Now the shadow was only Palpatine: old and shrunken, thinning hair bleached by time and care, face lined with exhaustion.
"For all your power, you are no Jedi. All you are, my lord," Mace said evenly, staring past his blade,"is under arrest."
"Do you see, Anakin? Do you?" Palpatine's voice once again had the broken cadence of a frighteded old man's. "Didn't I warn you of the Jedi and their treason?"
"Save your twisted words, my lord. There are no politicians here. The Sith will never regain control of the Republic. It's over. You've lost." Mace leveled his blade. "You lost for the same reason the Sith always lose: defeated by your own fear."
Palpatine lifted his head.
His eyes smoked with hate.
"Fool" he said
He lifted his arms, his robes of office spreading wide into raptor's wings, his hands hooking into talons.
"FOOL!" His voice was a shout of thunder. "Do you think the fear you feel is mine?"
Lighting blasted the clouds above, and lightning blasted from Palpatines hands, and Mace didnt have time to comprehend what Palpatine was talking about; he had time only to slip back into Vaapad and angle his blade to catch the forking arcs of pure, dazzling hatred that clawed toward him.
Because Vaapad is more than a fighting style. It is a state of mind: a channel for darkness. Power passed into him and out again without touching him.
And the circuit completed itself: the lightning reflected back to its source.
Palpatine staggered, snarling, but the blistering energy that poured from his hands only intensified.
He fed the power with his pain.
"Anakin"Mace called. His voice sounded distant, blurred, as if it came from the bottom of a well."Anakin, help me! This is your chance!"
He felt Anakin's leap from the office floor to the ledge, felt his approach behind-
And Palpatine was not afraid.
Mace could feel it: he wasnt worried at all.
"Destroy this traitor," the Chancellor said, his voice raised over the howl of writhing energy that joined his hands to Mace's blade. "This was never an arrest. It's an assassination!"
That was when Mace finally understood. He had it. The key to final victory. Palpatine's shatterpoint. The absolute shatterpoint of the Sith.
The shatterpoint of the dark side itself.
Mace thought, blankly astonished, Palpatine trusts Anaking Skywalker...
Now Anakin was at Mace's shoulder. Palpatine still made no move to defend himself from Skywalker; instead he ramped up the lighting bursting from his hands, bending the fountain of Mace's blade back toward the Korun Masters face.
Palpatine's eyes glowed with power, casting a yellow glare that burned back the rain from around them. "He is a traitor, Anakin. Destroy him."
"You're the chosen one, Anakin," Mace said, his voice going thin with strain. This was beyond Vaapad; he had no strength left to fight against his own blade."Take him. It's your destiny."
Skywalker echoed him faintly"Destiny..."
"Help me! I cant hold on any longer!" The yellow glare from Palpatine's eyes spread outward through his flesh. His skin flowed like oil, as thought the muscle beneath was burning away, as though even the bonees of his skull were softening, were bending and bulging, deforming from the heat and pressure of his electric hatred. "He is killing me, Anakin-! Please ahhaa-"
Mace's blade bent so close to his face that he was choking on ozone. "Anakin, he's too strong for me-"
"Ahhhh-"Palpatine's roar above the endless blast of lighting became a
fading moan of dispair.
The lightning swallowed itself, leaving only the night and the rain, and an old man crumpled to his knees on a slippery ledge.
"I cant. I give up. I....Iam too weak, in the end. Too old, and too weak. Dont kill me, Master Jedi. Please. I surrender."
Victory flooded through Mace's arching body . He lifted his blade. "You Sith disease-"
"Wait-"Skywaker seized his lightsaber arm with desperate strength. "Don't kill him-you can't just kill him, Master-"
"Yes I can," Mace said, grim and certain. "I have to."
"You came to arrest him. He has to stand trial-"
"A trial would be a joke.He controls the courts. He controls the Senate-"
"So are you going to kill all them, too? Like he said you would?"
Mace yanked his arm free."He's too dangerous to be left alive. If you could have taken Dooku alive, would you have?"
Skywalker's face swept itself clean of emotion. "That was different-"
Mace turned toward the cringing, beaten Sith Lord."You can explain the difference after he's dead."
He raised his lightsaber.
"I need him alive!" Skywalker shouted."I need him to save Padme!"
Mace thought blankly, Why? And moved his lightsaber toward the fallen Chancellor.
Before he could follow through on his stroke, a sudden arc of blue plasma sheared through his wrist and his hand tumbled away with his lightsaber still in it and Palpatine roared back to his feet and lightning speared from the Sith Lord's hankds without his blade to catch it, the power of Palpatine's hate struck him full-on.
He had been so intent on Palpatine's shatterpoint that he'd never thought to look for Anakin's.
Dark lighting blasted away his universe
He fell forever.