As I replayed the footage of Anakin getting his legs blown off by a walker blast and thrown into a dark chasm of doom, I knew that nothing was over. He'd survive, the Force wouldn't let him die until there is an observer to confirm it.
Of course I wasn't afraid of the coming of the Chosen One, not at all. The Force doesn't affect me and Jack, so his plot armor is useless against us. With the loss of so much of his body mass, Anakin would never be pulling Star Destroyers down from the sky, and without Palpatine he wouldn't have access to a Sith Sorcery enhanced gimp suit that constantly fuels and amplifies his dark side powers.
Even if he gets the best prosthetics available all he'd be is a cripple Dark Jedi. And when he finds out we'd turned his precious Padme into a smear on the battle scarred Senate building he'd be a crippled and insane Dark Jedi. Significant power boost at the cost of any cleverness. Young Anakin would lose himself to the Dark Side and come straight at me like a bull at a matador. After all, the great Patriarch teaches us, 'Kill the family and he will come at you stupid.'
Dooku agreed with me on Skywalker's survival, and wanted to send Grievous to hunt him down, but I knew better than to send a prized attack dog after a man protected by fate. The sadistic cyborg would be far better utilized pursuing the other Jedi that survived Order Sixty Six.
With the quick refreshment that watching Anakin blow up always gave me I got back to my day job of running the galaxy.
When Jack and I formed a secret oligarchy with Dooku and Ventress to control the CIS, I hadn't expected them to all dump me with all the responsibility and power and fuck off to do their own shit.
Dooku and Ventress spent all their free time exploring the various holocrons and histories the Jedi had collected over the years, both chasing personal power like true Sith, with Dooku making public appearances the keep up the façade that he was still the head of state, and Ventress spent time training all the children they'd taken from the Jedi Temple. Children that now lived in Grunt's Mega Fortress. How my home got turned into a Dark Side kindergarten is an interesting story. Ventress needed a secure place to stash all the kids she kidnapped and smooth lizard dick, and my house is the only place in the galaxy where the best in both classes can be found.
All this exposure to kids might make me a better father if I ever get back to my home dimension. It will be tough to jump over the high bar I set after turning thousands of my children into emotionless slaves so they could serve as disposable troops against a race of machine gods and their vast armies of cyborg zombies.
Gaining levels in fatherhood via osmosis sounds like a thing. I suspect it's the reason why World's Greatest Dad mugs have stopped exploding in my presence.
I took another sip of a wonderful adult beverage, the glowing purple liquid warmed my body in a way I haven't felt in years and I greatly appreciated that it killed anyone without a constitution on par with a hutt's. Hell it would even kill the weak hutts like my Uncle Ziro. In one glass this liquor both got me drunk and established my dominance. Glorious.
Some might view drinking while managing a government that spanned the sea of stars as grossly negligent, but like the great Tsunade Senju, I kept it in moderation during business hours.
God I hope I one day find a way to get to the Naruto verse. I don't care if I have to adopt Naruto and Sasuke and raise those ass monkeys into responsible reasonable adults if it gets my dong on those willing titties.
You know that running trope about people in positions of power losing their shit because of the paperwork? They should have taken over via the powers of evil, cause no one sends me trifling shit to handle. The Hutt Empire exists to serve the hutts, I set the course and a series of terrified minions and slaves make it happen. Who knew being a totalitarian dictator was so easy.
As for the CIS, Independent Systems is two thirds of the name. The member systems try their best to govern independently and I mostly manage intersystem disputes and commerce, and honestly most of that shit gets handled amicably all of a sudden when I email people to come to Tatooine so I can mediate the problem.
Circulating that video of Nute and Wat is the gift that keeps on giving.
Who could have guessed that one of my best life choices would involve stiff rancor cock?
The war against the Republic had turned the difficulty down to easy mode following the Shattering, as our attack on Coruscant had been dubbed. With the Jedi Order mostly massacred, the clone armies were routed swiftly by the weight of our droids. Even without the Chancellor and the Senate the clones fought fiercely to defend what was left of the Republic. They just didn't have space wizards to pull off impossible tactics at vital times, and though largely superior in terms of skill, they couldn't conventionally defeat us. Especially with new systems surrendering to us constantly.
While the CIS worked on securing territory in the galactic rims, the Hutt Empire had turned our former pirate, now privateer, forces on the Core Worlds. This generated a truly staggering amount of wealth for us.
A bunch of outlaws forming a crew to turn pirate is a life of meager reward and high risks unless a truly intelligent and driven individual manages to drag his fellows to riches, under the Hutts, piracy is organized and supported with excellent intel and becomes moderately profitable for reasonable risk. Raiding the Core Worlds was like opening a portal to the money dimension.
In the Outer Rim, if you aren't armed it's because you are a slave. In the Core owning guns outside of Law Enforcement is almost universally illegal.
The Core Worlds have known only peace and prosperity for a thousand years. They had every reason to be fat, complacent, and arrogant. While most of the galaxy is third world hell holes they have lived in sci-fi utopias for a millenia. From birth to death, for generations, so long as they lived within the law they experienced no hardship.
And I had unleashed the dogs from the edge of the galaxy onto them. Sure, they could still drown the CIS in money, but they had spent barely a percent of a percent of their GDP on their armed forces for so long that they didn't have the infrastructure in place to fight back against us. The amount of resistance my fighters hit in the Core amounted to a fetus trying to defend itself from a trip to Planned Parenthood.
Jesus once said, "To those who have, more will be given. And for those who have not, everything will be taken."
I had a near total monopoly on violence in the galaxy, and every day my wealth increased. Since the Core had no capacity to excerpt violence, I'd be taking everything from them.
The man had more than just a mad exorcist game, he also spoke mad facts.
Ice cold facts, but it wasn't like he was endorsing the statement, just saying this is both true and important.
Who knows, maybe when the people of the future look back on this time period they will know better than to let the state turn them into pussies. Nah, that would be having too much faith in people being able to think critically about this kind of war instead of emotionally. The Fall of the Republic and the chaos that came after it was too dark a topic for people to view it objectively as a natural conclusion to a system of spineless and corrupt flesh bags ceaselessly oppressing their hard as fuck neighbors.
Shit, the hutts figured that out just by example. We really are the most superior race in the galaxy.
When my work concluded I got back to my daily sword training, sure that Anakin would come for his revenge soon enough and that the Force would not be denied her sword duel.