them?

*Hide,* the Force whispered in his ear, clearer than it had been in a decade.

Mace turned to the left and slipped through a narrow alley where a lot had been divided in two and Coruscanti building regulations forced a gap between the buildings. He hit the edge of his right arm on the wall and doubled over as the pain shot up and down his arm, making his ears ring and eyes blur, too strong to set aside.

He continued on, pushed by the Force, the moment his eyes worked again. He slipped down a few levels and walked to the North until he stumbled upon an abandoned warehouse. A wave of his hand unlocked the doors and he stumbled in, curling up in a dark nook like an animal of prey might curl up in a burrow to die.













A youngling skittered across the street, much too shady for the respectful levels they were at. What caught Mace's attention, though, was how bright she was in the Force.

It was simple to follow her along the alley,

[Katooni briefs Mace on Temple attack]



[Mace makes way toward Temple, finds Katooni being hunted]

[escape off Coruscant – Mace disguises himself as Tholothian, facial scar helps?]

[training montage while avoiding Vader/Inquisitors/Stormtroopers; Mace does introspection on Vader = Anakin, probably, and chips maybe reason why clones fired]

[doing damage vs the Empire?]

[run to edges of galaxy, find work as merc, run into Shadow Syndicate]

[meeting with Maul]
MW: I heard you were hiring.
DM: Oh? What use would you be to me?
MW: A sparring partner.
DM: ...
MW: *removes helmet*
DM: !!!!!!!
DM: *You* want to work for *me*?
MW: I believe we both want Sidious dead.

Maul nodded brusquely and continued pacing. "Yes. Yes, indeed we do. My organization is much weakened from past events, but perhaps..."

"I would propose we ally with other factions who want Sidious gone," Mace said. He ran through a list of politicians from the Delegation of 20,000. Amidala was out for obvious reasons, and Organa was close enough to her to be under the Emperor's eye, but- "Senator Mothma is no doubt unhappy about the current state of affairs, and secure enough in her position on Chandrila to be able to do something about it. I can reach out."

"Why, Master Windu, are you trying to make me respectable?"

Mace quirked an eyebrow. "Have you tried being respectable before?" Maul shook his head. "Perhaps you should try it. If only for the experience."

Maul snorted. "Very well," he sighed. "Welcome to your life in organized crime. What is your stance on assassinating Hutts?"

"Agreeable."



[convo with Katooni abt the greater good & allying with Maul]

[duel w/ Maul]
- Mace wins
- Maul spooked, waiting for punishment after loss; Mace gently corrects

[meditation time! Maul joins]

[Maul/Mothma tells of hint wrt other surviving Jedi]
- NOT Obi-Wan or Yoda
- Cal? Shaak Ti?