Kaelen's revelation left a heavy silence in the villa. The threat was no longer a faceless assassin or a distant political crisis. It was cosmic, personal, and directly linked to the man Padmé loved.
It was she who broke the silence, her leader's pragmatism overcoming her shock. "Whatever this Council of Ricks is, they're not here now. Anakin's mother is suffering now. First, the people. We'll go to Tatooine." She looked at Kaelen, her gaze firm. "And then, when this is over, we'll deal with the storm coming for you. Together."
Kaelen nodded, a wave of gratitude calming the panic within him. She was still his anchor. "Agreed. But I need a few hours."
While Padmé and a restless, confused Anakin prepared the ship, Kaelen locked himself in his lab. He wasn't building a new weapon. He was studying the enemy. He disassembled one of the Ricks' portal guns, analyzing its mechanics with his new understanding of multiversal physics. He couldn't replicate it yet—the power source was a mystery—but he could learn from it.
In two hours, he had built a new device for his wrist. It was a passive sensor, designed for one thing: detecting the unique energy signature of Rick's portal technology. A "Rick-detector."
"They won't catch us by surprise again," he muttered to himself as he activated it. Then, he packed a small bag with his "tools": the Molecular Destabilizer, a personal force field shield that was still in beta, and several EMP discs. He was ready.
Seeds of Truth
The journey to Tatooine was tense. The dynamic aboard the small cargo ship had drastically changed. Anakin no longer looked at Kaelen with simple resentment. Now he looked at him with a mix of fear, awe, and an almost feverish curiosity. The engineer was no longer a mere rival; he was an enigma of incomprehensible power.
"Could your... father... stop an entire army?" Anakin asked at one point, his voice barely a whisper.
"Anakin..." Padmé warned him.
"No, it's fine," Kaelen said, not looking away from the navigation controls. "The question isn't whether he could. It's how he would do it. Would he disintegrate them atom by atom? Would he transport them to the center of a sun? Or would he just rewrite the timeline so they were never born?" He looked at Anakin. "When you can do anything, the only question that matters is how lazy you feel that day."
It was then that they received an encrypted communication. It was Obi-Wan.
His hologram flickered in the center of the cockpit, the background showing elegant white architecture and incessant rain. "Kaelen, you were right," he said, his voice serious. "The coordinates were perfect. I'm on Kamino."
"And?" Padmé asked.
"I've found an army," Obi-Wan continued, and the temperature in the cockpit seemed to drop several degrees. "An army of clones. Created for the Republic, ordered over ten years ago by a Jedi Master named Sifo-Dyas. They tell me a bounty hunter named Jango Fett was the original genetic donor."
The Grand Design
The pieces click in my head. Not like a puzzle, but like the gears of an infernal machine.
A secret army. Created for the Republic, but no one in the Republic knows about it.A Separatist war conveniently creating the need for that very army.An assassin (Jango Fett) who is the template for the clones, whose trail (the Kamino dart) leads the Jedi directly to discover the army that was supposed to be a secret.And at the center of it all, Palpatine, the only one who benefits from the fear, from the war, from the creation of the army, from everything.
This isn't politics. Politics is clumsy, it's a mess. This is... elegant. It's a script. Every piece moves in perfect harmony. The opposition, the solution, the discovery... it's all orchestrated. It's a manipulation of complex systems on a scale I've only heard in the stories of an amoral genius. It's a Rick-level play.
*And suddenly, I see it. I see the entire architecture of the conspiracy. *
Arrival on Tatooine
"Cut the communication," Kaelen said, his voice an icy whisper.
"Kaelen? What's wrong?" Padmé asked, alarmed by the pallor of his face.
He stood up and activated the holographic galaxy map. His hand trembled slightly as he pointed to the bright spot that was Coruscant.
"We've been looking in the wrong direction," he said. "All this time. Count Dooku, the Separatists, the Trade Federation... they're a smokescreen. A brilliantly designed distraction."
"What are you talking about?" Anakin asked, confused.
"Think about it!" Kaelen exclaimed, his mind racing. "A secret army appears just when the Republic needs it most. The trail to find it is left by the very man who serves as the template. It's too perfect! Someone is playing both sides of the board. Someone created the problem and at the same time created the solution, ensuring the Republic would be forced to accept it."
He pointed again to Coruscant, his finger almost piercing the hologram.
"The enemy isn't in the Outer Rim. He's been sitting in the Supreme Chancellor's office all this time." The air went out of the cabin. "Palpatine. He's behind everything. The Naboo blockade ten years ago gave him power. And this crisis will give him his army. He's not trying to save the Republic. He's dismantling it from within to rebuild it in his image."
Anakin stared at him in disbelief and protective anger. "That's impossible! The Chancellor is a good man! He's been my mentor!"
"And he's the best Dejarik player in galactic history!" Kaelen retorted. "He's been moving us all like pieces from the beginning. You, Padmé, the Jedi, everyone."
At that moment, an alarm sounded on the console. They were entering Tatooine's atmosphere.
They landed on the outskirts of Mos Espa, the heat of the twin suns hitting them instantly. They stepped out of the ship, not just to face the criminals and crime lords of Tatooine on a personal rescue mission. They stepped out with the terrible knowledge that their galaxy was not on the brink of civil war.
It was already in the midst of a silent, masterful coup d'état, and they were the only ones who had just realized it.