There are some things that all troopers know Nat born's will never understand.
All the troopers grew up in a world where perfection was the standard and anything less resulted in death. Where individuality was a crime and being anything more than just another number was a danger, Where saying the wrong thing in front of the wrong person could get you killed.
All troopers know this, but post Kamino the Guards have had it drilled into them all over again. If they want to survive In the Senate they have to fall back on the lessons they learned on Kamino.
The Corries know that there are some things that nat born's will never understand. Things that Nat born's shouldn't understand.
So no one in the guard quite knows how to feel about the strange fallout of the Shiney squad's Jetti Cadets apparent discovery of the Guards position on Courcant.
It starts small, the guard notices that the boy stops being weird about the fact that most of the Corries don't use their names, when asked, the boys. "It's because I know that you have them now." raises more questions than answers, because apparently the boy just figured out that they used their designation numbers around the Senate because their names were a secret on his own. He also seemed to get an unreasonable amount of joy from the fact that all the clones chose their own names.
If it has stopped there then it probably wouldn't be so weird, but it didn't. From sneaking in extra medical supplies and food, (actual food, not just ration bars) when he discovered that 'depur' was cutting their budget for stuff that they needed to function, to the way he seemed to intrinsically understand their need for secrecy, and their reasoning for it. "secrets keep us safe." Without anyone seemingly telling him.
They all agreed that they weren't gonna ask about how the boy had managed to rangle several senators around to the truth of the situation and his point of view with only a few words to one of them. A point of view that not only had them working on trooper sentient rights bills, but also had them aiding in his more under the table helping.
At first it was weird and confusing, both because this kid was a nat born, and because how did a Jetti Cadet develop this kind of understanding, he was a child. It took them a while to connect the dots, Even as the boy started unconsciously dropping hints.
At first it was that weird little nickname he had for the Senate and Senators, in a language that even the most nerdy of Corries didn't seem to understand. They weren't sure what a Depur was, but apparently it applied to the Senate and was probably not a good thing.
The next clue was the stories, because as Anakin spent more time with the guard, becoming more of a Vod'ika than a Jetti Commander and subsequently beginning to learn more and more about the secrets that they kept from the rest of the Senate.
As the boy learnt about the lighter side of the inner workings of the guard, and how to speak the clones particular brand of Mando'a, the guards began to learn stories about Ekkreth, Leia and Ar Amu, stories about secret plots and tricking the The infamous Depur in ways that resulted in the freedom of those he enslaved.
About secret Languages, Tzai, Jappor snippets and secret rituals. About the ways one could steal back some control from the Masters in ways that they would never even notice. About things that the boy claimed that all Slaves should know, lessons that would help keep them safe from their Masters. A term that by now the guards suspended was not referring to the kind the Jedi had.
By the time the boy causally mentioned that he and his mother had been enslaved prior to him being taken to the temple, the Guards already had a pretty decent picture of the situation.
The fact that the boy had been adopting them into his own culture right under their noses had been vastly more surprising. He'd been a little awkward when he'd admitted it. Saying that he knew that they were sort of Mando'ade, but they could be Amavikka too if they wanted.
And sure, maybe it was a little dark that part of the reason the boy spent so much time in the barracks was because it felt familiar, but also this kid cared about every single one of them, to the point where he apparently sees them as family.
Well it really was no wonder that it was agreed that the entire guard would do just about anything for their Ad'ika. Including possibly stopping said Ad'ika from doing the same for them. (Bloody Skywalkers)
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Report nro. 34456-446: Lost sight of the suspect in level 2089; the suspect was not apprehended; the surroundings impeded with the process of apprehending the suspect
Report nro. 35567-447: The suspect was chased down to level 2089; the patrol in charge lost sight of the suspect due to poor conditions of the surroundings, which made continuing the chase at full force dangerous for the members of the patrol; the suspect was not apprehended
Report nro. 36678-448: The last sighting of the suspect was near sector 8994 of the level 2089; the patrol in charge of the chase had to slow down their approach due to poor conditions of the area in question, to make sure there would be no excess harm for the troopers; the suspect was not apprehended
Requisition for equipment upgrade, form 6678 B-3
Requisition DENIED
See more information below
There was a headace incoming. Fox could feel it.
Stone raised a brow at him when Fox informed him about it.
"You know, if you can already feel the headache, it means you have a headache", he said.
Fox glared at him.
"When someone tells you that they can feel a headache coming, the last thing they usually need is someone being a smartass", he said, barely restraining himself from gritting his teeth. It wouldn't have done him any good either on the headache department.
Stone didn't seem at all phased by Fox's bad mood. He just shrugged, and then reached over the desk and snatched the datapad right from Fox's hands. That did make Fox grit his teeth, but he forced himself to relax. If the datapad was in Stone's hands, it meant that Fox didn't have to look at it anymore.
He drummed his fingers on his desk, as he watched Stone scroll through the reports and the requisition form.
"You asked for better safety gear for unstable ground and low lighting conditions?" Stone glanced at Fox over the datapad. "Those are weird things to deny, especially since they want us to increasingly patrol the lower levels, even outside an active investigation."
"You think I don't know that?" Fox scoffed, and then tried to make himself relax again. Nothing about this situation was Stone's fault, and Fox didn't like taking his frustrations on his brothers. Other people outside the Guard yelled at all of them enough already, they didn't need their Commander to do the same.
Stone didn't, thankfully, still seem at all phased by Fox's mood. He continued to scroll for a moment longer, his forehead creasing more and more by every second.
"The request was denied because there have been no observations of conditions on the reported area, that are deemed unsafe enough for us to need better equipment?" He glanced at Fox again. "That doesn't make any sense. You have clearly attached the trooper reports onto the form. Did they not read them?"
"Probably not." Fox pushed his frustrated thought out of his head by sighing very deeply. "Or if they did, the person in charge of processing the requests that day just deemed the risks not worth the credits."
Both of those options were just as plausible, as both of them had happened just as many times by now. Fox leaned his forehead on his hand and pressed his thumb hard against his temple. They were just past half a year in their posting, and most things about it sucked already.
Just think about the fact that you have a bed that is not full of mud, sand, or bugs, he told himself. Just think about the fact that at the very least, you don't have immersion foot syndrome. You have things good in here.
That thought helped a little bit, but it didn't change the fact that they had still been denied of the gear they needed, and now there was heavy breathing against the back of Fox's neck.
Stone must've felt it too, because he sighed as well.
"So they expect us to just throw our men at the danger and get results, no matter the cost?" He clicked his tongue. "And when we do that, a few weeks goes by, and they start complaining about too many casualties."
"Tell me about it." Fox jammed his thumb harder against his skin. There was a burst of pain under it as he found the point of tension. "We need to come up with a new tactic for situations like this. Increase the force or use of weaponry, if the suspect starts heading towards an area we know is unsafe. Update all the patrols with a map of said areas."
Stone started to drum the desk now as well in Fox's place.
"That might work", he said. "At least for now, it's the best we have."
"I'm going to implement it until we get the time to have a larger meeting about this issue." Fox forced himself to straighten up. "Give me the datapad back."
"No", Stone said, frowning at Fox. "You're not supposed to be looking at them. You're not supposed to be even thinking too hard. You can knit together a broken bone, but not a concussed brain. You're lucky I haven't already tattled about you to Index."
"Like Index would do anything."
"He would look sad, and then his two little terrors would come down here and kick the door in", Stone said. "You know they don't respect anyone in here, other than Index."
Fair point. Still, Fox extended his hand.
"I promise I won't do any more work", he said, "but I need to send a couple of messages to Casset. He agreed that there is a very high chance that all of these recent cases are related to some sort of bigger activity, as all of their movements are similar. He promised to look up some old reports from before the war and send them over."
Stone tilted his head.
"That sounds a lot like working", he said. "And why do you need Casset to do it anyway? Couldn't you have asked Mirror to find those reports for you?"
"Mirror has other things to do than to slice through old security databases and see if there is anything even remotely related to this", Fox said. "If a natborn wants to be helpful to us, I'm going to take it. It doesn't happen too often anyway."
Casset was the new head of Security for the intelligence office, though Fox had by now realised that it didn't mean a lot, despite the important-sounding title. Casset's job was basically to keep up with five hundred different channels and double the amount of systems used for processing and archiving information related to security. Most of the time Fox saw him, he was talking to at least three people at the same time through his commlink. But still, for a natborn officer, Casset was not bad. He couldn't tell Fox and his brothers apart most of the time, but that was forgivable, and he, at the very least, didn't try to actively make Fox's life worse.
Stone knew all of that as well. He looked back down at the datapad, and then back at Fox.
"True", he said. "But still. It's still working."
"Well someone has to do it", Fox shot back. "And since all of you are busy picking up my slack, because I got thrown off a moving speeder and landed on my head a little bit too hard, I can type a couple of messages."
Stone himself was still in full armor, despite the fact that he had already been on his feet for at least eleven and a half hours. Perhaps Fox should've adopted the train of thought of just doing as Index had told him to do, so he could get back to work faster and prevent Stone and the others from growing massive bags under their eyes as well, but the truth was that he didn't have the luxury to do that, and that was also something Stone knew.
Stone looked at the datapad again, and then with a very displeased look on his face, he handed it back to Fox.
"I will tell Thorn about this", he said. "And if you're still here doing anything else than messaging Casset when he comes back from his patrol, I hope he throws you into a cell for as long as it takes you to fully recover."
"Whatever." Fox had just opened his messages, when Stone's commlink started to rapidly beep for an incoming call.
"Speak of the man", Stone said, and opened the call. "What is it?"
"We found the suspect on the latest case." Fox sat up a little straighter. What Thorn had just said didn't yet tell him a lot, since they had multiple cases open currently, but he sounded serious enough for Fox to immediately recognise that this was about something important.
"What case?" Stone asked.
"The suspected theft of the hyperdrive parts from the shipments to the GAR mechanics", Thorn explained. "The Nautolan guy who worked as an engineer there. Edix. He managed to slip from the patrol somewhere around level 2100 a couple of days ago."
Stone looked at the datapad in Fox's hands. They had both just read report 448, so at least the whole thing was fresh in their minds.
"Yes, I know him", Stone said. "Are you bringing him in here yourself, or do you need someone else to process him?"
"About that", Thorn sounded like he was grimacing when he spoke, "he is being sent to the medical center at the moment. He was...I don't know how to explain it, but he looked like he had been through a lot during the past couple of days. He was barely coherent, and even that is saying it too nicely. We need to make sure that he doesn't die before we can get anything out of him."
"Was he injured?" Stone asked. The answer should've been straight-forward, but instead, Thorn was quiet for a moment.
"Didn't look like it", he said, finally. Fox scowled at the commlink.
"What do you mean?" He asked. "You just said that he was being transported to medical because you're worried he will die without attention."
Thorn didn't seem at all surprised by the fact that Fox was also there, as he didn't comment on it at all.
"He didn't have any visible injuries, at least not anything bigger than a couple of scratches", he answered. "I'm not a medic or an expert in Nautolan physiology, so I can't say for sure what's going on, but he was just...laying here. Gripping onto the ground like he had just managed to crawl to where he was. Didn't even try to resist the arrest, he just stared at us and sometimes muttered something, but our translation software couldn't pick up clear words from it."
Fox gave Stone a look. This wasn't the usual way of operation. If there were no visible injuries, the suspects were to be transported into the medical section of the prison, where they would be monitored, until they were cleared to be well enough to be admitted for regular processing. Fox knew this. Stone knew this. They both knew that Thorn knew this as well.
Fox also knew that Thorn didn't do decisions that went against regulations without a good reason.
"Why did you call up medical personnel right away?" Fox still had to ask. There was something weird in the way Thorn was speaking. Fox wouldn't have said that he was being too serious, no. He just sounded like he was on edge, in a way that Fox recognised many of his brothers and other officers to be when they had seen something rather gruesome, but were able to compartmentalise it away after years of seeing things just as bad or even worse. The problem was just the fact that what Thorn was describing didn't sound like it was anything too grotesque.
It wasn't like Thorn. Perhaps he was just leaving things out while they were on the call. It could've explained it, at least for now.
Thorn sighed heavily.
"I deemed it necessary", he said, now sounding a bit frustrated. "Look, the medical officers that came to take him away agreed with me, and I'm going to trust their word on this. We want our suspect to be able to withstand interrogation. We've already gotten too much drag for all of this, and I don't want any more of it."
That was true. At least now they would have something to show for themselves.
Fox bit back his own sigh.
"Alright", he said. "We'll talk about this after the official report has been made."
Thorn breathed in deeply a couple of times. They were all working too much, Fox reminded himself, especially now that Fox wasn't doing full hours.
"Yes, Sir", Thorn said. "I'll be back to base in three hours, if nothing else comes up. I hope you're not in your office anymore by then, because I don't have the energy to be gentle with you tonight."
"I can accept that", Fox said. "Call me if something else comes up."
"No, I will be calling Stone, because he is the one on duty right now", Thorn said. "Over."
He ended the call before Fox could say anything else. Stone had the audacity to smirk.
"You heard him", he said, and stood up. "Message Casset, and then go to sleep. I mean it."
Fox sent him a much more vicious glare than the previous ones, but Stone still didn't seem to care. He just took Fox's empty cup of caf from the desk, and marched out of the office without a second look.
Fox leaned back on his chair with a groan. His head definitely hurt now. Maybe it had been hurting to whole time. Who knew. Not Fox, that was for sure.
Going to sleep did sound rather nice, Fox wasn't going to lie. He could've given himself a moment, but he knew that if he did so, he wouldn't be able to make himself do anything else, and he really did need to message Casset. It was the least he could do.
He straightened himself, lifted the datapad, and typed a message. Then he leaned back again and closed his eyes.
He wasn't sure how long had passed, but he startled awake when there was a chime coming from the datapad. Fox straightened himself a bit too fast, making both his neck and head thrum. The light coming from the screen seemed definitely brighter now than it had the last time, and Fox had to squint at the device until he could lower the brightness enough to be able to see clearly.
Casset had gotten the reports. He was sorry for them being not sorted in any way, as he had had to pull them from different filing systems. Fox understood very quickly why he was apologising when he saw the size of the datapack attached to the message.
Fox put his head in his hands and just breathed for a moment.
Then he pressed download.
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Alor and Stray
Alor:
Nobody outside the Coruscant Guard were really sure about Alor.
Any time he got introduced it was by a different number, nobody's sure where he came from, he has no actual batchmates (while not uncommon as there was a war going on, it did add to that… untraceable nature) and yet… updated documents references Stray despite that probably being impossible.
He's also bigger than most clones, even the Commando who claims to be part of the Coruscant Guard (Stray) has to look up slightly. It's especially noticeable as the Corries tend to look smaller than the rest of the GAR...
But no, none of that's really what makes Alor… odd, for maybe a lack of a better description.
No, it was Alor's presence. Like a solid beskar wall looming over you, watching you with a sharp and unbreakable gaze. His tendency to watch people he doesn't consider vode (so pretty much everyone that's not Coruscant Guard), like a Nexu watching prey animals… doesn't go unnoticed by most clones and Jedi definitely don't miss it, it can be felt even through his helmet.
The other Corries seem mostly oblivious to this.
Stray:
Technically he had been assigned to Jedi Knight Baz's Battalion, but as his missions often don't need Stray's type of expertise in stealth, spying, sabotage and blowingup everythingin his path he is allowed to work with the Coruscant Guard any time he's not called to the front. So basically he's on Coruscant most of the time (after all Baz's Battalion primarily handles space battles and the majority of the troops are trained to be pilots, unfortunately not Stray for the most part.). "Officially" anyway. Baz sensed some fishy business going on, it only made sense to station his best (favorite) there seeing as Stray already made friends.
Stray used to have a different name, given to him by his Commando squad but he had dropped it after their deaths. Before he was assigned to Baz he had befriended Hound (who at the time was unaware Stray is a Commando), they had bonded over owning Massiffs, when finally he ended up following his new friend around… where he overheard Commander Fox asking Hound "where do you find these strays?" and he had called himself Stray ever since.
As stated, his batch had been killed in action and are listed as such… updated documents now also list Alor suddenly for some reason so he technically still has one living batchmate?
Stray was the explosives guy in his squad, he's either a very controlled and predictable individual, or a feral piece of work at pretty much a flip of a credit.
He's fully aware of Stray's… presence… and absolutely loves it. Practically makes him feel high with power to have a best friend like Alor right behind him.
Neither are afraid of upsetting the GAR by arresting troublesome troops. In fact it's the highlight of their day.
Don't get me wrong, they absolutely suffer as much as the rest of the Guard. But they find their fun where they can and it shows. Probably helps that Fox doesn't want them anywhere near the senate building or more specifically in direct line of sight of senators on most days.
(Random extra fact: Alor also knows just about every secret way in and out of the barracks, the Senate Building and several parts of the lower levels… he occasionally tells Stray but the passage ways are in a way his dirty little secret, that being said if someone needs a safe path he's willing to show them in a heartbeat…. hence why Commander Fox had been made aware about most of them, not just the commonly known ones that everyone uses….)
Someone once overheard a conversation Stray and Alor were having and proceeded to fear for their life...
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