#i watched the movie alite: battle angel a few weeks ago which is how this worm got wriggling

[bitchin-witchin]

Kind of silly au but it's been brewing in my brain and making it hard to finish work so time to purge this baby.

Love cyborgs and concept of like sentient weapons so au where instead of playing yhe long con to get anakin to turn to the dark, during the clone wars (sometime before Dooku betrays Asajj) Sidous orders Dooku to capture Anakin and they use sith magic to try to erase/corrupt his memory of his past life as a jedi so they can make him believe their story of him being a slave and weapon of the republic that left him to die on the battlefield. They rescued him and gave him a new body, a new chance at life. Or something like that.

Cue the suffering montage LOL uhh they probably have to wipe his brain a few times for things to really stick or stay unstuck. All sorts of training and stress test with his mech body (the only organic part of him left is his brain so he's a TRC (Total replacement cyborg) and also it has force supression built into it bc they wanna be sure they can completrly control him before gicing him his power in the force...except when has anakin ever been completrlt controllable. Impossible task). Anakin is grateful for the new body at first, but theres a struggle with the mind wiping, memories resurfacing, (sidious doesnt want to risk like permanent damage so they gotta be careful), so that's unpleasant. They probably give him some evil tests like kill this republic baby bc I told u so or whatever. He fails the tests so they torture him/the other guy until he just does it. Fucked up obience training.

once the sith lords have ironed out his mindspace to what they desire he's p compliant but like in a distanced way. Just going thru the motions. They tell him his mission is to eradicate the jedi. He's on the battlefield but with his mech body, suppressed force presence, and wearing a helmet he's unrecognizable, or at least extremely hard to recognize.

The sith lords try to keep him away from jedi/republic citizens he has strong ties to for a while so as not to trigger any memories on accident, so people like Obi-wan who could sense something suspicious happening underneath appearances if close enough, never are.

Anakin still has like his "normal" face but it's synth skin but maybe like some proportions like the eyes are different bc they're super high tech optical devices. They also don't want him to look too different so he's not like too freaked when he looks in a mirror and also kind of hard to overwrite his memory of what he looks like. The body is difficult enough to adjust to. Or maybe they don't give him his face at first but he's FREAKED TF out and breaks down so they're like aw dammit gotta do it over.

Anyways something happens in a battle where some aspect of the force supression in his mech body gets damaged. Something feels slightly different... he goes to med to get repaired by a droid bc his masters (Sidious & Dooku) track all sorts of stuff on him, but is able to find out from the droid what NOT to repair to keep this feeling. Overwrites the record so everything looks normal.

Having what little acess to the force he does helps tidbits of memories come back. anakin starts to grow suspicious of his purpose with the CIS but it comes on slow enough to keep it hidden. Ventress has been present for some of anakins transformation, once deemed her appearance didn't upset any sith brain magics.

As things progress with Anakin's development as a CIS weapon, she suspects more and more he's gonna be her replacement. At first it seems ridiculous, a cyborg they cant trust with the force as the new apprentice, but they have her spar with him to not only test his combat skillz but to teach him to be a precise and unquestioning assassin. It's happening right in front of her eyes. This makes her more amneable to developing a weird camaraderie with anakin. Especially as he starts to recover some of the anakin she knew before. He still doesn't remember the jedi, but he's coming into a new person with a personality getting harder and harder to hide. Anakin without the hang ups he has a jedi and the whole us vs them thing with the sith ends up making an interesting...acquaintance (they will be friends eventually).

So anakin secretely works on a new body with his own tech to replace his CIS spyware one when the time comes and ventress helps along the way maybe. Or shes just knows and keeps it a secret but isnt super helpful. anakin is also able to do this work without a lot of scrutiny bc hes been tame for a long enough time that Sidious and Dooku kind of loosen their surveillance. He doesn't let the force suppressor in his og mech body get too broke tho so the force sensitives stay off his case. To successfully escape he has to so so without the force or only have access to it during the moment of escape with his new body.

Eventually the time comes for Dooku to eliminate Ventress. Asajj has shared some of her suspicions with Anakin by this point and they've developed a few plans to escape together. Ideally they wanted to escape before she was gonna be killed but they can work with this too.

They escape! Yay! Anakins new body is super cool. Nanotech stuff, black and gold scheme, the appearance is more organic compared to present tech but still obv mech bc he likes that look (from what we know of the official description of how he feels about his arm). Overall appearance is a little more like the sinews of muscle fibers. The mobility is fucking awesome and super organic too. Maybe it's not this way at first and he worls more on it agter escape but its still a big improvement from what he had before escape time nevertheless.

Asajj and Anakin-the-guy-with-as-normal-as-a-life-he's-probably-ever-gonna-get now go on adventures. Anakin gets to figure out who he with the least amt of direct outside influence he's ever had, and same for Asajj tbh. They are now ✨️friends✨️. Yay!

Somehow they end up at Hondo's in their adventures together. Ventress tells hondo enough to know that anakin does not remember his time as a jedi (tho he has had some moments like seeing republic propaganda with obi-wan and others in the pictures which brings up confusing emotions. PADME IN TELEVISED SENATE HEARINGS....????? Much to consider here....

Hondo slips up ofc and anakin is like you know these guys? You call them before? And somehow they get to the conclusion that from what anakin does remember he wants to see what he can glean from talking with them so Asajj and hondo give their friend Obi-Wan a call and asajj is like "I have anakin, but here's what's happened... (general explanation) he wants to speak with the council. And then the other jedi see him on a holo call and there's questions and a couple memories unlocked like Obi-wan confirms anakin can trust they knew each other for real bc idk he says an amatakkan phrase small padawan anakin taught him when he trusted him enough to do so. Then that opens the door for more convo.

However...the jedi see such a difference in anakin now...even after what he's been through, he feels so much lighter in the force, visibly less depressed, very eager to see the world. When the jedi ask if anakin would consider returning he's hesitant. He wants to remember more before making a decision. And he's got his pal Asajj and this new guy Hondo who's a hoot. Who have complicated relations with the jedi....

And that's where I'm at. Perhaps now that this is out i will have more space in my brain to consider what comes next. Open to hearing other's ideas though!

And since I drafted this!!! I got my work done!! Typing it out really did help! Crazy. New strat to avoid procrastination.