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weyrwolfen · 8 months

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Eidola: Chapter 12 - CT-441-9891 Frag

Rating: T

Characters: Gen, Clone Trooper OCs, Captain Rex, Ahsoka Tano, and other canon members of the 501st/332nd

Warnings: canon-typical violence; references to self-harm, injuries, and substance abuse; PTSD; it’s post-Order 66 and nobody is having a good time (but they’re all working on it)

Summary: The mission was never to bring down the Empire. Not really. The mission was to save every single one of their chipped brothers. But if doing do helped break the Empire’s stranglehold on the galaxy? Well, that was just a bonus.

“Mom and dad are fighting,” Lighter said in a mock-conspiratorial tone.

Frag stopped turning the makeshift spit over their cooking fire and craned to look back towards the dormant lava tubes which had become their base of operations. Sure enough, the Captain and Commander were back there, having what looked like a very heated argument. “What’s their problem?” he asked.

He wasn’t really expecting anybody to answer, until a long-suffering sigh drew his attention back to the group of brothers sitting around the firepit.

Lighter seemed to be as confused as Frag, but Echo and Tech were looking pointedly at their squad leader. Hunter was giving them both an annoyed glare.

Right, Hunter had been engineered to have better senses than the rest of them. So, he probably could hear whatever their commanding officers were on about. Frag put on his best tooka eyes and turned them on Hunter.

The unimpressed glower Frag got in return could have melted transparisteel. “You’re going to burn those again, kid,” Hunter said, pointing at the skinned and seasoned, lizard-adjacent things Frag was supposed to be babysitting for Eidan.

With a sigh, Frag started turning the spit again.

Maybe his piteous fishing for gossip had been doomed to failure, but Echo looked and sounded genuinely concerned when he prompted, “Hunter?”

Apparently that did the trick, because Hunter finally relented and said, “He doesn’t like that she’s planning on going into the temple without backup. And she’s pointing out that if it’s the kind of temple that pulls Force stunts, it’s very likely that none of us could follow her in, even if we tried.”

Yeah, that’d do it.

Jedi or not, natborn or not, the entirety of the 332nd had seemingly adopted the Commander as their collective little sister. Most of them would have liked to wrap her up in blankets and store her in a safe house, if they thought there was even a small chance she’d stay put.

Which of course she wouldn’t, because whether she claimed the title or not, she was about as Jedi as they came.

It was kind of funny, when viewed from a certain angle. Frag and his brothers had been raised, conditioned, to see the Jedi as the next best thing to gods. And yet, here they all were, worrying themselves ragged because they didn’t think their Jedi could wander around some dusty old ruins without getting herself killed.

On second thought, no, it wasn’t funny at all.

“He knows that he is going to lose the argument,” Tech said matter-of-factly, zapping the tangle of parts in his hands with a compact soldering iron. He’d been tinkering with the wiring of what looked to be a spare set of goggles for a while now.

The Bad Batch’s technical expert seemed to be completely oblivious to the sharp looks which had turned his way. “And how do you figure that?” Lighter finally asked.

“Because he asked me to make her this,” Tech said, holding up his half-completed project. “It will transmit live data on her location and vitals, as well as a visual feed I can use to generate a photogrammetric map of the temple’s interior, should we need to mount a rescue attempt.”

Frag was more familiar with the kind of electronics that went boom, but that sounded like the kind of stuff the commandoes’ fancier buckets could do. Neat.

“And if it transports her to a different point in space or even time?” Hunter asked dryly. At the blank stares that comment earned, he just tapped his ear. “I’m just relaying the potential complications she’s been laying out to Rex.”

Tech’s expression turned sour. “Spatial displacement is traceable with her existing comm tracker, but temporal displacement remains a highly theoretical area of research. I have no way to account for it at the present time,” he said, looking and sounding annoyed and almost embarrassed by his lack of actionable knowledge. On time travel, like that was anything anyone could seriously expect him to be able to handle.

These 99 brothers were something else.

They did have a point though. Frag really, really hoped the temple didn’t decide to get ‘highly theoretical’ on their Commander. That was just about the last thing they needed. Given the dour faces around the fire pit, he wasn’t the only one having similar thoughts.

Nobody spoke for a few minutes. Hunter seemed distracted and Lighter concerned. Echo was definitely keeping a discreet eye on their two, still-arguing COs, and Tech was once again fully absorbed with the electronics in his hands.

Frag traded hands on the jury-rigged spit when his arm started to get tired and kept going. His gloves were good for keeping him from getting burned, but they didn’t do a thing for preventing repetitive motion cramps. This was absolutely droids’ work. Maybe he could sweet talk Tech into making a little belt driven motor to turn the spit in the future. After he finished up his project for the Commander, of course.

“Hey, Frag!” Eidan called from the makeshift kitchen tent. When Frag glanced over at his brother, he was immediately asked, “Is that batch done?”

Frag stopped turning the lizard-things and gave them a critical once over. They looked… the expected shade of reddish-brown? Kind of crispy around the toes and the tips of the tails? Sort of like the last batch, minus the accidental charring?

“I think so?” he yelled back, not bothering to keep the question out of his tone.

“Then bring it here!” Eidan said before ducking back behind the packing tarps which had been strung up as minimal protection from wind and rain.

Frag stood up, grabbed the spit by the closest end, and lifted it out of the forked supports.

Echo rose with him, clearing an easier path for Frag to escape the fire circle without accidentally whacking anybody with the spit. “I’ll let them know the food’s basically done,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Captain Rex and Commander Tano.

He found Eiden stripped of gauntlets and vambraces, blacks rolled up to his elbows, piling up some chopped fungi into a pile on the stripped-bare inner surface of a repurposed stormtrooper cuirass. A mound of cooked leaves, green and purple and mushy-looking, already filled a similarly gutted skid plate. They’d have to get creative with how they’d been serving their food. The Jekai’s galley wasn’t exactly set up for preparing or doling out real food, it had really only contained a weird assortment of mismatched utensils and trays too small for anything other than single-serving field rations.

Frag pulled the lizards off of the spit and piled them up next to the others on a spare piece of shuttle paneling they’d coopted as a platter. Eidan had prepped enough for everybody to have one for themselves and several extras on top of that, just in case. They’d already figured out that Wrecker would easily eat three times the amount a regular trooper could pack away, and Lighter had shared the strongly worded message Kix had sent, basically ordering the Raiders’ medic to cram as much high-protein food into the Commander as possible.

“What else needs doing?” Frag asked once he’d balanced the last carcass precariously on the pile.

“Nothing really,” Eidan said, glancing down at his bare, food-smeared arms and shrugging. “Just comm everybody to let them know the food’s ready.”

“I think Echo’s already–” Frag started to say when the tarp behind him was pulled open once again.

“What’re you cooking?” the Commander asked brightly. “It smells great!”

She looked so cheerful. Any other day, Frag might have totally bought her act. Between Kix’s message, the argument he’d just witnessed her having with Captain Rex, and the couple of comments Hunter’s team had dropped about the situation back at the Imp base, Frag took a second, harder look.

She was smiling, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes, which were red-rimmed and shadowed. She looked tired. Tired and sad and very, very young.

It was easy to forget that sometimes. In terms of cycles lived, she was older than all of the clones, especially Frag, who at ten was the often-teased baby of his Raider team. She was, or had been, a Jedi, a wartime Commander, but none of that negated the fact that there were several planets in the Empire where she still wasn’t old enough to legally purchase an alcoholic drink.

Ah hells. Who was he kidding? He was just as bad as his 332nd brothers.

“Some kind of fluffy lizard,” Frag said, handing her a tray and two of the piping hot carcasses, fresh off the fire. He might not be able to bundle her away somewhere safe, but he could do this. “Dunno if the leaves and fungi will agree with you, but they’re ready too. Dig in.”

Frag hung around the food tent, helping Eidan serve up the evening meal as their brothers filed through, picking up trays and making semi-joking bets about whether the evening’s food would be a success or only edible in the strictest, most clinical sense of the term.

None of that seemed to be setting the newcomers’ minds at ease. Apparently nobody had read them in on the culinary situation on the island.

All of them, even Wrecker, eyed the food with a little trepidation. In the end, Captain Rex had just joined the food line without saying a word, and Tech had made an offhand comment about all clones sharing an engineered resistance to most foodborne pathogens. That seemed to be enough to convince the rest of Clone Force 99 to dig in, even if they didn’t seem particularly excited about it.

Frag wasn’t sure if he should be offended. He’d snuck a few tastes, and the evening’s dishes were all pretty good. Nothing like those scrawny waders from their first week on Wadj, which had been nasty.

Hunter just wrinkled his nose and stepped into line after the Captain. Echo took substantially smaller servings than anyone else, splitting a lizard with Tech, who himself made up the difference with a sizable serving of the leaf stuff. Wrecker piled enough food on his tray to more than balance out his brothers’ smaller shares and then some.

When the last of their brothers had been served, Eidan and Frag loaded up their own trays and exited the tent to join the others. Frag was more than a little surprised when Trip immediately caught his eye and waved Frag over to join him.

Frag settled down between Wisp and Ripple, feeling unaccountably nervous. Not that he didn’t get along with their team leader. He did. It was just, Trip was... Trip. Getting summoned by an officer always made Frag’s stomach drop, like he was about to get dressed down for something. Didn’t matter that he hadn’t done anything deserving of a reprimand, the immediate attack of nerves came anyway.

But Trip knew that about him – by this point, he knew all of their team’s quirks – so he didn’t leave Frag in suspense for long. “You might be going into the Temple in the morning,” he said, cutting immediately to the point.

Oh.

Wait, what?

“I thought the Commander didn’t want an escort?” Frag asked, glancing around the small circle of clones. The sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach worsened.

“She doesn’t,” Lighter replied, sharing a look with Trip. “Captain Rex talked her into some concessions. You’ll only go in if she runs into trouble.”

Well, that was wholly unexpected. “Why me?” he dared to ask.

Trip shrugged. “From what little we’ve seen of the inside of the temple, it’s a mess,” he admitted. “We’re expecting we’ll probably have to clear debris, assuming the interior hasn’t completely collapsed. In which case, it’ll be a short mission.”

So maybe some controlled demo work. It had been a while, but flash training wasn’t exactly something you forgot overnight. And bonus, he’d get to pull out some of his old toys and dust them off.

Assuming he didn’t get possessed by some ancient Jedi’s ghost or some other absurd Force garbage. What were the chances? “Any other recommended gear for reality-bending Force temples?” he asked, trying to bury his very legitimate concerns with dry humor.

Before Trip could say anything, Ripple answered, “Rations.” His tone was flat, and he kept his eyes on his own food, eating mechanically. “You never know.”

Four whole words out of Ripple, all strung together like that. Things were serious.

Frag felt kind of bad about cutting the column apart, but they didn’t really have any other options. Most of the floor-to-ceiling columns, decorated with carved figures and incomprehensible text, had somehow survived the eruption which had engulfed most of the building. They were oddly beautiful, and all the more impressive for their age, but this specific one fallen across the entrance of the only passage that seemed to lead further into the mountain. It had to go if they were going to explore further.

And Commander Tano was pretty insistent that she needed to explore further.

With a sort-of-Jedi on hand, shifting debris wasn’t really the problem, but this column was too big to easily maneuver without running into the other supports. Even Wrecker, with his obvious enthusiasm for blowing things up, had admitted that they shouldn’t worsen any of the alarming cracks which were already in the walls and ceiling. So Frag and his laser cutter had been tasked with carving a wide enough slice out of the column to reveal the door they could just make out behind it.

The row of figures under his hands seemed terribly unimpressed with him, but Frag was making an effort to cut along the empty band between the carvings and the next section of incomprehensible text. Whatever it was, it was too old to be in any current database, but Tech said that it looked similar enough to a few languages that he might be able to translate it eventually. Apparently he had co-opted the Marauder’s main computer to run a few analyses on photographs of the text on the building’s façade.

CT-436-6148 would have freaked out if he’d been here to see this. He would have freaked out over the whole temple really – he’d liked learning about the histories and cultures of other species – but he would have absolutely melted down over Frag destroying something this old.

But CT-436-6148 wasn’t here, and Frag didn’t know where he was or even if he was still alive. They’d been separated some time after their chips had activated, together in one disjointed memory and then not in the next. Frag tried to put his batchmate out of mind.

Instead Frag distracted himself by wondering who these Jedi had been. If they’d even been a Jedi. The Raiders had been calling it a Jedi temple, but was it? Really? It felt weird. Not bad weird, but too-peaceful-to-be-real weird. Like somebody really wanted them to let their guards down and rest, weird. And maybe that was okay. Maybe that was just the light side of the Force, or whatever, but maybe it was a smokescreen, concealing something dangerous.

Nobody had been dumb enough to go poking around without an actual Force-sensitive on hand to make sure it wasn’t a trap, but Commander Tano was here now, and she seemed to think it was okay. Or at least okay enough to explore. He’d overheard her telling the Captain she could hear something singing underground, so that was a little disconcerting.

Frag could see most of the rest of the team milling around the temporary command center. Tech was doing something to his holoprojector, which was projecting a model of the temple’s entrance hall. It flickered and shifted, leaving ghostly, half-formed models of the people moving around the room.

This end of the huge entrance hall was just barely bright enough to limit the utility of their night vision settings. It was kind of creepy, in all honesty. Every time the model updated, or someone walked in front of one of their yellow chemlights, or just turned their head and sent their helmet lights shining off in a new direction, the shadows moved too. It made the carved figures look like they were moving. Frag wasn’t a fan.

“I’m about to make the final cut. Are you ready down there?” he called down to Wrecker, not able to see the big clone around the curvature of the column without standing, but knowing he was there.

“Just finish up,” Wrecker yelled back, sounding more than a little impatient.

Frag scooted himself into position so his helmet light could illuminate the right spot, double checked the laser cutter’s depth setting, lined it up so the sensors reported he was angled just right, and activated the beam. Centimeter by centimeter, the last sliver of rock holding the section of column in place burned away. He was tense, waiting for the rock to crack, to shear away unpredictably, but the gray-white, crystalline rock didn’t seem too prone to doing that. It held up, right until the last second, when Frag’s laser sliced through the last sliver of stone and the entire section settled with a heavy, grinding thud.

Frag pulled his cutter away, keeping his hands well clear of the gap, and then noticed with a lurch that the huge section of column had started to roll.

But then Wrecker yelled, “Got it!” and sure enough, the column’s progress continued in starts and stops, as if he was finding handhold after handhold to roll it along. Tech and Hunter had assured him that Wrecker was plenty strong enough to deal with a section of column twice the planned size of this one, but Frag hadn’t been entirely convinced until that exact moment. He wondered what the Kaminoans had done to their brother to make that possible. Human bone could only handle so much force before it cracked under the strain, and that wasn’t even getting into the material limitations of the body’s other tissues. Maybe they’d slipped some non-human genes into Wrecker’s DNA? Grafted something synthetic into his tissues? Who even knew?

Probably Tech. Maybe Frag would ask later.

Frag stayed where he was, on top of the main section of the column, and watched the doorway slowly appear as Wrecker rolled the huge slice of stone out of the way. It was arched, framed in the same mysterious writing that covered the walls and ceiling of the rest of the temple, and only a little crushed by whatever had sent the huge column crashing into the wall.

“Here,” Commander Tano said, from next to the holoprojector. “Let me,” and the column abruptly rose with her lifted hands, rotated to the side, and drifted towards the distant wall.

Frag sat up, secured the laser cutter in his pack, and then started to pick his way down the side of the column, finding hand- and footholds on the line of carved figures. The relief was low enough that he couldn’t manage that for long – plastoid boots were great for keeping your feet from getting crushed, but kind of garbage for wriggling into shallow, tight spaces – so Frag finally just let go, slithering down the side of the column in a semi-controlled fall. He landed with an awkward little stumble, but still managed to stay on his feet. Not bad, given that he’d needed the Commander to hoist him up there in the first place.

Captain Rex and Echo were already checking out the doorway, helmet lights shining into the dark corridor, when Frag finished dusting himself off and making sure nothing had been dislodged from his utility belt in the fall.

The hallway didn’t look like much. Dark. Creepy, just like everything else in the temple. The feeling of unnatural peace seemed to flow out of the door.

“See anything interesting?” the Commander asked, apparently done securing the section of column.

“Not really,” the Captain replied, turning to look back at her with his visor angled a little down and to the side so he wouldn’t shine his lights directly in her eyes. It wasn’t an issue for the other troopers, their HUDs could adjust, but the Commander’s modified goggles didn’t have that feature. “Can you sense anything?”

She nodded, expression distant and eyes unfocused behind her tinted goggles. “It feels like Ilum,” she said, not that Frag had any idea what Ilum was.

Apparently Captain Rex did, because he just nodded. “Your call,” he said.

“I’m going in,” she said firmly.

And that pretty well settled it.

Frag dropped his pack off next to his blaster, against one of the intact columns, and joined the rest of the team. The map had already updated itself, showing the shifted piece of column and a little bit of the hallway beyond the doorway. There were even little wisps of vaguely person-shaped blurs, where everyone was standing.

Commander Tano exchanged a few words with Echo and Captain Rex, made sure her hood wasn’t obstructing the camera or lights Tech had affixed to her goggles, and started down the hallway.

The darkness seemed to swallow her up.

“The floor is angling down,” she said, sounding calm. “No cracks in the walls or anything, so far everything looks to be in good shape.”

Frag snuck a sideways peek at the direct feed from her camera on Tech’s datapad, but all he saw was an empty hallway with blank, stone walls and a low ceiling.

The Commander kept up a steady stream of chatter, talking about the lack of carvings on the walls, the thick coating of dust on the floor, the song of the Force. That was part of the deal the Captain had cut with her. As long as her vitals were normal and she kept in touch over the comms, their team would stay put in the entrance hall.

The projected map grew, even if it wasn’t terribly interesting so far. The long, straight corridor narrowed down considerably, but it was in surprisingly good condition. Given the damage to the entrance hall, Frag had kind of assumed that things would get dicier the further into the volcano they went. So had everybody else. That was, after all, the entire reason he’d been assigned to the team: to help deal with any debris or ceiling collapses they encountered.

The first grave they encountered was a surprise. Much to Tech’s obvious annoyance, everyone pressed in close to get a better look at his datapad. Each rectangular nook, carved at chest height into the wall, contained the dusty, half-crumbled remnants of what had clearly been humanoid skeletons. A spray of crystals seemed to grow out of each ruined ribcage, some even anchored directly to the brittle bones. They caught Commander Tano’s lights, flashing and casting odd shadows on the back wall of the alcoves.

“Those are kyber crystals,” Commander Tano breathed, bending close to get a better look.

“The things Jedi use to power their lightsabers?” Hunter asked after a moment’s silence.

“Yes,” the Commander said, sounding almost reverent. “But they’re more than that. It’s… hard to explain.” She moved on to the next grave, looking, but not touching the remains or their crystals. “They’re not exactly sentient, but they might as well be.”

That didn’t make any sense. How could something without a brain be almost sentient? Frag just filed that under ‘weird Jedi stuff’ and looked back at the map. There could be miles of tunnels down there, filled with dead Jedi.

Creepier and creepier. He was kind of relieved that it looked like he might not be needed anymore.

“I thought the Jedi cremated their dead,” Captain Rex said carefully, as if he was worried he might offend the Commander with a more direct question.

“We do,” she said, but her voice faltered and she amended, “We did. But traditions change, and I’m not sure these are actually Jedi. I don’t mean that they’re Sith either!” She rushed to clarify, apparently realizing how that statement was being taken by her backup squad. “I just meant, these graves are old. I don’t know how old, but kyber crystals take a long time to grow. They might pre-date the Jedi order, or they might be a separate group, which broke away from the rest of the Jedi. Nothing says they have to be Force-users at all. There have been lots of religious sects who worshipped the Force, even if they couldn’t really wield it. Monastic groups, just all sorts of other possible things.”

Frag caught himself thinking about CT-441-9898 again. He would have loved this.

Frag didn’t love this. Sentient crystals growing on dead, not-exactly-Jedi were not his idea of a good time. Not that he was going to admit to anybody how much his skin was crawling over the whole situation.

“I should keep going,” the Commander said. She sounded distracted, like she was listening to something else. Or someone else, because obviously the situation wasn’t creepy enough.

She found more graves as she went. The single row became two, then four, lining either side of the hallway from floor to ceiling. Some of the skeletons were clearly not human, even though Frag would have been hard pressed to identify every species, especially in the dim lights of the Commander’s video feed. Others had crumbled to dust and fragments which could only be identified as bone with a little creativity. There didn’t seem to be a link between the condition of the remains and the extent of the crystal growth. A few of the smallest clusters of kyber had grown in the most decayed nooks, while one grave had been spilling over with crystals, glittering from the walls, the ceiling, mounding up over a shroud-wrapped body, pieces of the woven fabric perfectly preserved and encased in kyber.

The hallway forked numerous times, but Commander Tano never hesitated, taking turns and ignoring corners with uncanny certainty. She did switch back on her own trail once, making a series of four left turns in rapid succession. Frag thought that was weird, but then Tech made an annoyed sound under his breath.

Echo leaned over, giving the model a critical eye. “What’s the problem?” he asked.

Tech indicated the location of her first turn. “The model is now registering a wall across that entranceway,” he said, and sure enough, there was a faint barrier where one hadn’t been before. “I cannot explain it.”

“Could it just be an error in the program?” Lighter asked.

Tech gave him a nasty look. “No,” he said sharply, despite the clear evidence projected in his model.

“You still with us, Commander?” the Captain asked over the open comms.

The video feed from her headset jerked, like the question had surprised her, but then she finally answered, “Yeah, still here.”

But then her video feed winked out.

Tech barely had time to announce the oddity before the Captain had grabbed the datapad and flipped it around to get a better look. Frag couldn’t see anything from the new angle, but the map started to glitch oddly too. Disconnected fragments of hallway sprung up in isolated patches, spread far enough apart to suggest she was moving incredibly quickly, even for a Jedi.

“Commander, report,” Captain Rex snapped, watching more, disjointed sections of map spring to life.

She didn’t answer.

Tech snatched his datapad back from the Captain and looked at it, scowling. “Something is intermittently blocking her signal,” he said, scowling down at the device. “Her heartrate and cortisol levels seem to be spiking.”

Frag knew where this was going, even before Captain Rex spoke.

“We’re going in. Fire everything up,” he finally said, already striding in the direction of the dark entrance. “Beacons, lights, cameras, everything.”

This seemed like a Force problem, and not exactly a shoot-it-with-blasters problem. But, Frag wasn’t about to argue with the Captain. He also wasn’t about to just abandon the Commander down there alone, so he stuffed down his reservations, punched the correct codes into the keypad on his vambrace, and gathered up his gear.

“Tech, we’re going to need directions,” the Captain said as everyone formed at the tunnel’s entrance.

“I cannot guarantee your armor won’t be affected the same way as the Commander’s,” Tech replied distractedly, wholly absorbed with whatever data were rolling across the screen of his datapad. “I will guide you as far as I am able, but you may need to rely on Hunter’s skillset, if your comms are compromised.”

“Understood,” the Captain said, sounding a whole lot more confident than Frag felt. “We’re not here to collect souvenirs,” he said, turning his attention to the rest of the team. “Don’t touch anything you don’t have to.”

As if Frag had been considering grave robbing a bunch of dead Jedi, even before the Captain’s pre-dawn briefing on the Force complications they might encounter if they ended up following the Commander into the temple. Frag didn’t care what the black-market value for kyber was, it wasn’t worth getting haunted over.

Captain Rex and Hunter took point. Frag and Lighter followed them, with Echo and Wrecker covering their backs. The Commander’s smaller, booted footprints were clearly visible in the thick layer of dust on the floor. The team set off at a controlled jog down the tunnel, following her trail. Wrecker complained that he was going to hit his head if the ceiling got any lower.

He had a point. The hallway was claustrophobic already, barely wide enough to let the clones move in two parallel lines, and Frag didn’t have Wrecker’s extra height and bulk to consider.

The graves were just as creepy as Frag had expected, not that they slowed down to inspect any of them too closely. Empty eye sockets watched them pass. Crystals caught their helmet lights, scattering multicolored flashes against the walls of each carved nook.

The hallway didn’t feel peaceful anymore. It felt watchful, expectant.

Tech kept up a periodic commentary on the Commander’s location, and sometimes the Captain asked him follow up questions. She had apparently slowed down, she was circling back on her own path, her vitals were still within ranges consistent with significant stress and exertion, but not injury.

Most everyone else was quiet. It was silly, but Frag got the impression that if he spoke, if he even breathed too loudly, he might wake something up. For long stretches, the only sound was their footfalls, soft as they could manage in full armor.

They’d just turned another corner when their comms crackled to life. “Everyone stop,” Tech said, tone sharp. “Go back, you should have taken the other fork.”

What fork? Frag and Lighter shared a look, confusion clear even with their buckets sealed, and then glanced behind them at an equally bewildered Echo and Wrecker.

“Tech, there wasn’t a fork,” Echo said, turning to shine his helmet lights behind him. “It was just a turn in the hallway.”

The silence wasn’t exactly heartening. Finally, Tech said, “Show me.”

Frag felt a hand on his shoulder and looked over to see Captain Rex, who jerked his helmet a little to the side in an obvious request to let Hunter and him through. Frag shuffled closer to the wall to get out of their way, trying not to bump the closest skeletal occupant with his pack in the process. A glint in Frag’s peripheral vision caught his eye, and he turned his head to see what it was.

A half-crumbled skull with a spray of crystals growing out of its eye socket stared back at him.

Frag flinched, and then felt like an idiot for it. Sure, the light caught the crystals oddly, making them look almost alive, but that wasn’t any excuse. He really needed to get his helmet on straight.

“There’s no other hallway here, Tech,” the Captain repeated, shining his helmet lights over the graves in the offending section of wall.

“Rex, look at this,” Hunter said, crouching down and pointing at something on the floor.

Echo and Wrecker had shuffled closer to try to see what had caught Hunter’s attention, so Frag and Lighter were left to try to crane around them.

“What’s going on?” Lighter asked, apparently coming to the conclusion that trying to see around Wrecker was a losing proposition.

“Commander Tano’s footprints stop in front of that wall,” Echo replied without looking around. He sounded grim, but the words made no sense. It took a second for them to really register with Frag.

“What?” he asked, because surely he’d heard that wrong, but Echo didn’t repeat himself. He just rested his organic hand on the butt of his blaster, fingers clenching and unclenching around the grip.

“I really don’t like this,” Wrecker said under his breath, speaking for all of them.

“Tech, are you sure she went through here?” the Captain asked steadily, but there was an edge in his voice that sent Frag’s stomach twisting.

“Yes,” came the immediate reply, but it lacked Tech’s usual certainty. “But I will check my program again.”

“I don’t think it’s your program,” Hunter said, straightening from his half crouch. “It’s not just her tracks that end at this wall.”

Well, that couldn’t mean anything good. Hunter had to be referring to his other senses, but that was ridiculous. People didn’t just disappear through walls.

Except apparently, they did.

Right… Haunted Jedi catacombs.

Hunter cautiously pressed a hand against the floor separating two of the stacked graves, as if half-expecting it to dissolve in front of their eyes, but the stone was solid.

The Captain stepped up next to him, running his hands over the wall as well, obviously searching for anything other than rough-cut rock. “Frag, get over here,” he ordered. Frag jerked, surprised by the summons, but then hastened to comply, awkwardly shouldering his way past a very tense, uncharacteristically quiet Wrecker. “Can you cut through this wall?”

“Uh, yes, but…” Frag trailed off, really not wanting to question a superior officer, especially not this one. The wall was just stone; he’d come prepped to blast through even tougher materials. He just needed to bore a hole, insert one of the smaller charges from his pack, and boom. New door. But…

But dead Jedi, disappearing halls, sentient Force crystals… What if we wake something up?

The Captain gripped Frag’s shoulder, apparently understanding his silent reservations. “Start small, just something we can see through first. Then we’ll figure out where to go from there.”

Frag nodded. He could do that.

“I’m guessing this is the interference Tech mentioned,” Captain Rex said, turning to look at each of them in turn. “Keep your eyes and ears open.” Then he motioned for Hunter and his team to follow him further down the hallway, obviously intent on continuing the conversation without the two Raiders. A moment later, their comm symbols winked out in Frag’s HUD as the open feed was shut down.

Frag kind of wondered what they were discussing, but then again, he probably didn’t want to know.

He tapped his gauntleted knuckles against the stone, working his way up and down the walls separating the neighboring columns of graves from the corner. It really did just feel like regular stone. He pulled out his laser cutter and started fiddling with its settings, increasing the diameter of the beam and dialing the depth of penetration way back. He figured he should try this in five centimeter increments, in case he cut through the wall and into the back of another grave or something.

Lighter was hovering at Frag’s shoulder, angled so he could watch the bend in the corridor not currently filled with their higher-ranking brothers. He wasn’t sure what the medic could actually do about shifting hallways and dead Jedi watching them with creepy, kyber eyes, but Frag felt better having someone watch his back all the same.

Frag eyeballed the center of the stretch of wall separating the graves and set the cutter parallel with the waist-height floors separating the alcoves, figuring that’d be the most structurally sound spot to cut. When the sensors read the correct angle, he activated the beam, burning a small hole into the rock.

Nothing happened.

Frag pulled out his backup flashlight and shone it into the fresh bore.

Yup, that was a small, round hole in a rock wall. And the Force hadn’t struck him dead for the transgression. So far, so good.

He dialed up the length of the beam and continued.

After a couple additional passes, his flashlight beam wasn’t strong enough to shine all the way to the bottom of the hole, but the cutter was still reading resistance every time he upped the depth. As best as he could tell, there wasn’t a hallway on the other side of this wall. As best as he could tell, there wasn’t another side to this wall, just a solid mass of Force-possessed volcano which had eaten their Commander.

Maybe it was going to eat them too.

Frag dropped his forehead forward to rest against the wall. When that didn’t do anything to alleviate the sick, twisting feeling that had set up shop in his gut, he pushed himself back with a frustrated snarl and set his cutter against the wall again.

“Force osik,” Lighter announced in between cuts, obviously trying to sound flippant, but failing miserably.

He was scared, too.

That made Frag feel both better and so, so much worse.

Lighter was a generation one, decanted around the same time as the Captain, so Frag wasn’t just being a total tubie about this situation.

On the other hand, Lighter was a generation one, a veteran of who even knew how many campaigns. He’d seen it all, done it all, and had the scars to prove it. Nobody could call him a coward with a straight face, so if he was scared, then maybe Frag should be terrified.

“That’s Mandalorian, right?” Frag asked, trying to distract himself.

Lighter nodded. “Mando’a, but yeah.”

Mando’a. Right.

Frag had been deployed early, when he was only eight cycles old. The Republic had been getting desperate near the end of the war, demanding soldiers at a rate the Kaminoan backlog of growing clones couldn’t support. He’d had maybe two weeks’ worth of advanced combat training with a human bounty-hunter named Gard before being sent off to Felucia, and then maybe two months before Order Sixty-Six had gone into effect. He’d barely earned himself a couple yellow stripes on his armor and picked out a name for himself before all of it had been taken away from him.

He’d heard that some of the higher-ranking, first gen brothers had learned directly from Jango Fett, and they’d picked up some Mando’a from him. After that, they’d been deployed of course, adding words and phrases, mostly insults and profanities, from the species and cultures they’d encountered. Then the next wave of clone troopers had been deployed, and the next. They’d all picked up new words and dropped old ones, adopting a seemingly random selection of slang from at least a half-dozen languages into their day-to-day conversations.

Frag could follow along, sort of, using context clues and repetition, but he’d barely been with the Raiders longer than he’d served in the entire war. It made him feel like a shiny still, despite the solid year he’d been on the front lines after his chip had activated, putting down local uprisings for the Empire. He’d been stuck with a mostly-natborn regiment, and none of them had cussed in anything other than Galactic Basic.

“That means excrement, right?” he asked Lighter, dialing up his cutter’s depth settings again.

Frag risked a glance when Lighter didn’t immediately answer. He couldn’t read the expression on the medic’s face, but he could guess what it was from the way his brother’s helmet was canted. “You’re seriously asking me to teach you to cuss, at the bottom of a Force-cursed Jedi crypt?” he asked, incredulous.

“Yeah, I guess I am,” Frag replied, setting the cutter against the wall and adjusting the angle. “Kind of feeling like I don’t have the right words to describe our current situation.”

Lighter snorted at that. “I can’t argue with that. Yeah kid, osik means ‘excrement,’ but it doesn’t have to be literal.”

That made sense.

He was about to ask about ‘kark,’ which seemed to be one of the most grammatically confusing swears he had yet to hear, when the rest of the team’s open comm symbols flickered back to life in his HUD and the Captain asked, “Making any headway?”

“Not really, sir,” Frag said, letting his cutter fall to his side and turning around to face the rest of the approaching team. “Two point five meters in, and no end in sight.”

Captain Rex just nodded, like he’d been expecting that answer. Like that wasn’t completely insane. “We need to find out if any of the side passages loop back around to her trail. You two, stay here in case anything changes,” he said, obviously directing that last bit to Frag and Lighter. “The rest of us will scout up ahead.” He nodded towards the tunnel they’d started down, before Tech had stopped them.

Lighter cocked his head a little to the side. “Why not back the way he came?” he asked. “There were some side tunnels back there.”

Echo and Hunter shared an unreadable look behind the Captain’s back.

“The way’s blocked,” Wrecker said when nobody else seemed like they were going to answer. He sounded grim.

Wrecker never sounded grim.

“Like, a rock fall, or like…” Frag jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the out-of-place wall, not bothering to finish his question.

He really wanted it to be a rock fall. A rock fall he could handle, easy.

It wasn’t a rock fall. Quiet as the catacombs were, they would have heard something.

“Our tracks end in front of another wall,” Hunter said, confirming Frag’s suspicion.

Lighter said something under his breath that had the definite cadence of Mandalorian. Mando’a. Whatever. Frag couldn’t follow it, but it sounded rude, and angry, and resigned.

Frag just swallowed, not appreciating the way his stomach was twisting itself into knots at the news. “Okay,” he finally managed to say, sounding more than a little choked. “We’ll stay here.”

“Keep your comms open, we won’t be long,” the Captain said, but even though he sounded perfectly collected, something in his tone sent the skin down the back of Frag’s neck prickling.

Their brothers set off with the Captain in the lead and Wrecker last, trudging along like he was marching to his own execution. Frag couldn’t think of anything to say, everything that came to mind felt a little too close to a goodbye, and he refused to put that kind of thought out there for the cursed tombs and their doubly-cursed occupants to hear.

“First right,” Hunter reported a few seconds later, and then after a longer pause he continued, “Bypassing a left fork. Tech, are you getting this?”

Frag jerked when a loud burst of static assaulted his ears. Lighter did too, so it wasn’t just a glitch in Frag’s helmet. It must have gone out over all their comms. Tech’s designation had rolled up to the top of their group with the unexpected sound, but they couldn’t hear anything intelligible in the noise.

“Tech, say again?” Hunter demanded, as soon as the static stopped. “Te–”

Everyone except Lighter abruptly disappeared from Frag’s HUD.

The silence made the dark just that much more oppressive.

“Lighter, did your comms cut out too?” Frag asked, clinging to the hope that his bucket was just acting up.

Lighter glanced at him, visor unreadable, and then turned to look down the hallway where the others had disappeared. “Yeah, kid. They did,” he admitted.

If their comms had cut out, then the Captain and the others would notice too, right? They’d turn around and come back, regroup and decide what to do next.

Frag didn’t say anything. He didn’t trust his voice not to crack if he’d tried. He just checked his chronometer – it read 10:14 – and watched the hallway for their returning team.

They didn’t appear.

He checked his chrono again, but it still read 10:14, which didn’t make sense. Sure, he was being a little impatient. Given the situation, he thought he’d earned the right to be, but it had really felt like longer than one minute.

His chrono flickered, rolling over to 10:15, but then immediately skipping ahead to 10:49.

Maybe there was something wrong with his helmet after all? Could there be something down here that was messing with their electronics? Some kind of radiation or radio signal? That would explain at least a little of the weirdness, not the walls appearing and disappearing, but the comms…

Except no. Hunter definitely would have sensed something like that.

“Lighter, is your chrono acting up?” he asked, and sure enough his voice cracked like a mid-puberty cadet. Humiliating.

“What do you mean?” Lighter asked, just as Frag’s chrono skipped again, this time falling back to 10:46. They were both silent for a moment, and then Lighter said, “Yours just did that too, right? Went backwards a few minutes?”

“It’s gotta be something electronic, right?” Frag asked, but all he could think about was Hunter’s dry recitation of the argument between the Captain and the Commander yesterday. Time. Sometimes Jedi temples could mess with time. Had they just jumped back in time a few minutes, or forward a full cycle? Or more?

Lighter didn’t answer. He just took a hesitant step in the direction the other four had disappeared.

Frag forced himself to stop thinking too hard about it, because the other option was going to end with him hyperventilating right there in the hallway. He leaned against the wall, instinctively seeking out a little extra support, but stumbled backwards when his pack didn’t meet the expected solid stone.

His involuntary shout of surprise sent Lighter whirling around, blaster ripped from its holster and ready to fire.

They both froze. Frag’s arms were still flung out to his side, seeking balance or at least a handhold to catch himself.

He was standing in the missing hallway. The wall, complete with his drill hole, had disappeared again.

“Okay,” he said, mouth running with nerves. “Okay,” he repeated, forcing himself to lower his arms and look around himself.

Lighter stepped forward, blaster still out and ready. His helmet light skimmed up and around the doorway.

Frag looked down and sucked in another surprised gasp. “Lighter, look here!”

The Commander’s small tread was there, but now there were others too. One unusually large set, even if the tread was familiar, just the standard pattern on the bottom of all their boots to give them better grip on unsteady footing. One other was oddly angular, with a different pattern, and there were a few more that were a perfect match for the prints Frag himself had just left, stumbling through the dust.

Frag wasn’t a great tracker, but he knew a few of the basics. He’d lay every credit he’d ever seen on these tracks belonging to Wrecker, Echo, Hunter, and the Captain.

Or something wanted him to think that?

Lighter stepped forward cautiously into the hallway, lights joining Frag’s on the floor and the tracks left there in the thick blanket of dust.

“Do we follow them?” Frag asked, falling back on training and experience and trust that an older brother would know what to do.

But Lighter seemed just as shaken as Frag. “I don’t know,” he admitted, voice strangled. “What if it’s a trap?”

This whole place was a trap. What kind of question was that?

“Look,” Frag said, half trying to psyche himself up and half trying to legitimately work through the problem at hand. “Look, even if those don’t belong to the Captain and the others, the Commander’s were definitely real. Hunter smelled her, or… or whatever it is he does. They were real.”

Were they? Was any of this?

“Yeah, okay,” Lighter said, taking another step forward and scanning the hallway like he was still expecting an ambush. “You might have a point.” He still looked back over his shoulder, hesitating.

“We could leave something, in case…” Frag trailed off, not wanting to give voice to the numerous reservations and fears which were vying for attention in the back of his head. “Just in case. A note or something.”

“Did you bring some karking stationary with you?” Lighter asked sarcastically, but Frag would take it, if it meant the medic kept sounding more like his usual self.

“We’ve got to have something we can use, between our two packs,” Frag insisted.

In fact, they had several things. Lighter wasn’t about to give up any of his bandages as a banner, but they managed to tear a strip out of Frag’s thin, thermal blanket and the medic burned a message into the fire-resistant material with his field cauterizer.

‘Hallway to Commander opened. Following her. L&F’

The letters were a little wobbly, and the arrow Lighter added as a crude set of directions was worse, but it was legible, which was all that really mattered. They left it at the junction where the two hallways came together. Frag weighted it down with one of his containers of two-part explosive putty, much good it had done him so far on this mission. If he ended up needing some later, he had more.

“Eat something,” Lighter repeated with just enough of a threat behind his words that Frag gritted his teeth, but did not argue. His stomach wasn’t interested in food in the slightest, but arguing about it wasn’t going to do any good.

“Fine,” he grumbled, reaching behind him and finding his way into the correct compartment of his pack by feel alone.

Their chronometers were still acting up, skipping around or slowing to a crawl for no obvious reason. Nevertheless, when the broken thing had rolled over noon, Lighter had started pestering Frag about eating and drinking something.

Medics.

Frag slung his blaster rifle over one shoulder, opened the ration bar, then popped his seals and pulled off his helmet to start eating. They didn’t stop walking though; he could see well enough in the light from Lighter’s bucket.

The skeletons in the graves were less visible without his HUD’s light adjustment settings. He wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse. It definitely didn’t make him forget the oppressive feeling of being watched from those dark alcoves.

Frag didn’t have a good word to describe how the hallway smelled. Dry, like old flimsi, and stale, like a shuttle whose CO2 scrubbers were in desperate need of changing.

The ration bars tasted like dust and something worse. Decay. When he’d finally gagged half of it down with a few swigs of water from one of the canteens he’d packed, Frag was more than relieved to seal his helmet back up. He had a sneaking suspicion that the pervasive dust wasn’t just coming from the stone walls.

“Your turn,” Frag said, extending the other half of his ration bar in his brother’s direction.

Lighter was silent for a few seconds, and when he answered, it was only to say, “Later.”

Frag still didn’t argue, even if the refusal made him grit his teeth. He understood the need to stretch their supplies as far as they could. Neither one of them had any idea how long they were going to be down here. But it still felt like Lighter was treating him like a cadet. Between the two of them, having a healthy and functioning medic seemed like a much higher priority than whatever Frag was on this mission. Dead weight. The most useful thing he’d done so far was follow Ripple’s recommendations to pack extra rations, but so had everyone else. He was less than worthless down here, just one more mouth in need of their limited food and hydration, with nothing tangible to provide in return.

Frag shoved the half-eaten bar back into his pack and promised himself to refuse another bite until Lighter ate something too.

The footprints in front of them kept changing. Sometimes there were multiple sets, from way more than four pairs of boots. Other times, they only saw the commander’s smaller tracks. Her stride was really long, a sure sign that she had been running at this point, but towards what or away from whom, they couldn’t tell.

Frag was trying to ignore the graves on either side of him, but when he spotted a half-familiar crystal formation spilling out of one nook like a frozen waterfall, he couldn’t help glancing into it as they passed. There was a skull there, near-human, but sporting a crown of small horns. They looked similar to a Zabrak’s, but the count and spacing weren’t quite right. The first time Frag had seen it, he’d distracted himself by wondering if maybe the horns’ owner had been a hybrid of some sort.

The second time he’d seen it, he’d stumbled in surprise and sudden fear. The hallway they’d been following since leaving their message for the others was long and straight, and they hadn’t turned off of the path once. He’d bumped into Lighter – the two of them had started walking so closely they were constantly bumping shoulders anyway, as if both of them were worried the tunnels might throw a wall up between them if given the slightest chance – and had cracked a joke about his own clumsiness. It had fallen thoroughly flat, but Lighter hadn’t questioned him further.

This was the fourth time he’d seen that same, distinctive skull, toppled over in the same, staring position. Frag clenched his hands around his blaster rifle and walked past it.

He still hadn’t told Lighter about it. The medic was being overbearing enough as it was. No reason to stress him out even more.

Frag tried to even out his breathing, catching himself slipping closer to shallow, panicked panting if he didn’t make an effort to calm down.

Same thing with thinking about the impossibly repeating skull, or the impossibly disappearing and reappearing footprints, or the impossibly moving walls, or, or, or…

He couldn’t think about any of those things, not without cracking up completely, so he just concentrated on putting one foot in front of the next and hoped.

The press of the darkness and the pervasive feeling that the dead Jedi were watching him were really starting to get to Frag. He kept thinking he heard footsteps or voices, echoing oddly up and down the silent corridors, but he didn’t want to ask if Lighter was hearing them too. He wasn’t sure if a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ answer would be worse.

Apparently his brother could follow his thoughts just fine though, because only a few minutes later Lighter said, “Whatever you’re seeing or hearing, just ignore it.” He sounded tense and harsh and almost angry. “This place is trying to kark with us.”

Yeah, Frag definitely needed to work out the exact definition of that word. He could use some descriptive profanities just then. He choked down a laugh he was pretty certain would have come out sounding more than a little hysterical. “It’s doing a good job of it,” he admitted, hating how unsteady he sounded.

“Don’t let it.”

Easier said than done.

When Frag didn’t immediately answer, Lighter caught him by the spaulder and yanked him around. “We’re getting out of here,” he said, his voice a harsh grate. “We’re finding the others, and then we’re leaving. We’re going to be fine.” He almost sounded like he believed his own osik.

“You don’t know that,” Frag muttered under his breath, dropping his blaster to one side, and then repeated, louder, when Lighter just stared at him. “You don’t know that.” He was sick of Lighter treating him like a tubie, sick of feeling utterly powerless, sick of the temple or the dead Jedi or whatever was playing games with him. Sick of all of it, really.

Lighter shoved him back against the wall of the hallway. Frag’s pack hit the uneven graves with a clatter of jostled equipment and plastoid. It sounded like something dry and brittle had snapped under his weight, but Frag didn’t have much time to really think about that before Lighter was in his face, hand locked under the bell of his spaulder, arm pressed against his chest where a little pressure could send it up and against his less armored neck.

Frag instinctively grabbed Lighter’s wrist with one hand, halfway towards executing a twisting maneuver to break the medic’s grip, when he paused. This was his brother. His older brother, who outranked him in every way that mattered. Everything in his training was screaming at him to not fight, to listen, to obey.

“So what’s your plan then, kid?” Lighter said, and there was none of the usual affection in the way he drawled over that last word. “Gonna tuck tail and run? Leave your brothers and your Jedi down here to die?”

Frag saw red.

He had no idea how he managed it, and probably couldn’t repeat the maneuver in a moment of sober lucidity. But even though Frag was pressed flat against the wall, he somehow managed to kick a booted foot between Lighter’s legs, hook an ankle behind his brother’s foot, and send Lighter and himself both crashing to the floor. After that, the situation devolved into a tangle of knees and fists and elbows.

The words streaming out of his mouth were mingled denials and the most scathing, insulting combinations of half-understood terms he could imagine. He was pretty certain he wasn’t making sense, especially around the point he’d managed to tear off Lighter’s helmet while suggesting the medic do something anatomically inadvisable with an acklay.

He didn’t care.

He knew he was going to lose. He knew Lighter had more training, and more experience, and just more of everything than Frag had been given a chance to learn. He knew he was the weak link on this mission, but that didn’t mean he needed to be coddled or guilted or lied to in order to convince him to do what needed doing. He wasn’t planning on leaving anyone down here in this cursed tomb, not if he could help it at all, but he was going to leave a boot print across his brother’s face if it was the last thing he managed to do.

“Force, kid, calm the kark down,” Lighter said through gritted teeth. He had already ripped Frag’s helmet off and was holding one of his arms twisted up behind his back. With his other hand, he was struggling to pin Frag’s face down against the floor in an attempt to subdue him further. “I didn’t mean–”

Frag bit Lighter’s gloved fingers. Hard.

Lighter yelped, and Frag used his momentary distraction to twist out of his brother’s grip, getting just enough leverage to half stand and throw himself backwards in a move that should have slammed Lighter against the far wall, dislodging him further.

It didn’t work out quite like that.

They both went sprawling into a side passage that had not been there when the fight had started.

Lighter let go of Frag completely and staggered to his feet, looking around wildly at their new surroundings.

Frag picked up a smashed helmet light, neither knowing nor caring which one of them had lost it in the fight, and hurled it down the new hallway with a snarl of unfocused frustration and rage at whatever was toying with them.

The broken light hurtled out of sight before it hit the ground with a sharp crack, bounced, cracked against the floor again, and then collided with something softer.

Frag froze, fear dousing his irrational fury in an instant.

Whatever it was, whoever it was he had hit with that stupid, thoughtless stunt, moved.

Frag staggered back, instinctively putting himself between his brother and whatever he’d managed to wake up.

Something scraped against the stone floor, sounding like booted feet, and a pair of eyes reflected back the lights from their helmets, red-orange pinpricks.

Frag raised his blaster and was instantly answered with a rush of static followed by a low hum of energy.

Two unfamiliar, yellow-green lightsabers blazed in the darkness.

“Oh, Kark.”

AN: Other chapters are available here.

Dividers by freesia-writes using helmets by lornaka. More designs available here.

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one-real-imonkey · 3 years

Note

New au idea (it's a little au of au.) After the kavado fiasco palpapunk gets Rex transferred to the corasant guard with the excuse that he would to unstable to be on the front lines in an attempt to make Anakin more reliant in him.

Sorry if spelled something wrong.

Yessss.

There is nothing wrong with an AU of an AU, half my Corrie Guard works are different endings post following Hound letting the information out, lmao. And don't worry about the spellings, sometimes I get things so wrong the spell checkers can't work it out.

I'd also like to clarify in advance that some of the opinions Fox has on characters or their actions will be how he perceives them etc and some of his thoughts or opinions on a character may counter what we from an outside perceptive know.

---

The news was crushing. Firstly that Rex'ika had been taken by those Zygerrian slave taking monsters, and then a ruling that his actions on the mission had been reckless so soon after the mess on Umbara and between that and his injuries he was being redeployed.

To Coruscant.

To the Guard.

Part of Fox would almost have preferred he be sent back to Kamino, almost, but not quite.

Rex'ika was coming to the Guard, his vod'ika, the little brother they'd taken into their batch so so many years ago.

He was coming to the Guard.

Fox was terrified, but he wasn't sure if it was because Rex was going to be in danger, or because he was going to learn the truth.

And then Rex would tell Cody and Wolffe and Bly and Ponds and the truth would come out and everything would get out and there would be chaos. The Guard wouldn't just be cowardly paper pushing meat droids, they'd be the weak cowardly paper pushing meat droids who couldn't defend themselves from some rich Senator who'd never held a blaster or thrown a punch.

Like being spat on and insulted wasn't enough already.

Vode an, except when you were in the Guard.

There was more to it, to Rex's joining them, he was certain of it. Rex'ika worked with Skywalker, Skywalker was close with Palpatine, Palpatine was... Fox wasn't sure what but he didn't want him near his brothers. Palpatine was the reason Skywalker hadn't been on Umbara, the reason that Krell had been allowed to play with the clones like toys, the reason so many of Rex's vode were dead... the reason for a lot of things.

Skywalker was the reason Rex was being transferred to them, at least the reason Palpatine was having him transferred. He wasn't certain why, but with how close Skywalker was to Palpatine, how he acted around them sometimes, especially after a meeting with Palpatine, that Jedi wasn't to be trusted. He was dangerous, saw himself above them whether he realised it or not, and he could have them killed if he wanted.

It they'd been sending Rex almost anywhere else, he'd have been glad his brother was getting away from Skywalker.

Getting closer to Palpatine was hardly something he wanted though.

Fox watched the LAAT arrive, and watched his vod’s so clearly unique blue armour appear.

He stayed to the edge of the landing pad until the LAAT had taken off again, and Captain Velt, who lead one of the Lower Level Security Teams and would be, hopefully, looking after Rex and keeping him out of the Senate Building, had introduced himself.

And then he strode over.

Velt knew what he had planned, and had in fact anticipated it, but it wasn’t often one of their vode was brought into the Guard rather than bringing in Shinies, and he knew well enough that Fox was going to be protective of his batch-mate, adopted or not. Velt stepped back as he approached, nodding to Rex and then going to his own squad.

“Rex’ika, with me.”

“What, Fox, where… shouldn’t I...?”

Rex gestured to Velt and his squad.

“No,” Fox grabbed him by the wrist and started pulling, not letting Rex resist, “you come with me, right now.”

He dragged his brother through the halls into the Command barracks, thankful that for all he was clearly annoyed about it, Rex didn’t fight him.

“What was so important, Fox? If you really wanted to catch up you couldn’t wait until I'd settled in?”

He had a meeting in 20 minutes he couldn’t miss, which meant he had no time to address the subtle barb he’d been offered, nor to sugar coat what was happening on Coruscant.

"Vod, you have a lot to learn about the Guard if you're going to survive here."

“Fox, I'm sure General Skywalker will try to get me back to the 501st soon. And I can manage a few weeks handling paperwork.”

“No, no, vod, it’s not paperwork and fun times here. Rex, it’s horrific, and I'm not letting them decommission you because you didn’t know how to protect yourself here.”

“It’ll be a few weeks...”

“Palpatine had you transferred here for a reason, I don’t know what, but I don’t trust Skywalker much better. He’s dangerous, vod.”

“I think I know my General better than you.”

“So you’ve never noticed how he acts after a meeting with the Chancellor, because last time he had one he shoved a shinie into a wall. He's dangerous, maybe not to you when he’s in a good mood, but... but that’s not what you need to know. You're here, you need to survive here. Besides, no-one leaves the Guard except in a body bag,” he left out the or worse, Rex didn’t need that yet, “Rule one...”

“Fox wait...”

“Rule one, you don’t ever, and I mean ever, fight back. Rule two, keep your armour uniform, so if you’re ever accused of anything or slated for reconditioning or decommissioning you can be swapped around. Rule three, no matter how weird or demeaning, you do what you’re ordered. Rule 4, if they call you it or clone or anything like that, don’t argue or try to impress on them your name or anything like that, just do what they say. Don’t react. Now I'm trying to get you put into one of the units that takes patrols rather than on Senate Security, but I can't make promises.”

Rex looked blown away, and a little shattered, but this was reality and he couldn’t afford to be soft on his little brother.

Not if he wanted Rex to live.

His comm buzzed a warning.

“Look, Rex’ika, I have a meeting, but the rec room and commissary are down the hall to the right, I’m sure someone can help you settle in and... I'll answer any questions you have properly tonight.”

He wondered if his voice sounded as defeated to his vod’ika as it did to him.

It didn’t matter, he slammed his buy’ce on his head and headed up to the Senate Building.

He couldn’t keep the Chancellor waiting, not even for his youngest batch mate.

———

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed.

Thanks for the ask, I love the idea for this AU though I’m not sure yet how or if I’ll continue from here. If anyone has ideas or wants to take it on or anything like that go nuts (obvs let me know lmao).

Like I said at the top, Anakin is nice to the 501st, but all Fox sees is someone close to Palpatine and someone who is always aggressive to them after spending time with Palpatine. He sees Skywalker as a threat and he has to focus on his siblings first. Similarly the vode don't hate the Guard and wouldn't see them as cowards, but due to Palpatine's manipulations, on both Fox's mind and the vode as a whole, these are Fox's beliefs.

Also Anakin is kinda unstable due to palpatine manipulating things, and similarly that why the Jedi can't see whats happening to the clones on Coruscant, but normally (and if/when they find out) they'd be horrified and do what they can to help.

Inbox always open. (-:

#star wars #my corrie guard au #corrie guard #rex joins the corrie guard au #au of my corrie guard au #coruscant guard #commander fox #captain rex #oc clone velt #star wars fanfiction #ask response #prompt response

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eyayah-oya · 3 years

Text

The Father You’ll Be

Boil/Waxer with a side of Cody/Rex

Rating: G

Warnings: there is brief mention of the cadets dying during the Battle of Kamino. Nothing graphic, but there are mentions.

for @clonehavensotm

Ao3 link

Boil walked into the barracks and began stripping off his armor, desperately ready to go to sleep. After a long day of fighting, the 212th and the 501st worked with Rancor to clear up the debris around Kamino, until they’d been awake for approximately two and a half day cycles. Every step felt heavier than the last, until Boil felt like he was about to fall asleep where he was standing.

At least, he felt that exhausted until he realized Waxer was no longer behind him. Nor was he anywhere in the barracks.

For several moments, Boil debated the merits of just falling into bed without Waxer, but the longer he stood there without knowing where he was, the more agitated he became. With a heavy sigh and a silent curse, Boil put his armor back on and marched out into the hallways of Kamino. Several other vod’e tried to reach out and stop him, to try and drag him to bed, but Boil just shrugged off their concerned hands and continued on to the mess hall.

Boil sighed heavily when he couldn’t find Waxer in the mess hall, nor could he find him back in the area they had been cleaning up. He would not be able to settle down properly until he at least knew where Waxer was and what he was doing.

There were many places on Kamino that Waxer could be hiding. He tended to go for a run after a high-risk battle, just to help himself settle. But he could also have gone to the training halls to work out his energy, as there were most likely plenty of brothers who he could spar against. Boil really should have expected this kind of reaction from Waxer. This battle was different from any other they’d fought in before. There was more at stake, more at risk if they failed. Worse casualties. They’d lost far too many ikaade when the droids crashed through one of the domes, and several barracks were overrun by droids—

Boil froze.

He knew exactly where Waxer was.

With a quick about-face, Boil marched towards the Littles’ barracks. Waxer always had a bleeding heart for anyone who was in need of help, but especially animals and children. Numa was a perfect example of that (Boil conveniently neglected to remember how enamored he had been by the sweet Twi’lek girl). After the kind of loss all clones had experienced that day with the death of their vod’ikase and ikaade, Waxer would want to comfort the Littles.

“Boil? What are you still doing awake?”

Commander Cody was leaning against the wall, guarding a doorway with Rex by his side. They both looked exhausted, especially since they’d been working with Rancor command while Colt and Havoc were in the medbay getting patched up. Boil did not envy their jobs. The two of them were effectively coordinating three battalions in the cleanup efforts with the help of Commander Blitz and ARC Hammer. They were also the ones dealing with the casualty reports.

“Sir,” Boil snapped off a salute. “Just going to find Waxer, sir.”

Cody’s brow furrowed. “He’s not with you? I thought I assigned the two of you to the same work crews.”

“You did, sir,” Boil answered. “I got to the barracks and turned around and he wasn’t there. I have a pretty good idea of where he disappeared to, though.”

With a strained look in his eyes, Cody nodded. It was likely that he, too, had guessed where Waxer was, and the Commander definitely wouldn’t get mad at either of them for being in the littlest cadet dorms. “Make sure he gets some sleep tonight. A pile of Littles will probably help more with that than anything else at this point. Hell, I might even join you later. We lost too many of them today, and it’ll be nice to see them and make sure they’re holding up well.”

“I’m sure they’d love that,” Rex murmured. “The Great Marshal Commander Cody coming to visit them and hug and hold them. They’ll love you for that.”

Cody sighed and thunked his head back against the wall. “You’re never gonna let me live the hero worship down, are you?”

“Nope,” Rex huffed a weak attempt at a laugh. He sounded exhausted, just as worn as the rest of them, and more since he was also dealing with a padawan commander who stumbled upon a bunch of cadets killed by Grievous. Boil had heard the rumors, and he was so glad neither he nor Waxer had had to see any of the bodies of their little brothers. That would have crushed them both.

“Bring Commander Tano,” Boil said spontaneously. He shifted back on his feet when both the Commander and the Captain looked at him in surprise. “Well, I think it would do her good to see the cadets, too. And I’m sure they’d like to meet a shiny Jedi. They probably have only ever seen General Ti from a distance.”

“Ahsoka would like that, I think,” Cody answered, looking to Rex for confirmation. Boil wasn’t sure why. It was well-known among the 212th and the 501st that both Rex and Cody had adopted the young Jedi and loved her as fiercely as any nat-born loved their children. Ahsoka looked up to Cody and probably spent just as much time with him as she did with Rex.

“We have some a few tasks left to do before we can bunk down,” Rex said slowly. “But then we should be free to come join you. Ahsoka is debriefing with the Generals and checking on the injured in the medbay, but I’ll try to wrangle her into coming with us.”

Boil nodded. “I’ll go find Waxer and let you know which barracks he’s hid himself in. I’ll see you soon, sirs.”

Cody and Rex waved him off, and Boil continued down the hallway, each step heavy with grief and exhaustion. He counted off the doors until he reached the bunks for the youngest cadets decanted and poked his head into each one, looking for the tell-tale sign of a puppy-pile of vod’e flopped all over Waxer.

It wasn’t until the fifth barracks he checked that Boil finally found him. Waxer was telling a story about one of their many missions, watered down so that it was appropriate for little audio receptors. He had a pair of Littles curled together under each arm, and two sitting on his lap while another dozen or so piled around his legs. His armor was neatly stacked on a nearby pod, and it was clear that Waxer was planning on spending the rest of the night here with the little ones.

“And then these great big, hungry monsters started chasing them through the streets of Nabat. They were closing in on Commander Cody, and his blaster wasn’t working against their tough skins. He was trapped, weaponless, and about to be eaten. And do you know what happened?”

One of the Littles on his lap perked up and grinned. “He punched them?”

“Or kicked them!”

“Nah, he used his blaster to beat them up!”

“You saved the day, Waxer!” a Little chirped from where he was practically buried underneath his brothers.

“Thank you, 53, but no. I was actually on my own adventure with Boil at the time. I heard about all of this after it happened,” Waxer grinned. He looked up, caught Boil’s eye, and shrugged apologetically.

Boil found he couldn’t really be mad at Waxer. Not when he was helping the little vod’ikase. With a heavy sigh, Boil stripped off his armor and set it next to Waxer’s while he distracted the little brothers.

“I’ll tell you what happened,” Waxer continued his story with a wide grin. “General Kenobi leaped in front of the charging monsters, without his lightsaber—“

“No!” a Little cried. He was curled up on his brother’s lap, tucked snugly under Waxer’s right arm, but when he shouted, he sat bolt upright, horror written on every tiny, adorable feature.

That one is going to be Cody’s. He’s going to adopt that Little next, Boil thought to himself. As he sat down, he and Waxer exchanged a knowing look, even as his lap was immediately overrun by Littles looking for a comfortable place to curl up. If Cody managed to adopt this one, General Kenobi would stand no chance at ever running away from medical or losing his lightsaber in battle again. The large, sad eyes pleading with him would be his downfall. Boil made a note to tell Cody all about this one.

“It’s alright, 2467,” Waxer soothed and kark, the kid even had Rex’s and Cody’s numbers combined into his. “While it’s always a bad idea to go into a dangerous situation unarmed, the General had a few tricks up his sleeve. So, there they were, cornered by starving beasts, when General Kenobi holds up his hand, just like this.” Waxer demonstrates with arms raised in a decent imitation of the General when he was doing his Force magic stuff.

“What happened then? What happened to Commander Cody and General Kenobi?” a Little from the pile at Waxer’s knees piped up.

“With the power of his mind,” Waxer said, “he spoke to the monsters and lured them away from Commander Cody and the rest of Ghost Company. He led them deep into an alley, where there was only one exit. And then he ordered Ghost to shoot at the walkways above him.”

“NO!” 2467 shouted again. “He can’t do that! The General’s supposed to be safe!”

Kriff it, Boil was going to help Cody sneak the whole squad onto the Negotiator, so he could adopt this one. After all, they would never split up a batch.

“Commander Cody was worried, but it all turned out okay. The General used the Force to leap high over the new blockade Ghost Company created, and he landed safely outside by Commander Cody, while the monsters were stuck. And of course, Commander Cody handed the General his lightsaber and they went on to save Nabat. The villagers were all safe and could move back into their homes without worrying about those awful clankers taking over their homes.” “Wow!” one of the Littles in Boil’s lap whispered.

“I’m gonna be just like Commander Cody when I grow big and strong!” another said, leaping up to demonstrate various kicks and punches. They weren’t very coordinated yet, and it was absolutely adorable to watch.

“You better keep practicing, vod’ika,” Rex called from the doorway. “Someday, you’ll be just as good as Cody. I know it.”

He slumped against the nearest pod and began taking off his armor. Ahsoka slunk into the room behind him, and as soon as the top half of his armor was off, she attached herself to his back. Her thin arms wrapped around his waist, and her face was pressed tightly in between his shoulder blades. Boil would be willing to bet all the credits he never earned that she’d likely been crying as soon as she got away from the Generals. But here among vod’e, she was safe to express all the awful emotions she had pent up in her heart. Boil had learned over the course of the war that Jedi struggled with all the death far more than any vod. They felt each death as if it were their own unless they shielded themselves so completely from the Force that it rendered them entirely useless. To feel the lives of children slip away? Boil couldn’t imagine.

“Captain Rex, sir!” the Littles all shouted, and they tried to detangle themselves to salute, but Rex immediately waved them back down.

“At ease, cadets. Do you mind if we join you? Commander Cody should also be coming soon.”

“Really?” The enormous eyes were filled with hope and disbelief that one of the greatest soldiers in the GAR would be coming to visit them.

“Yes, really,” Boil answered. “I invited him. I hope you don’t mind?”

Immediately, the little cadets were all wriggling around in excitement, talking loudly over one another about how cool and heroic Marshal Commander Cody was. It was karking adorable.

Boil slid into the newly freed space and wrapped an arm around Waxer. Immediately, he felt him relax into his hold, some of the tension draining from his shoulders. Rex plopped down against a wall, and immediately pulled Ahsoka into his lap, cradling her tightly against his chest. She went almost desperately, needing the grounding contact of one of her adopted dads. Boil knew that as soon as Cody arrived, she would somehow manage to wrap herself around both of them. They’d probably end up buried beneath a pile of vod’ikase, but Boil sincerely doubted any of them would mind in the slightest. He might not have the Force, but he could feel himself relaxing in the presence of such innocence and enthusiasm. Waxer had made an excellent choice to come here. Boil was glad that he had followed.

He would always follow Waxer. Whether it was on the battlefield or to a hoard of Littles that needed the comforting presence of their ori’vode, he would walk right beside him. Waxer was special. Boil didn’t quite know the name of what he felt for Waxer, but he knew that it was enough to just be near him. To press against each other tightly at night, and to shake apart together. To be together for the rest of their lives.

It was enough.

(Cody nearly managed to sneak the entire squad onto the Negotiator undetected, but at the last minute, General Kenobi caught him. And then proceeded to help them set up a nursery perfect for the 212th’s newest squad of cadets. No one could ever say their General didn’t have a bleeding heart, nor a soft spot for children. And just as Boil had predicted, Cody adopted 2467 and helped pick out the name Dara. They would be eternal, no matter what happened during the war.)

#clone/clone #clone shipping #boxer #boil/waxer #waxer/boil #clone trooper waxer #clone trooper boil #commander cody #captain rex #ahsoka tano #clone cadets #clone haven sotm

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thefoundationproject · 3 years

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It's Soft Wars feels hours (when is it not)

Rex was obviously a Shebs and had trained with CC's more often than not, so ARC training was almost a given for him (also like he wouldn't have gone for it anyways).

But what about Keeli? As far as I remember he was the only other CT in the first ARC class. How did he get in? He must've been specifically picked out, maybe by Alpha 17?. Thinking about his squads' reaction to him being picked, being 1 of 2 CT's in a class of like 100, being picked by an Alpha for specialty leadership training.

So this is kind of the vaguest of vague thoughts about Keeli and might or might not make it into fic at some point, but I liked to think that he got reluctantly dragged into this whole CC madness mostly because of Gus. Gus got tugged into pilot training (Neyo knew this one kid, Jet. Knew he was the kind to try to adopt anything that moved. Knew that with only very little maneuvering, Jet'd think it was his idea in the first place.)

I have this one picture in my head of Keeli coming along to fetch Gus from pilot training to go to whatever exercise they're to do as a squad. I also have this one picture in my head of 17 coming up on a scuffle in the hallway: some tiny CT sinking teeth into one of Jangotat's insufferable brats. (Doom was there to grab Davijaan. He wanted to know if the little baby was lost. 'The Little Baby' took offence to being infantilized.)

17, pulling Keeli off Doom like oh kark not again. Spar smirking in the doorway, letting him suffer a little before going 'no the little one has a squad still' and 17's heartfelt oh thank kriff. He doesn't need yet another tiny biter!

(Years later, for some unknown reason it seems like 17 kept an eye out for that little bitey brat regardless and maybe moved a thing or two to get him in a command class. If you accuse him of such, however, he will beat your ass.)

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cats-inthe-cradle · 2 years

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Okay so I wanna talk about my immortal-Fives au specifically The SquadTM (I need an actual name for the squad helpp) aka the squad that Domino is a part of after they join the 501st.

(Putting it under the cut 'cause it got long 😅)

Mostly because I've finally figured out who all the members are and I'm actually starting to get a feel for the ones I wasn't sure about that I'm actually happy with.

Well, I've figured out all the members for the first version of the squad. It gets changed up a bit as Domino become ARCs.

Oh wait I'm looking at my notes and realizing I'm thinking mostly about the 2nd version of the squad right now. Which is essentially the 1ist version except now Fives and Echo are ARC so 2 new people have been brought in to fill their places. Fives and Echo still stick around with the squad quite a bit tho even after becoming ARC.

Anyways.

So first, you've got Domina (obviously). Fives, Echo, Hevy, Cutup, and Droidbait. That makes up half the squad +1.

Then you've got Kix (Because Rex was looking at the configuration and decided it'd probably be a good idea to put someone who wasn't some form of crazy in there and who actually had some good experience. Which, Kix isn't necessarily not some form of crazy. He's just less so than most of the others.) and Hardcase.

Then you've got Vaughn (whom I love). In this au he's barely younger than Domino. So at the time the squad is formed he's only been deployed for a couple months tops. He was a shiny coming into the 501st and got promoted to Corporal pretty early on. And now he's the Sergeant of this squad :'D. And also the youngest.

And last but not least you've got Grift (an oc) who's Vaughn's honorary batchmate (I'll elaborate in a min.) No one's actually sure who's older or younger between him and Vaughn but he insists he's older. He got his name when some trainer jokingly called him a lil' grifter once, and the personality I'm thinking of for him stems from that as well as the influence of some (slightly) older vod which I'll elaborate on in a min.

So that's the first version of the Squad - with Jesse as the Lieutenant over their platoon, of course.

Now for version 2 of the squad, aka version 1 plus two more, aka the boys I've especially been thinking about tonight.

So Fives and Echo (and Jesse) head off to ARC training. Leaving the squad down 2 men. So Rex transfers in Charger and an oc whom I've been referring to as twin (don't ask me why, idk, I just know that I need a name for him).

Some background:

In this au, Charger, twin, my oc Cricket, +2 others who are in different battalions, were batchmates / a squad on kamino. In my mind their squad is very like, sneaky/stealthy and really clever. They're like a bunch of foxes, or raccoons, something like that. They're also kind of a diverse squad with a wide variety of talents/skills. One of them ('27) got picked to be trained as a scuba trooper and ended up in Kit Fisto and Commander Monnk's battalion. '29 got picked for the command track and ended up being deployed to a separate battalion (tbd). Cricket got selected for medic training, but ended up in the 501st as well (he shows up briefly in my fics Captain's Guide to Getting Cuddles and Guide to a Happy Medic). And Charger even got selected for Bomb Squad training, but ended up getting transferred back to his original training (but still with some specialist training) for various reasons. twin was the only one that didn't get selected for any special training, but that didn't stop him from picking up random skills wherever he could.

This is where Vaughn and Grift come in. Neither Vaughn nor Grift ended up staying with their original squads for very long, and both ended up getting moved around from squad to squad growing up. Eventually they found their way to Charger and twin's squad (despite them being at least a cycle or more ahead of them) and the squad kinda adopted them. It worked especially well after Cricket and '27, and even '29 got transferred to other training. With Vaughn and Grift helping to fill that gap in the squad during training, even being younger.

So anyways Vaughn, Grift, Charger, and twin are all very familiar with each other by the time they end up in a squad together in the 501st (with Hevy, Cutup, Drodibait, Kix, Hardcase, and Fives & Echo as ARCs). And they're especially all used to Vaughn being the baby of the squad, but now he's in charge of them all >:3 Not sure who's gonna be his corporal yet.

Some more stuff about Vaughn, Grift, Charger, twin, and Cricket 'cause I can't stop thinking about them:

Cricket struggles to connect with people, it usually takes some time (and being forced into meaningful interactions 😂). He's definitely the most guarded of the lot (and the most emotionally constipated, in Kix's words.) He can be hard to get to know but it's definitely worth the time and effort—when he loves someone it's with his whole heart and although he's bad about letting others take care of him, he's very good at taking care of others.

He was the first of his batchmates to get transferred for seperate training (followed closely by '27) which caused him to grow more distant from them. He didn't really get close to anyone again 'till the 501st, so by that point he'd become especially withdrawn from people. So it was a little awkward at first interacting with his batchmates again after reuniting. But he'll always be very fond of Vaughn and Grift and he loves Charger and twin a lot so it all works out. He also becomes fairly close to Kix, even if it doesn't seem like it to those who don't know them well.

Side note: '27 is rather similar to Cricket in nature and personality, although a bit less guarded.

Being the only one not picked for special training really hurt and upset twin. But it also pushed him to be better and prove that he's just as good as his batchers. He's also a natural blonde (he tends to keep it buzzed, like Rex. he's also got a scar across his nose and reaching down his left cheek), so he's always had to deal with being singled ut and discriminated against do to his 'defect'. He's always been a hard worker because of it, constantly trying to prove himself (and he did when he passed all of his exams with flying colors). He's definitely the stealthiest of his batchmates and also the nerd (so's Vaughn, they're nerd buddies).

Charger has a nack for anything electric and specifically that has to do with wiring (especially if explosives are involved). Second to '29 he's always the one looking out for the squad and is probably the most emotionally attuned to them (although Cricket is very good at reading people's emotions). He's a very competent trooper, but can also be a little impatient on missions. His hair is also naturally a brown that's lighter than the typical clone's black, so like twin he's also had to deal with discrimination in training do to his 'defect', but to a lesser extent since it's closer to the standard black. He keeps it in some variation of the standard cut.

Vaughn's my blue-eyed boy :) He could have easily made the command track, but due to his original squad having a reputation of being 'problem troopers', his own genetic 'defect' (blue eyes), and being moved around a lot, he spent the majority of his training just trying to stay afloat and (after some bad experiences) trying not draw too much attention to himself. It wasn't until he found Charger and twin's squad and the consistency that came with it, that he really began to grow confident in his abilities again. By that point he didn't really want to make the command track because it would mean getting moved again and he was happy with his new squad. But he still hoped to someday work his way up the ranks and become an officer. Also did I mention he's a nerd?

Grift's situation was very similar to Vaughn's but with a few small differences. One, his 'defect' wasn't necessarily as noticeable, being slightly smaller than the average clone, but not by much. He wasn't as focused on proving himself or trying to make the command track as Vaughn. He got easily distracted from his studies. And he had a habit of sneaking around, getting into places he shouldn't be, and just generally finding trouble. Fortunately he still managed to get (barely) passing test scores, and Charger & twin's squad took him under their wings before anyone managed to get him decommed. His scores improved with their guidance (and ability to keep him on track).

Vaughn and Grift are as close as any batchmates.

Well that's all for now. Hope you enjoyed listening to me ramble on about my boys :D

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zoeology31 · 4 years

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30+ Ship/Character Headcanons for Pride: Star Wars Edition

Halfway through the month already, but I’m gonna do something this year! I have consumed so much Star Wars content in 2020, canon and fanfic both, and now I have Opinions.

Codywan

Cody is gay and demisexual, Obi-Wan is bi.

They become friends quickly, and develop one of the closest Jedi-Commander relationships in the GAR. They fall in love later on but agree not to commit to anything until after the war.

Obi-Wan realizes his feelings slowly over seasons 2 and 3, reflecting on their teamwork and how much he values and cares about Cody. Cody realizes his feelings when Obi-Wan comes back from Kadavo and he realizes how important Obi-Wan is to his life.

During the war, they like to spend time together, especially in the mornings or decompressing after a battle. They do paperwork, trade book recommendations, and just sit close and talk.

In AUs where ROTS didn’t happen, Obi-Wan steps down from the Jedi Council and he and Cody work out the details of their relationship so Obi-Wan can still be faithful to the Jedi Code.

Basically they get engaged and stay that way forever. They get an apartment with many houseplants and a cat that likes Cody better.

Cody is a little Force-sensitive, and Obi-Wan teaches him to meditate and use the Force to process emotions. Once Cody is free of the chip (in canon-compliant timelines), he uses this to find peace about Obi-Wan’s “death” and joins the Rebellion.

Rex

Rex is demiromantic asexual.

In AUs where ROTS didn’t happen, he ends up in a queerplatonic relationship with Anakin (who leaves the Order) and Padmé. He is Luke and Leia’s third parent.

He’s really good with kids, and adopts several orphans after the Empire is defeated. Luke and Leia and Ezra and Sabine are his honorary kids too.

Ahsoka

Ahsoka is a lesbian. She’s jealous of Lux during the Onderon arc, not Steela.

Barriss is her first kiss, right after the brain worms incident. They’re never actually in a relationship though, because Barriss thinks that would make it too hard to follow the Jedi Code.

She reconnects with Kaeden Larte during her Fulcrum years and they get married after the Battle of Yavin. Between Fulcrum work and the mission to find Ezra, she’s away a lot, so she carries a special holocomm with a secure line to Kaeden to keep in touch.

Skybridger

Ezra and Luke are both gay. Ezra is also nonbinary and uses both he/him and they/them.

They bond over comparing notes on Jedi training, and also going through the embarrassing “mistook admiration for a crush on now-sister” phase.

They go on lots of adventures together to gather bits of Jedi culture and find Force-sensitive kids to train. It’s Luke’s idea to start a school and Ezra’s idea to search for the old Jedi temples like the one on Lothal.

Eventually they just also start being romantically affectionate on these adventures. No one is surprised. Ahsoka officiates their wedding on Lothal a couple years later, which is attended by the entire rebellion.

They fix up an old U-wing to live and travel in because they’re both used to living on ships. Luke flies, Ezra shoots as needed and also cooks. Ezra always brings back stray animals and Luke sometimes agrees to keep them.

Ketbine

Ketsu and Sabine are both lesbians.

They meet at the Imperial Academy and are dating when they run away together. The stress of running from the Empire and bounty hunting strains their relationship and they break up before parting ways.

They start dating again after the liberation of Lothal and get married after the Battle of Endor. Hera officiates. Sabine is smug about getting married before Zeb.

After the war, they split their time between Krownest, where Sabine eventually inherits the title of Duchess Wren, Concord Dawn, where they help rebuild the Protectors, and Mandalore.

Kalluzeb

Kallus is pan, Zeb is gay.

They build up a friendship before and during season 4, and start dating after the Battle of Yavin. They have a lot of personal issues to work through and getting stuck on the ice moon together was only the beginning, but they both put in the effort and it pays off.

They get married after the Battle of Endor. Hera officiates. Zeb is kinda salty that Sabine beat him to the punch, but they have a great honeymoon on Lira San so it all evens out.

After the war, they help build up the refugee community on Lira San and travel around to locate other Lasat refugees. Zeb even serves a term as Senator for Lira San in the New Republic Senate.

Miscellaneous

Chirrut and Baze are both gay. They’ve been married for 30 years.

Rey is biromantic asexual, Finn is bi, and Poe is gay. Rey and Poe both date Finn but not each other.

Kanan, Hera, Leia, Han, Padmé, Cassian, Bodhi, and Rose are all bi. So are a plurality of the clones.

Lando is pan and genderfluid and their pronouns vary. They’re living their best life.

Echo is genderfluid and uses he/him. Fives is agender and uses they/them. None of Domino squad are cis.

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kaijusplotch · 3 years

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Deaging clones fic wip

so this is titled "Rejuvination" and i wanna share this so...ENJOY!

Cody was glad that the latest campaign was over. It had been hell for the 212th and the 501st. While casualties had been low, it was still a blow to each battalion. They felt too much, sometimes, both Rex and himself; as well as their generals. Something heavy was hanging over The Negotiator, and he was sure that was the same over on The Resolute.

“Cody, we need to change course,” Obi-Wan said softly as they stood on the bridge.

“Sir?” Cody frowned worriedly, wondering what it was that pulled his general off of their return route to Coruscant.

Obi-Wan just smiled and patted Cody’s shoulder. “It’s nothing bad. The Force is...pulling me toward something. But it’s a good feeling.”

Cody eyed his general, raising an eyebrow before shaking his head. “Alright. Should we let The Resolute know?”

“Yes, if Anakin hasn’t sensed it as well. There’s a planet that has a strong force presence; a peaceful one. It must be a well of the Force or something like it.”

Cody hadn’t seen his general so relaxed in a long time. If this detour was going to give Obi-Wan a little more peace, then Cody was all for it. He smiled and nodded to Siren. “Send the coordinates to The Resolute. I think we’ve all earned a little detour/shore leave.”

The command center was filled with cheers from the clones, and soft laughs from the nat-born administrators. Some peace and quiet (or as much as Cody could get from some of his men) would be nice. He just hoped Waxer didn’t try to adopt any local wildlife.

The planet was uninhabited by any sentient species, which was a surprise to Cody. The air was safe, even had safe food and water if they wanted to have a snack. What seemed to be what drew the Jedi was a strange abandoned temple. What drew Cody’s, and by extension most of the exhausted 212th and 501st command structure were the hot springs.

“You should enjoy yourselves while here,” Obi-Wan said with a small smile. “The scanners are working on the shuttle; there’s no need to be on edge.”

“Are you sure, sir?” Cody watched his General carefully. He seemed already to be so much more at ease, he wanted to thank whatever deities existed.

“Very. Nothing bad will happen here.” Obi-Wan was so confident in his assessment that Cody had no choice but to have faith in him.

“All right.” Cody sighed and looked up as the sound of another shuttle breaking atmosphere broke the peaceful silence. He smiled, noticing the nose-art of the two LA/ATs settled down besides the 212th. Cody was excited to see his little brother, and hopefully catch up on the chaos that the Domino Squad was no doubt causing.

“Hey Master!” Anakin cried as he jumped from the shuttle, beaming and stretching. Behind him Ashoka was already pulling an exhausted looking Rex from where he had settled.

“Anakin, Ashoka,” Obi-Wan said with a smile as he walked to meet them.

“General, Commander, Rex’ika.” Cody grinned when Rex just glared at him.

“Really, Cody?” Rex grumbled.

“I’ve effectively been given a short term leave by Obi-Wan. I can call you whatever I want.” Cody beamed and punched his brother’s shoulder playfully. He looked up when the rest of the 501st came out, smiling as they mingled with brothers from the 212th.

“You’re right, Master. This place feels...so bright and light!” Ashoka smiled and closed her eyes as she stood with her masters.

“General Kenobi says there’s nothing here to be worried about, I have to believe him, if only for how much better he looks,” Cody said, smiling at the young Torgruta. “Although I’m more interested in the hot springs.”

“Hot springs?” Anakin and Ashoka asked with bright smiles.

“Sorry, claimed first use,” Rex joined in, looking more eager than he was before.

“I want to meditate anyway first. The old temple is this way.” Obi-Wan beckoned the other two Jedi away and toward the eroded stone ruins on top of the small hill looking over the deeper valley below them.

“I’m up for hot spring dip!” Hardcase chirped beaming and already stripping out of his armor as he hurried away.

“YES! C’mon Boil!” Waxer grabbed his twin and dragged the other ARF trooper toward the several large hot springs tucked close to the mountain side.

Cody snorted and looked to the rest of the troops who were joining in with the rush to fresh hot water. “C’mon. Maybe we can find a pool that won’t be full of chaos.” He pulled Rex along at a more sedated pace, soaking in the good feelings and bright warm sunlight filtering through the trees as they stepped under them.

Already piles of blue and orange-gold armor were on the edges of the pools, with a few piles of blacks already. hanging on low hanging branches. Cody spotted the Domino squad chatting away with Jesse, Kix, Waxer, and Boil. He was glad to see that even with Echo and Fives going off on missions with other units, they were still close with Droidbait, Hevy, and Cutup.

“This one’s small, but no one else is here,” Rex called past a small collection of small shrubs and thin seedlings.

Cody smiled, spotting the ten foot wide pool and nodded. “Brotherly bonding time it is then.” He said smirking and pulling his armor off and piling it to the side, stripping down completely.

“Oh come on, leave your briefs, I don’t want to see your junk, Cody!”

“We have the same junk.” Cody rolled his eyes and tossed his shorts over a branch before walking into the hot water. He hissed a bit before settling down and finding a rock to sit on, leaning back against the edge of the pool with a sigh. “Never knew you’d become such a prude.”

“I have a 14 year old FEMALE Padawan on the ship.” Rex grumbled, settling in next to his brother in his underclothes. “AND she’s here on planet.”

“Oh...kriff, good point.” Cody frowned and stood to turn around. “OI! Someone better be on watch to stop Ashoka from walking in on the sausage festival!” Cody cried to the loud chatter of his brothers. The answering “KRIFF!” explained all he needed, even as he heard water splashing and yelling at brothers to toss each other their shorts.

“See?” Rex tossed Cody’s shorts in his face and smirked.

Cody glared and splashed him back before putting the shorts back on. “Shit head,” he spat, although it just felt good to not be a soldier and just be an older brother.

“Shebs kisser.”

“I know you are but what am I?”

Rex burst out laughing and Cody couldn’t help but join him. It felt good; he felt younger than he had in - well - forever. He held his breath and dunked under the water, rubbing his face.

“Gods this feels so good…” Rex said with a deep sigh.

“Second that, Rex.” Cody leaned his head back, closing his eyes and letting the hot water and the peaceful energy soak into his muscles and bones.

The laughter and splashing of the sixty-some brothers in the other larger pools was a siren song and Cody slowly found himself falling into a restful drifting sleep; even as a few voices sounded slightly different. Nothing bad would happen here. His General promised him.

Obi-Wan wasn’t sure exactly how long he, Anakin, and Ashoka had been meditating, but when he finally felt the gentle caress of awareness brush his consciousness he finally allowed himself to come out of the meditation. Opening his eyes he had to hold a small chuckle at the sight of both his Padawan and grand-padawan sprawled across each other in a peaceful sleep. The lines of stress across their faces were gone; like they never happened. Even their force signatures were lighter and brighter; even the super-nova-like brightness of Anakin’s.

“Anakin, Ashoka,” Obi-Wan gently prodded, poking their feet. He was rewarded by a very classic Anakin whine and grumpy face. Obi-Wan openly laughed at that. It had been so long.

“Ugh! Master, I don’t want to get up!”

“We should, especially if we want to go to the hot springs, Master.” Ashoka slowly uncurled from where she was sleeping and stretched. She looked like a Tooka as she yawned widely and arched her back; another reminder for Obi-Wan of her carnivorous nature.

“I should make sure that the boys are at least decent.” Obi-Wan stood and stretched, feeling his aches gone and his heart lighter. “Come on, both of you up. It’s nearly sundown and we should be getting back to the ships soon.”

He left to the complaints of both of his friends, knowing well that they wouldn’t leave before everyone had had a soak. He wasn’t as cruel as he played. Besides, Obi-Wan hadn’t felt this good in years. The Force was soothing and rejuvenating; lifting the years of weight that seemed to double from the war.

The path down into the small group of trees near was clear of any stones, although the piles of armor that were peeking out from between bushes and shrubs broke up the monotony of neon green and purple. The sound of a panicked scream broke through the peaceful chatter of aves and other creatures, causing anxiety to well in Obi-Wan’s heart.

“Cody?!” Obi-Wan rushed forward, abandoning his outer cloak to the wind. He burst through the bushes that blocked the path and drew his saber, only to stare in shock.

Sixty high ranking clones were staring back at Obi-Wan with wide, slightly shocked, slightly terrified, brown eyes. Most were scrambling to hold up their too-big under clothes as they abandoned the pools, some were swimming in their blacks, some were trying to use their armor to hide their nudity. Cody and Rex were part of the first group, staring up at Obi-Wan. Every single one between the ages of ten and 12.

“Oh dear…”

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elendiliel · 3 years

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Return from Umbara

Tags/warnings: references to the Umbara arc, and its emotional fallout; consequent hurt/comfort; family is more than blood 689 words Author’s Note: Trying something new... This demanded to be written and shared, but I’ve posted a few hurt/comfort fics in a row on AO3 and would rather not keep that streak going longer than necessary. So, as a compromise (and because I’ve been spending far too long on this site lately), I thought I’d try posting this one just on Tumblr and see how it fared. It may migrate at a later date.

The rest of Lightning Squadron is waiting when Fives finally gets back from Umbara. The shadow world is at long last under Republic control, in spite of everything Krell did or tried to do. Fives has barely slept in days. When he tried, on the ship that carried him and the remnants of the invasion force home, he kept reliving every nightmare battle. Hardcase’s sacrifice. Facing the firing squad, Kix and Tup among them. If Rex put that squad together, that was a shrewd move; if Dogma did, it was just brutal. Krell’s bloody rampage, and Rex steeling himself to execute the fallen Jedi. The moment Fives realised that it wasn’t the honourable captain who had fired the fatal shot – Dogma, loyal Dogma, the one they had had to exclude from their unconventional plan, had been pushed to breaking point, and the recoil had been lethal for Krell. The victims of the traitor general’s cruellest ploy – clones from the 501st and 212th, as close as their respective commanders, tricked into killing one another – scattered across the ground, awaiting burial. He knows the images will fade, in time, joining his memories of Rishi, Kamino, Lola Sayu and others. He’s a soldier; he’s been bred to cope with this. Eventually.

Even so, he’s glad to be home, and to see his other squad again. He looks for Echo, then reminds himself not to. Torrent and Spark greet him with welcome-back smiles, but Fives, as they seem to be alone, makes straight for Hel, almost collapsing against her as his arms fold around her tiny frame. In this moment, she isn’t his commander – she’s his safety, his strength, his sister.

Whatever happened on Umbara, Hel knows it was bad. Fives isn’t usually so demonstrative of his affection, even in private. She has to brace herself as she takes his weight; he’s bigger than her and still in full armour, bar his helmet. But she can handle it. She can feel his whole body shaking as he holds back tears he doesn’t want to shed, not even here, where it’s just them. Her arms wrap around him, gentle but reassuring. She doesn’t insult either of them with kind lies, such as it’s OK or it’s going to be all right. They’ve both seen too much to believe that. But there are some things she can truthfully say that might help. “It’s over,” she whispers. “We’re together again. I’m here for you, and I always will be.”

Minutes pass as they hold each other, the tremors subsiding as Fives gets himself back under control. Torrent and Spark join them, consoling their brother just with the warmth of their presence and affection. They don’t speak. They don’t need to. Not even to coordinate the inevitable physical breakup of the family circle. It’s only when they’ve drawn apart again and Fives has straightened up and begun to observe his surroundings that he notices the fifth person in the room, tactfully rendering herself mentally invisible in a corner. Hel introduces them. “’Ro, I’d like you to meet ARC Trooper Fives, my third-in-command. Fives, this is Padawan Ma’ro Saszalac.”

“Koh-to-ya, Fives.” Fives echoes the formal greeting, and as Ma’ro draws him into conversation Hel can sense his alarm and embarrassment at having their emotional reunion witnessed by a stranger being swept away by her friend’s charm. Ma’ro is a gifted empath and natural diplomat. Her talents and skills are doing as much for his wounded heart as his family’s love and support.

Padawan and ARC trooper are still chatting as the party makes its way to 79’s, their usual place to unwind after deployments, or remember fallen comrades. In this case, the latter is more likely. Lightning Squadron have adopted the Twi’lek custom of the mi’sou, a funeral that celebrates the deceased’s life, rather than focusing on the pain of parting from loved ones. Fives is grieving for at least one close brother, and Hel’s heart aches in sympathy. She’s not planning on running from that suffering, but she fully intends to help her brother to bear it, now and for the rest of their lives, Maker willing.

#star wars #the clone wars #fives #original jedi character #original clone characters #spark #fanfic

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kyberconfessions · 3 years

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Omega Squadron - Clones

Please don't use them. These are mine and I created them and I love them.

Do not steal. Thank you.

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Delta - Commander CC -7767

Stoic, kind, quiet, always has his arms crossed. Completely and utterly in love with his General. But knows she loves another. Still loves her. Will still give his life for her. Will follow his general to the ends of the earth. Protective of his team and family. Fuck you, you're not Omega. Really, really loves tea and meditation. Will meditate long into the day with Chidori and Maul. He doesn't have the connection to the force they have, but being able to clear his mind and have a moment of silence is more than enough. Best friends with Captain Rex of the 501st and Commander Cody of the 212nd. Will frequent 79s with them when they're all planetside and complain, er discuss, about their Generals and the crazy situations they put themselves into.

Has military cropped hair with one side shaved and the GAR symbol tattoo'd. Small smattering of grey at his temples. Not a fan of it, but his General said it made him look distinguished, so he kept it. Has one line on his chest and neck for each member of his squad in their company purple.

large scar across the bridge of his nose. Not from the war, but from breaking up a fight in 79s and getting a glass slammed into his face.

Jedi symbol tattood on inside of left wrist, keeps it hidden.

Donner - Communications CT - 4459

Prankster, always cracking jokes, knows that making someone laugh can usually help alleviate the pain they're feeling. Enjoys fried foods, thinks of others, always has the biggest and most genuine smile. Really loves those scented oils he got from naboo, especially the cardamom.

Long hair on top, undercut buzzed on bottom. Wears hair in topknot. Two tattooed rectangles under right eye, three lines shaved into left eyebrow, black out tattoo on entire right arm. May or may not have been involved in the '79s Incident'.

Niner - sniper CT-9999

Gentle. The most gentle man in the entire GAR. so very kind. Will give all of his food rations away to street urchins, just so they know someone cares for them. Has tried to adopt lothcats multiple times, but a stern glare from Delta usually has him putting it back.

Amazing shot. Will be the first to volunteer for whatever mission his General has. Always tries to talk down situations. Prefers to use his words over his fists. But will finish fights if he has too. Heart is to big for war, will sit and let you cry on his shoulder if its needed. Gives the best hugs. Best friends with Donner.

Regular military issued hair cut, nothing fancy, no facial tattoos, has the republic gear on his entire left shoulder, chest, deltoid, trapezius, and into his back. Still sees everything with wonder and big eyes.

Bama - Medic CT-3524

No nonsense guy, will call you out for making stupid mistakes. Dry bedside manner. Oh? You've got a hunk of shrapnel lodged in your side? Here, let him rip it out if you all the while telling you how stupid you were for standing to close to a bomb. Can and will drug Delta if he thinks he's not sleeping enough.

Had to learn a lot about Zabrak anatomy when Maul was added to the team.

'Two hearts! Why the kriff does he have two hearts?!'

Will drink everyone under the table. Once ran into a dangerous warzone to grab a kid who had wandered from the alleys.

Shaved head, sometimes sports a few days old shadow, but likes to keep it clean. Black out tattoos on both arms, completely covered. Wears a necklace with the Republic Gear. Has heteochromia from an injury sustained on Geonosis. Basically one normal colored eye and one almost completely black eye (can still see fine and doesn't want a stupid kriffing implant.)

Familial grump.

Ares - Weapons Specialist ARC-8599

CONTRABAND EXTRAORDINAIRE. You want something, he can get it! Correlian wine? Easy. Sabaac game from the Palace of Naboo? Childs play. Religious regalia from the Chiss? Please, find me something hard.

loves his gun. Named it Mesh'la. Yeah its Mando'a. Fuck off. can and will shoot every weapon in the GAR. Usually is the one laying down heavy fire so his brothers can maneuver or escape. Can curse you out in 6 different languages. Was the first to accept Maul into their ranks.

'So what if he was a sith? We've all done stuff we're not proud of. Who are we to judge? The General trusts him and thats all that matters to me.'

loves working out. Will workout every chance he gets. "Mesh'la isn't the only big gun I've got! BAM!" MASSIVE FLIRT.

Has a more stylized version of the military cut, bottom fades into the top with a longer section on top towards the front. Two red bands on upper right arm, Omega symbol branded into chest. Not tattoo'd, branded. Bama had a field day cursing him out in Mando'a and applying bacta patches.

Nero - pilot CT-1966

Great pilot, best pilot, can fly around the best of those clankers. Not very smart. Look, don't expect him to be able to recite Alderaani Poetry, but has read every manual for every cruiser this side of the galaxy. Really wants to do the Kessel run, Delta told him no. Rrreeeaaallly wants to though. Donner and Ares may sneak him off with one of the y wings, see if they can do some damage. Has a crush on the Civilian Auxiliary that helps fuel their ship. Stumbles over words, very shy, turns hot faced and wide eyed when Ares flirts for him. Boy is pretty and has a good heart, but definitely will not become a Senator any time soon. Everyone thinks he and Maul are best friends, when really he's absolutely terrified of the red and black Zabrak and can't physically speak when he's around. Maul on the other hand finds Nero's silence and calm demeanor relaxing and enjoys watching space go by, so he will sit with Nero as they go through hyperspace. So Maul sits up with him in copilot chair and Nero sweats bullets and internally screams the entire time.

Buzzcut and intricate pattern shaved in, swears its a map into Wild Space, Bama told him it looks like he list a fight with his clippers.

Soul patch and checkerboard diamond tattoos on left forearm GAR symbol on left calf.

#clones #clone wars #OCs #omega squad #my clones #do not steal #mine

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oceanera12 · 4 years

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Characters I want to see in the Bad Batch TV series:

The Bad Batch. I feel like this is self explanatory, but to be clear: Hunter, Tech, Crosshair, Wrecker, and Echo. And y’all better not kill one of them off one at a time. If you’re going to kill them Mr. Cowboy hat Man THEY BETTER GO TOGETHER I CAN’T HANDLE ANY MORE CLONES BEING SPLIT APART

Cody. Give me Commander Cody’s fate. I may not be able to handle it and will bawl for weeks on end and may scream at you and tell you that’s not what I wanted but I need to know WHAT THE KRIFF HAPPENED TO CODY.

Rex. Rex and Cody reunion scene. I don’t care how, I don’t care why, I don’t care what happens. Just make it happen. Kapesh?

Wolffe/Gregor. I’d love to see how Rex meets up with both but will settle for one or the other. Let’s see some de-chipping, please!

Random clones/Random Jedi/Random civilians/new aliens. I want new characters, Filoni. New aliens, new names, new personalities, new allies, new enemies. Give us new content, things we don’t know about during the time of the Empire. Give us new rebel cells, the very beginning of the Rebellion in it’s haphazard, unorganized glory. I’m fine with old characters too (and would love to see some cameos from some certain future Specters), but give us new Jedi-on-the-run and new clones and just new people to love and care for and squeal about. Give me a baby (Padawan) Jedi that is adopted by the Bad Batch and everyone grows to love and care about and they are happy so that you can rip our hearts away when they die or turn evil.

Tiny Leia Organa/Bail Organa. One arc, that’s my limit on their appearance but I want to see tiny Leia kick butt/be sassy at these hard war military veterans

Characters I do NOT want to see in the Bad Batch TV series:

Ahsoka Tano- LET ME EXPLAIN DON’T KILL ME YET. I am okay with Ahsoka showing up for ONE arc and that’s it. I draw the line there simply because if she’s there for longer it will turn into her her show and gosh darn it Disney just give her a kriffing show already, geez. I don’t want my clone boys overshadowed because Ahsoka flipping Tano is in the room.

KRIFFING Fives. Look, if you want to do some flashbacks with Echo and Rex, fine. Heck, I would even take an episode where Echo is hallucinating all of Domino squad/Torrent Company and he sees all these ghosts that have left him behind. But I swear, Cowboy Hat Man, if we get some kind of resurrection arc that I keep seeing on everything, I’M GOING TO FLIP. I love Fives, really I do. But if you bring him back then the whole “Fives discovering the plot to overthrow the Republic and it cost him his life” is POINTLESS. So don’t do it. (And I will rant about this later in more detail because it’s BUGGING me but for now we’ll move on because now is really not the time)

Obi-Wan Kenobi. Stay on Tatooine. Stay in self-exile. Stay with Luke. You do you in the Kenobi tv series and keep away from my clone boy’s spotlight. Love you, but it’s their turn to shine. This also includes Luke Skywalker. I don’t want him in this show as anything. You already pushed the boundaries with Rebels so I think we’re good on Luke in cartoons (especially since Ezra and Luke were the same exact age)

Vader. I don’t need you hunting a bunch of clones so just stay on Mustafar please. Send some Inquisitors or an Evil clone squad after them but just stay away. (Kriff, now I’m think about Cody leading an evil clone squad against the Bad Batch)

Emperor Potato-head. Stay the kriff away from my clone boys.

…I’m going to be honest here: Mandalorians. I love “The Mandalorian” just as much as everyone else but I’m getting a little annoyed with how much Mandalore has become “THE” Star Wars culture that is explored and developed. Can we get a new planet with new inhabitants or something? Just no Mandalorians. I’m getting annoyed/done with them.

If anyone wants to add to the list: be my guest!

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fromryloth-tocorellia · 4 years

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CAW 2020: Day 5 - After Army

It's my AU and I can save whoever I want

Smoke Squad:

This lot cut and run to the outer rim after their jetii finds out about the chips and is ready to leave, and they aren't about to let her go off on her own, that's their person. Also Levi would feel very irresponsible as a Captain if he let the Commander go off on her own, and they weren't about to be assigned to someone new, either. They take to attacking slaver compounds and freeing the slaves, which is how they run into a much larger crew of deserters and slaver-hunters and join up. They pick up a couple more members along the way: Dogma and Shrapnel (their transport to Kamino was attacked by separatists and they were in a cell together for 6 weeks), and Tup (picked up from Mandalore with a few others after a frantic call from Rex). After 66, they keep at it, also hitting Imperial targets, but they start to focus closer to home when kids start to happen. After Qetryscelyon and Shrari get together and adopt children, the group starts to change their MO, with some of the crew going with some of the larger lot instead of the whole Squad going together. That way there's always someone home with the kids.

Panther Squad:

Panther is made up of a ragtag group of rescues and deserters

A former commando (dead, according to his file) who ran assassination missions before this crew came together (Blink)

A heavy gunner who was sent back to Kamino for punching a General who didn't care about casualty count and escaped the transport (Recoil)

An ARC trooper from an aberration batch of 6 who they pulled from a reconditioning transport along with his brothers (Bard)

A pilot who crashed and was presumed dead, nursed back to health by his now-best friend, an anti-establishment slicer (Careen)

An ARC trooper who lost everything and who was given the chance to leave with his Captain's goodwill and comm number (Fives)

An ordinance specialist who was found to be Force-sensitive, trained in secret by his Padawan Commander, and left when it got too dangerous (Jaig)

A medic who, by design or mistake, was sent out far too early (~15) and was going to be reconditioned for refusing to shoot (Nuhur)

They join the same crew Smoke Squad does (the small Twi'lek they grow attached to, Cain, has a brother there). Blink has a son with his close friend as the surrogate, who is a couple of years younger than Cain's children. Several years down the line, Bard meets Sarya, his future wife, and they have three children.

Pel'verd Company:

The day of 66, the two Force-sensitives attached to this crew, Jedi Commander Tak and Sergeant Kohs, sense that something is going to happen and they have to get out now. Dechipped in secret thanks to a tip-off from an escaped medic, they have two hours to get everything loaded into ships. Feedback manages to get Boil down to the hangar, and uses an emergency code to get Cody down as well. He snags his brother and they take off before Cody can react. They've been in hyperspace less than a minute when the order is given, and Cody realises this wasn't an abduction, this was the narrowest of escapes.

They wind up on a deserted moon on the edge of outer rim space. Tak had been having nightmares for weeks, so they had an evac plan, but it takes a whole week for them to settle, and they maintain radio silence for two solid weeks before reaching out to trusted sources. They establish a settlement, and Feedback's partner, Qadla, uses her status as a trader to disguise her movements and bring them supplies. Cody, Totem, and Boil establish a quiet farm a little way off from the main settlement, both to help provide food and to have a little privacy and space. They love their vode, but they're very quiet people who need to not be super involved. Cody finds he rather likes animals, and Totem starts a fruit orchard. Boil is the most outgoing of them, and is usually the one who makes deliveries to the main settlement. They don't completely isolate and they do visit but they all appreciate having their own space.

Tak finds Morpheus on a trip off-world and brings back this scared and lonely clone whom Qadla immediately welcomes into the fold. A few years after they settle there, Qadla and Feedback get married, and have two kids whom everyone adores, including the trio of hermits. Ink also finds a partner in a notorious galactic troublemaker, which surprises absolutely no one.

Wolfpack boys:

After the staged shooting-down of the general, they lay low with the rest of their unit before joining the general and his family on the Kel Dor homeworld. Orbit wishes Wolffe good luck and hugs him when he leaves to find Rex and contact the rest (so he's still in Rebels, he's just more grounded). They get calls from him regularly, because Dad Koon would be sad if his son didn't call home regularly, and they do get to meet several niblings this way.

#my ocs #behind the stars #caw #caw2020 #clone appreciation week #cloneappreciationweek #I posted day four late so you get both back to back

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thisspaceintentionallyleftblank · 5 years

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Try, Try Again

This is a Rex lives AU where, at the end of the movie, the flux capacitor is not destroyed, and Rex escapes to the past. This time, he arrives early, disguises himself, and takes Emmet’s place in Apocalypseburg. In this way, he plans to toughen Emmet up while simultaneously keeping a closer eye on Lucy.

I have not ever done fanfiction before... so hopefully this turned out okay!

Chapter 1 (2668 words)

The Rexcelsior appeared in a brilliant flash of light, with bright bolts of raw electric power coursing across its hull before flickering away into nothingness. The ship, despite the dark blue of its exterior, stood in stark contrast against the backdrop of space due to the faint glow of its many humming engines. Inside, pacing back and forth across the main control bridge, an increasingly anxious Rex was attempting to re-evaluate his master plan.

He had come much too close to failure for comfort. If he hadn’t used his Deus Ex Block-ina at the last moment in order to teleport back to the ship, then Lucy could have very well destroyed his flux capacitor and, by extension, everything that he’d worked and suffered for. His scowl deepened at the thought of all that planning, effort, and pain flushed down the drain because simply because he’d failed to properly prepare for every possibility.

The weight of failure sat heavily on his shoulders. It’s not fair, he thought. I was so close. His plan had been so perfect, and he’d carried out the execution flawlessly. Tricking Emmet and destroying the Queen’s space temple had been child’s play. All they had left to do was make a clean getaway, but… everything had just started falling apart.

Rex hadn’t wanted to take Emmet to Dryar. If he had had any other option, he wouldn’t have. But, of course, Emmet hadn’t given him a choice, had he? Emmet was just being stubborn; he just didn’t understand.

Rex couldn’t be blamed for that.

He stopped pacing. The repetitive motion had started making him nauseous at some point. With a weary, tough-guy sigh, he walked over to the main console. The instruments adorning the dash lit the room with a soft, ambient blue glow. On top of them sat the Block-ina, a conveniently pocket-sized tool that apparently taken up the worrisome habit of intermittently spitting out sparks and smoke sometime between now and when Rex had first left it here.

Another sigh escaped Rex at the sight of how badly it had been damaged. He wasn’t especially broken up over the loss of the device, after all it had served its purpose well, and he could just build another one pretty easily.

Of course, he thought bitterly, I wouldn’t have even needed to use it if it hadn’t had been for... her.

He had been surprised when Lucy had shown up in Undar, having never entertaining the thought that she might have followed him. Thinking about it made something in his gut twist uncomfortably. She must have… It was… She had probably come there to stop him personally, right? Finding Emmet was just a nice bonus, was all. That made a lot more sense, in Rex’s opinion. After all, Lucy had always been about the world-saving, rebel hero aesthetic. The knot in his gut unraveled, content with his explanation.

However, if Lucy was willing to go that far in trying to save the world, then Rex couldn’t afford to let her get the drop on him a second time. He would just need to keep a closer eye on her this time.

Rex smiled, an easy cocksure grin. A new plan started formulating in his mind, one in which he could easily arrange to keep watch on Lucy, with her being none the wiser.

“COBRA!” He barked out, turning away from the console. A nearby raptor stopped typing, twisting her long neck to look over in his direction.

“Give me a current time readout on the Giant Screen.” At his command, the raptor nodded and clicked a few buttons on her keyboard. Turning back to the windshield, Rex watched as the display flickered to life, printing out the date in an oversized, white, blocky font.

JUNE 4TH | 06:20 | MONDAY

Rex hummed in approval. “Excellent work, team. Looks like we’ve got a whole week left before Our-mom-agedon starts.” With a smug grin, Rex leaning onto the dashboard, adopting a particularly cavalier pose. “Obviously,” he continued, “that’s waaay more time than I’ll need to work my magic.”

A raptor screeched from somewhere in one of the weapon hangers. “Does that mean we could take a day off?”

Rex laughed.

“No.”

If raptors could sigh in resignation, they would have done so now. As it was, they settled for screeching slightly quieter. Unfazed, Rex continued with some gratuitous exposition.

“Here’s the plan, squad. We should begin to break orbit over Apocalypseburg shortly after o’eight hundred hours. At that time, we’ll activate the super secret cloaking technology that I lifted from Wonder Woman’s invisible jet. Once we’ve landed, I’ll find Emmet and get him onboard.”

One of the raptors screeched up at him questioningly. “How will we find Emmet?”

Another raptor, one standing near the fax machine, screeched back. “I could make wanted posters!”

“No need,” Rex replied dismissively. “It’s a Monday.” Mondays were Lucy’s day to patrol the wasteland, which meant that she and Emmet would have to hang out in the morning, before she left. Usually that meant that he that Emmet would start his day off with a coffee run and then meet up with her afterwards.

“If we play our cards right, which of course we will, then we can intercept him at the base of the Statue of Un-Liberty.” Rex tapped a few of the console’s controls, pulling up a large digital map of Apocalypseburg. A blinking red dot appeared at the spot he’d described.

“Everyone got that?” Rex asked, watching as a sea of raptor heads started bobbing up and down in affirmation. “Awesome. Start bringing us into orbit then. Meanwhile, Ripley, Connor, I want you two to start readying the cloaking device.” The raptors screeched to confirm their orders, and then turned to their respective workstations with a renewed sense of urgency.

Leaving them to their tasks, Rex once more turned his attention to the windshield. The sounds of raptor noises and clicking keyboards seemed to fade into the distance. Somewhere beyond the dark glass, Apocalypseburg was waiting. With a start, Rex realized that, after everything that had happened to him, he’d gotten so distracted with time travel and scheming that he had just, never bothered trying to go home.

For a moment, he wondered when exactly that had stopped being one of his goals.

At the thought, a cold, hollow feeling seeped into his chest. It was an almost alien sensation, one that he thought he had left behind in the deserts of Undar. Fortunately, Rex was tough now. He knew how to deal with these kinds of feelings, how to patch and fill the places of him that felt empty. His tool of choice, anger, had never failed him yet.

Summoning strength from his internal well of rage, Rex clenched his fists at his sides and forced his mouth into a vicious grin.

I’m going back home, he thought, and those suckers aren’t gonna know what hit ‘em.

*******************

The sun was shining in Apocalypseburg this morning. Sure, it shone every morning, to the point that it had long since baked the ground into desert sands, but that fact didn’t mean that Emmet couldn’t enjoy a little bit of morning sunshine.

As usual, electronic strains of music were playing in his ears as Emmet jauntily made his way towards the giant statue on the edge of town. He was beginning to consider singing along with the peppy song when something else suddenly drew his attention.

It had only lasted for a second, but Emmet would have sworn he’d just seen a shooting star. Instinctively, he squeezed his eyes shut, concentrating on his wish.

More wishes, he thought as hard as he could, more wishes, more wishes, mo-

“Hey there, buddy!”

Emmet’s eyes snapped open at the sound of someone’s voice. Sure enough, standing in front of him was a stranger, some guy in blue, with disheveled hair and a cocky grin.

“Whoa,” Emmet whispered to himself. Something about this stranger seemed to exude charisma and toughness. Maybe it had something to do with the way he was trying to inconspicuously flex his biceps. Whatever it was, Emmet was definitely intrigued.

“Hi there!” He shouted, causing the stranger to flinch slightly at his volume. Abashedly, Emmet shrugged off his headphones.

“Sorry about that, friendo,” he chuckled. “Um, but my name’s Emmet! What’s your name? Are you new here? I feel like I’ve never seen you before. Which is weird because I know like, everybody here.” Emmet bobbed up and down in excitement.

“Whoa, whoa, slow down there, compadre!” The stranger laughed as he strolled towards Emmet, stopping at his side and giving him a friendly, albeit rather forceful, slap on the back.

“Oh,” Emmet jolted forwards from the impact, juggling his cups in an attempt to not drop either of them. “Sorry about that.”

“Why don’t you just take a breath, and I’ll introduce myself.” The stranger walked over to a nondescript hunk of debris, kicking a foot up onto it and striking a cool pose - one which would have likely made a dope freeze frame.

“The name’s Rex Dangervest,” he announced loudly. “Ace spaceship pilot, world-class dinosaur trainer, and all-around tough guy extraordinaire.”

He took a dramatic pause, before stepping back down, and continuing. “And, I've been looking for you, Emmet.”

“For me?” Emmet asked incredulously. “But why?” For a moment, his face grew uncharacteristically serious. “Did Jeff send you?”

“No, no, no,” Rex replied with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I’m just a big fan of yours.”

“A fan of mine?” Emmet’s jaw dropped. “But why?”

“Well, you’re the Special, right? Emmet Brickowski? The guy that saved the universe from Lord Business five years ago?” Rex stepped in closer, swinging an arm around Emmet’s shoulder.

“I… I guess?” Emmet sputtered. “I wasn’t really the Special though, you know.”

“So what,” Rex shrugged nonchalantly, causing Emmet to glance up in disbelief.

“So- So what? But it- that- I wasn’t really a hero! That’s so what. I know you’re new here, but seriously, just ask anyone and they’ll tell you that I’m not.”

“Really?” Rex asked, a hard edge entering his tone.

“Yeah,” Emmet’s voice grew soft, as he lowered his gaze. “I’m, um, not tough enough, they say.”

Rex hummed thoughtfully, stroking at his chin in a deliberately pensive motion. “Not tough enough, huh?”

“Yeah,” Emmet replied. “I mean, I don’t really get it, if I’m being honest. Personally, I’m not a fan of all the spikes and stuff, but still. It’s what everyone says.”

“What if I could fix that?”

“What do you mean?” Emmet looked back up at Rex, who was grinning widely now. What a friendly guy, Emmet thought.

“What if I could help you become tougher? Become the guy that all your friends want you to be?” Something eager bubbled up in Rex’s voice as he asked.

“I don’t- ”

“Become the guy that Lucy wants you to be?”

In retrospect, this should have been the moment that Emmet realized something was terribly wrong about this interaction. There was no way that this stranger could have known Lucy’s name. However, in the moment, his thoughts were somewhere else. Yesterday, he’d asked Lucy if he might be able to patrol with her, just once. She’d said no, on the grounds that “things can get like, really real out there, Emmet”. He saw the look in her eyes, like she was kind of scared for him, or maybe just disappointed in him. He saw that look a lot recently.

But, if he was tough… like Rex was promising… then maybe things could change.

“Okay,” Emmet said, his newfound conviction clear in his voice

“Hah! You made the right choice, kid.” Rex reached up and ruffled Emmet’s hair with a gloved hand. “Come on then, and I’ll show you to my ship.” Rex started to walk off, with his arm still around Emmet’s shoulder, but Emmet didn’t move to follow.

“Oh, um,” Emmet muttered, as Rex turned to look at him suspiciously. “It’s just… I’ve got to meet up with Lucy first. I always get her a morning coffee before we hang out and talk. But, uh, if I explain that I can’t stay today, she’ll totally understand.”

“Emmet, I want you to take a look at this.” Rex reached into one of his vest pockets, pulling out a small, colorful flyer. Emblazoned across the front was an advertisement for Rex Dangervest’s Toughness Seminar and Obstacle Course.

“Can you tell me what it says in the small print at the bottom?” Rex asked, pushing the paper towards Emmet’s face.

“Um, it says ‘A Once in a Lifetime Opportunity’.”

“That’s right.” Rex’s voice was low and serious. “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Do you know what that means, Emmet?”

“That one of my shooting star wishes came true?”

“No, Emmet. It means that I’m only going to make this offer once.” Rex’s grip tightened on Emmet’s shoulder. “If you don’t come with me now, then you’ll be stuck as a soft, hufflepuff loser forever.”

Dread pooled in Emmet’s gut at the thought. A future of disappointing his friends? When the chance to make them proud was right here?

“I mean, I guess Lucy will understand if I have to miss one hang out sesh...”

Rex’s benevolent smile returned. “Exactly! And think about how happy she’ll be when you show her how tough you’ve gotten.”

“Yeah!” Emmet cheered. “You’re right! And then we can hang out even more because I could do patrols with her and the other guys.”

“Totally,” Rex agreed. And, while maintaining his firm grip on Emmet, the two walked off into the desert.

*******************

It wasn’t very far to the Rexcelsior, but it still took a while. Rex had made it to Emmet so fast earlier because he’d done a super cool flip out of the hanger bay while the ship was still a few hundred feet above ground. Of course, that meant that now Rex wasn’t… super sure where the ship was parked. Fortunately, the Rexcelsior like most top of the line vehicles had come with a keychain dongle that made the ship beep obnoxiously whenever pressed. Rex had pawned the thing off on Emmet, who seemed pretty content with pressing the button over and over. In return, Rex had taken one of the coffee cups and started helping himself to its contents.

Emmet wasn’t really drinking from his cup anymore. Rex had said that drinking black coffee was the first step to becoming tough, but the caustic, bitter taste was making it a pretty tricky first step to master. Little sips made it much more tolerable, but also unfortunately made the drink take even longer. Emmet’s own cup must have been pretty bad too, seeing as how Rex kept making comments about how gross and sugary it was. He had finished it awfully fast, though.

Probably because he’s already so tough, Emmet thought, taking another tiny sip of his still disappointing coffee.

When he next pressed the dongle button, the previously distant beeping was much closer than he’d expected.

“We’re here.” Rex said, as he took the keychain back from Emmet’s hand and stepped past him.

“Really?” Emmet asked, looking around in confusion. “So, is your ship just like… really small?”

Rex snickered. “Not quite.” As if on cue, the ship materialized, looming impressively over the two men.

Emmet gasped, and continued to gasp for such a long time that it almost seemed like an action designed to garner laughter from an adoring studio audience. Rex stood nearby, patiently waiting for him to run out of air.

“This,” Rex gestured dramatically once he had regained Emmet’s attention, “is the Rexcelsior - the absolute toughest ship in the universe.”

A panel hissed open behind him, prompting Emmet to gasp once again. With a huff, Rex took his arm, pulling the two of them together into the maw of the ship. Once through, the door slid shut behind them, and the ship vanished back into transparency.

#the lego movie 2 #lego movie 2 #tlm2 #tlm2 spoilers #rex dangervest #emmet brickowski #hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh i'm very nervous #both about posting this and also just in general honestly #but! I'm! posting! it! anyways!

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