Anakin looked down at his hands and body, and waggled his fingers. "I think we're still alive!" He grinned, trying to disarm his fuming Master, but Obi- Wan seemed as if he was about to explode.

"It was stupid!" Obi-Wan roared.

Anakin worked wildly, trying to restart the speeder. "I could have made it," he protested sheepishly. His confident expression strengthened as the speeder roared back to life.

"But you didn't! And now we've lost him!"

Even as Obi-Wan finished, a barrage of laser bolts rained down around them, setting off explosions that rocked them back and forth. The pair looked up, to see the assassin zooming away.

"No, we didn't," a smiling Anakin said. He took the speeder up, the sudden thrust violently throwing them both back in their seats. They came through the area of smoke and carnage with several small fires burning on their speeder. Obi-Wan slapped at flames on the control panel.

Again they chased the assassin into the main travel lanes, dodging and turning fast about incoming traffic. Up ahead, the assassin cut fast to the left, between two buildings, and Anakin responded, going right and up.

"Where are you going?" a perplexed Obi-Wan asked. "He went down there, the other way."

"This is a shortcut. I think."

"What do you mean, you think? What kind of shortcut? He went completely the other way! You've lost him!"

"Master, if we keep this chase going, that creep's gonna end up deep- fried," Anakin tried to explain. "Personally, I'd very much like to find out who he is, and who he's working for."

"Oh," Obi-Wan replied, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "So that's why we're going in the wrong direction."

Anakin took them up and around, finally settling into a hover some fifty stories up from the street.

"Well, you lost him," Obi-Wan said.

"I'm deeply sorry, Master," Anakin replied. Again, he seemed hardly convincing, as if he was saying just what he had to say to keep Obi-Wan from scolding him further. The Jedi Knight looked at him hard, ready to call him on it, when he noticed that Anakin, seemingly deep in concentration, was counting softly.

"Excuse me for a moment," the Padawan said. He stood up and, to Obi-Wan's complete shock, stepped out of the speeder.

Obi-Wan lurched over to the edge and stared down, watching Anakin drop- about five stories, before landing atop the roof of a familiar speeder that was zooming beneath them.

"I hate it when he does that," Obi-Wan muttered incredulously, shaking his head.

Zam Wesell skimmed close to the buildings, staying to the side of the main traffic lanes. She didn't know whether the probe droid had successfully completed its mission, but she was feeling pretty good at that moment, having outwitted a pair of Jedi.

Suddenly her speeder shook hard. At first she thought she had been hit by a blaster bolt, but then, surveying for damage, she came to know the truth of the missile, and to know that it- that he-had somehow landed on her speeder.

Zam backed off on the throttle, then slammed it out full, lurching the craft ahead. The force of the sudden acceleration nearly dislodged Anakin, sending him sliding back to the tail, but he hung on stubbornly and, to Zam's dismay, even began crawling back toward the cockpit.

With a sneer, Zam hit the brakes, hard, and Anakin went sliding and bouncing past her.

But the stubborn young Jedi caught one of the twin front forks of the speeder and hung on yet again.

Zam accelerated and reached out her blaster pistol, letting fly a series of bolts in Anakin's general direction. The angle was wrong, though, and she couldn't score any hits. And there he was, crawling back stubbornly toward the roof despite all of Zam's evasive maneuvers. Her Clawdite form came back, suddenly and briefly, as she lost concentration, but she recovered quickly.

The bounty hunter cursed under her breath and swooped back into traffic, trying to formulate some plan for ridding herself of the troublesome Jedi. She went back into her evasive, traffic-dodging maneuvers yet again, entertaining the thought of moving in close to some of the heavier traffic and letting the exhaust plume smoke the fool atop her craft. She had almost convinced herself to do just that when suddenly a glowing blue blade of energy sheared through the top of her speeder and plunged down beside her. She looked up to see the stubborn young Jedi cutting through the roof. Swerving all about, she fired off a shot at him, then another. Finally, to her relief, a shot took the lightsaber from his hand, though whether she had taken the hand, as well, or just the weapon, she could not tell.

Obi-Wan had finally caught sight of Zam's speeder, with Anakin scrambling atop it, when the lightsaber tumbled from the Padawan's grasp. Obi-Wan gave a shake of his head and dived his speeder toward the street, angling for an interception.

Anakin's hand plunged through the hole in the roof, and Zam lifted her blaster pistol in his direction. He didn't reach for her, just held his hand there outstretched, and before she could fire, some unseen force yanked the pistol from her hand, throwing it right into the Jedi's grasp. "No!" the bounty hunter yelled, gasping in astonishment. She lurched in her seat, letting go of her speeder's controls to grab the pistol desperately with both hands. The pair struggled over the weapon, the speeder dipping right and left, and then the pistol went off, hitting neither opponent, but blowing a hole in the flooring of Zam's speeder, cutting some control pipes in the process.

The speeder careened out of control, and Zam fell back over the controls, desperately but futilely.

They dived and spun, sidelong and head over. Screaming, both hung on for dear life as they spiraled toward the street.

Finally, at the last possible second, Zam gained some control, enough to turn the impending crash into a spark-throwing skid along the broken permacrete of this seedy section of Coruscant's belly.

The speeder bounced up on edge and slammed to a halt, and Anakin went flying, tumbling along the street for a long, long way. When he finally got control, he saw the assassin leaping from the speeder and running down the street, so he climbed back to his feet and started to follow.

The splash as he stepped in one dirty puddle woke Anakin to the harsh realities about him. This was the underbelly of Coruscant, the smelly and dirty streets. He slowed-the assassin was out of sight anyway-and looked about curiously, noting the many lowlifes, mostly nonhumans of quite a variety of species. Many beings were panhandling up and down the street. He shook it all away quickly, though, reminding himself of the real reason he was here, and of Padme and her need for security. Spurred by images of the beautiful Senator from Naboo, the young Jedi sprinted along the broken sidewalk, catching sight of the assassin moving through a crowd of ruffians. Anakin charged right in behind, pushing and shoving, but making little headway against the press.