“Are you going to kill me right here, Mand’alor?” Obi-Wan manages. Fett freezes, his hold loosening, and shoves away from him as if burned, getting to his feet. Obi-Wan coughs, looks up to where the man is watching him with some strange mix of emotion. His shields are exceptionally strong, for a null. “There is no Mand’alor,” Fett says finally, and walks right out of the room. (Or: 15-year-old Jedi Padawan Anakin Skywalker crash-lands on Kamino on the one day a cycle when the seas are calm and the storms abate. At the time, he doesn’t think much of it. Later—much later—he will come to see it as an omen.)

Upending a base full of slavers was supposed to be a straightforward mission. Agen was unprepared for abduction, cloned armies, and the dark edges of the mystery that surrounds them, stretching back a thousand years. Though, in fairness, Alpha wasn't at all prepared for Agen, either.

Obi-wan Kenobi was chosen by a Master when he was a few months shy of his tenth birthday. Twenty plus years later, the galaxy as a whole has rather a lot of cause to regret that. (The longer the war drags on, the more Qui-gon Jinn finds to question; about himself, about the events of history, and about the Sith Lord who was once Jedi Knight Obi-wan Kenobi.)