Troopers and medics alike ran outside to get eyes on the situation. Kix looked up and saw a LAAT ablaze. The pilot was trying to steer the LAAT away from the building, but embers and pieces of metal broke out and off. Kix’s eyes widened as he watched the ship spiral out of control and troopers fall from the sky. “Medic!” Various voices called as troopers ran to the anticipated crash sight of the LAAT. “We gotta get to them!-” Kix stared at the blazing ship, it hit the ground. Screeching metal and blazing flames roared as a crippling boom followed. Kix instinctively ducked, covering his head and closing his eyes, turning away as the LAAT exploded, debris shooting in all directions.
— The Dying Breathe of Brothers by Tragedy_for_sale, Chapter 7
It was a delight to get to work on this accompanying piece for the 2025 clone wars big bang event! The full fic (written by the wonderful @tragedy-for-sale for_sale) is out now, complete with three accompanying pieces of art by yours truly, and one wonderful piece by @wolviecat ! I highly recommend giving it a read, I had such a blast getting to read it as it developed, and the writer completely shattered me with this one and they deserve all the love! Please go and check it out!
As long as "you" means the Jedi Council. Sixes and Echo find open minds and ears in the Jedi Council, explaining what really happened to Fives and Sevenset that evening. But after that? The matter might be out of their hands...
Words: ~5100
Warnings: None!
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Link to the full story on Ao3
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Grim Reaper: Nero what the kark
N__o: what???
Grim Reaper: You said Order 66 wasn’t dangerous!
N__o: no???
N__o: oh shit wait
Grim Reaper: IT IS VERY DANGEROUS
N__o: YEAH NO SHIT, ASSHOLE, IT’S IN THE 60s
Grim Reaper: YOU TOLD ME IT WAS SAFE
N__o: it was a typo!!! I meant Order 6!!!!
Grim Reaper: YOUR “TYPO” NEARLY GOT KENOBI STRANGLED BY HIS OWN TROOPER
N__o: I WAS FOCUSING ON MAKING SURE THIS KID GETS THROUGH SURGERY
Grim Reaper: Pay some karking attention next time!
N__o: “NEXT TIME”???? YOU PLANNING A REDO???
Grim Reaper: No, I’m going to punch your face into the mats when I see you. Next time.
N__o: oh lol
N__o: i was worried for a sec
N__o: not that this whole thing is not worrying!
Grim Reaper: Just make sure the kid’s okay and work on getting Tal Mu’s data to the Jedi
N__o: well duh
Grim Reaper: You did not just ‘well duh’ me after what you caused
N__o: YOU’RE NOT MY MOM
It was nighttime still, and Coruscant’s jagged cityscape was aglow with windows of different shapes and sizes and colors. Streaks of red and white flew by outside the speeder’s windows as the commander followed the two Jedi in their speeder through the crisscrossing flight lanes above the planet’s surface. Echo sat in the passenger seat, feeling quite a ways out of his depth beside the silent commander. Everyone else had been left at the Clubhouse, on the off-chance something went to shit and they needed to get the injured troopers to safety. The Jedi had insisted Echo and Commander Sixes accompany them to the Council to give their testimony, and he wouldn’t deny being apprehensive about speaking to Jedi he’d never met before.
Grim Reaper: I KRIFFING COULD BE WITH THE SHIT I DEAL WITH
-scene break-
Skywalker was still AWOL, according to Kenobi. The general wouldn’t give any other information, but Echo already had his suspicions that it had something to do with Senator Amidala. She was usually one of the reasons Skywalker mysteriously found other things to do while on Coruscant. He’d helped matters by comming Rex to assure him everything was under control without giving away too much. That way, the captain wouldn’t be dragging Skywalker back out to investigate any time soon. Ahsoka had suddenly appeared just as they were preparing to leave. She’d stumbled over some explanation of being at a friend’s house for a study session/sleepover, and she’d just seen the news, so she figured Saleha and Mira would know something.
Getting her to stay at the Noodle Bar had been like pulling teeth until Echo had gently told her that he would feel better with her there to watch Fives’ back while he recovered. She was still their little sister. The fight had gone out of her at that, and she’d hugged him and then Kenobi tightly before letting them leave.
Echo hadn’t been lying, either. He did feel miles better knowing Ahsoka was there in case the Corries found them.
The Jedi Temple came into view between skyscrapers and towers. The building seemed bigger in the dark, somehow. It had fewer lights on than the rest of the planet, but Echo could just make out the pinpricks of light at the top of the building that marked the Council Room. He swallowed, feeling his mouth go drier than was truly comfortable. The Jedi would listen. The Jedi didn’t dismiss the clones like others did.
“What if this doesn’t work?” He heard himself ask the question, breaking the overwhelming silence that had reigned since they’d left the restaurant.
The commander didn’t move, didn’t react outwardly at all. Then again, with his helmet back on, it was hard to tell. His fingers shifted a bit on the steering columns in his hands. “I’ve had a good run, I guess.”
Oh.
Right.
Echo sunk a bit lower into the comfortable seat.
If this didn’t work, the Jedi didn’t have jurisdiction over disciplinary retaliation. Mostly, that fell to the nattie admiralty. People like Tarkin. People who usually had a grudge against scientifically mass-produced soldiers “taking” positions usually earned by natties over a storied career. More than a few of them shared the opinion that a clone who didn’t behave exactly as directed and expected ought to be retrained or removed entirely.
“Guess this better work, then,” he replied. It sounded a hell of a lot more confident than he felt.
The commander made a noise acknowledging the statement, but nothing else. The rest of the flight went in silence, just as the beginning had.
They landed beside the two Jedi on a small landing pad at the top of the Temple. The commander pressed a round purple button on the speeder’s dashboard, and several mechanical clunks sounded from deep inside the vehicle. That, combined with the quiet electronic whir of machinery moving into a different position, made Echo resolve not to approach this particular speeder by himself. It probably had more weapons capabilities than the average AT-RT walker.
He followed at the rear of the group as the Jedi led them down into the building. The place was darker than he’d anticipated. Maybe he was just too used to the RMBs and cruisers, where the only true dark you got was the engine rooms and the barracks when his squad went to bed. Then again, he mused, watching General Ti navigate the semi-darkness with no more difficulty than she would in full light, perhaps there were more nocturnal or crepuscular people here than he was used to living around.
They followed down a gently spiraling staircase with wide steps and soft pink-orange lights in sconces along the walls. Eventually, they came to a corridor that widened out as it approached a large arched opening. Two Temple Guards stood on either side, faceless and impassive. A bit like the Corries when they were on-duty, from what Echo had observed. Their heads tilted down almost imperceptibly as Kenobi and Ti came before them. One of them pressed the button on the control panel, and the huge doors slid open at the center.
The commander turned to look at him. His helmet’s green visor glowed dimly, casting an eerie sheen onto his black armor. His hand moved, just in front of his chest, meant to be partially concealed. Echo’s brain immediately latched onto ARC sign, eager for a shred of familiarity in such a strange situation.
“Status?” Just as Echo imagined it would sound, the commander’s interrogatory sign was almost nonexistent. If not for Echo’s HUD tracking his gloved hand’s movement against the black armor, he probably would have missed the question mark entirely.
Echo nodded back once, firmly. “On you, Commander,” he replied, likewise keeping his hand close to his body. What was the commander’s name sign, he wondered. Fives had laughed himself silly after creating Echo’s. Echo had no trouble believing that the Chaos Batch hadn’t been the kindest when creating name signs for each other—if indeed they’d done such a thing. Plenty of clones chose their own, just like their spoken names.
He pushed the musings out of his mind. The commander rapped his knuckles against Echo’s chestplate gently, then turned to follow the Jedi inside.
Echo swallowed back the rising unease brought about by a sudden display of vague affection from one of the least affectionate people he knew. He was an ARC. He could do this. Fives needed him to do this. Domino Squad’s stubborn heart-before-head mentality had gotten them both this far. Echo wasn’t about to disappoint his batch by backing out now because of a dozen space wizards he didn’t know.
The Council Room was better lit than the rest of the building he’d seen so far. More than likely, this was because of the diurnal members present. Echo wouldn’t complain. Generals Kenobi and Ti nodded to acknowledge Windu and Yoda sitting on their right when they entered, then walked to their respective seats in the circle of chairs. They both sat down with a bit less grace than usual, and Echo could sympathize. He hadn’t had a chance to unwind from Ringo Vinda yet, and his knee and elbow were screaming for a chance to lie down.
He and the commander stopped at the center of the room. As politely as possible, Echo let his gaze sweep the room behind his visor, taking in attendance. Most of the Council were here in-person, leaving Generals Koth and Fisto as the only holograms in their seats. An empty chair stood roughly opposite the door. Echo didn’t know enough to guess why it was so.
Windu started, resting his elbows on the arms of his chair and steepling his fingers before he spoke. He addressed the two of them in the center. “This is an unusual situation for us all, and we appreciate you both for trusting the Jedi with the evidence you’ve collected,” he said. “The Council has already been briefed on Master Ti’s story of events, as well as what Nala Se and the chancellor have reported.”
Echo couldn’t help the grip of tension that slowly overtook his body at that. He would need to go through everything all over again. Force, why couldn’t Fives be doing this? Oh, right, because Nala Se had drugged him and he was currently (hopefully) passed out asleep back in the Clubhouse.
Windu probably sensed their apprehension. “I understand you may have conflicting evidence to those reports,” he said evenly. “That is why you are here.”
Yoda, seated to his right, stepped in. “Impartial we will be, as we are able. Value your judgment, and your intellect, we do.” The small general gave a warm smile that matched his stature.
“If you would please introduce yourselves to the Council,” Windu went on, gesturing to his colleagues around the room. “We will hear your testimony, and then Master Kenobi or Master Ti can present the evidence they said they would bring.”
Echo and the commander both nodded. The commander took a breath, then reached up to remove his helmet. It was still jarring, to an extent. Most clones (most clones outside of the 501st, Echo had noticed) were particular about which natties got to see their faces.
“My name is Commander Sixes,” he said, choosing to address the empty chair, from what Echo could tell. “Seventh Sky Corps, Star Fighter Pilot Legion.”
Echo followed his lead, removing his helmet and tucking it under his left arm. He held back a wince when his elbow twinged. “I’m Echo, sir,” he said, choosing to address General Windu. “I’m ARC Trooper Fives’ batchmate.”
A small smile graced the Jedi Master’s face. “Anakin speaks highly of you and your brother,” he said gently.
Echo allowed himself a quiet smirk. “We’re good at our jobs, sir.” Out of his periphery, he swore he caught the most miniscule eye-roll from the commander.
Yoda spoke next. “Involved in this matter, how became you?”
Well that was an easy answer for him. “He’s… my batchmate, sir. My twin. I’d honestly be shocked if I hadn’t gotten involved somehow.” Realizing that probably wasn’t very useful information, he quickly added on, “As for specifically how, there’s a…” He blinked, figuring out the best way to explain the Numbers to the Jedi Kriffing Council. “There’s a group of them, sir, with repeating designations like Fives. And we have a group chain of communications. We were all made aware that Sevenset and Fives were on Coruscant and in trouble through that.”
There was a short pause as the Jedi processed this. “For you the same is it, Commander?” Yoda asked.
“Yessir.”
General Ti raised a hand. “Actually, Masters, the commander here was involved on Kamino as well. He assisted in locating clone trooper Tup when he had disappeared from the medical facilities there.”
The Jedi’s attention refocused on the commander. He gave a brief glance to General Ti, but he nodded. “I have connections there. I knew if Tup stayed in Nala Se’s care, he wouldn’t get the treatment he needed. I pulled some strings.”
“Some strings?” General Windu repeated, his eyebrows rising a bit. He then closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “My apologies, we’re getting ahead of ourselves,” he said, holding up his other hand. “Firstly, I would like to understand how ARC Troopers Fives and Sevenset went from escorting Tup for a medical evaluation to being transported to Coruscant for an audience with Chancellor Palpatine.”
Echo glanced to the commander beside him. Slowly, the two of them worked together to piece together Fives’ journey from Ringo Vinda to Kamino. Echo was sure to mention the Separatist’s attempted kidnapping along the way, as it still stood out as strange to him why the enemy would want a wounded soldier. Periodically, General Ti would jump in to corroborate their story, adding confirmations of Fives’ clean bill of health, of Sevenset’s loyal service in Rancor Battalion, and of Tup’s strange behavior while he had been examined. The Jedi listened in silence, occasionally nodding along or leaning forward until they reached the part of the account that left Sevenset and Fives in the room with the chancellor alone.
General Windu held up an open palm, gently signaling them to stop. “Thank you,” he said first. “While we would like to hear from the two ARC troopers in question, we understand why this was impossible. Thank you for being their voices.”
Were normal Jedi always this flowery? This… borderline sappy? Maybe Echo had just spent too long with Skywalker, who was sometimes blunter than a boulder with his so-called wisdom. Regardless, he dipped his chin, shifting his weight to his stronger leg from the straight and square stance he’d subconsciously adopted to tell his brother’s story.
“Master Ti,” Yoda said, looking to her not quite directly across the room. “Evidence you have of what happened in that room, yes?”
“Yes, Master,” she answered, producing the datastick from her robes. She plugged it into the arm of her chair and tapped a button.
Echo and the commander took rapid steps back as a blue hologram emerged from the floor only inches ahead of their boots. Text sprang up in the usual layout from portable datasticks. There were four files: the first was a folder. Echo presumed it contained Mira’s pictures of Sevenset, and possibly whatever documentation was required to demonstrate they had both been high out of their minds. The other three were in odd file formats, but they were all downloaded from HUDs, so they were most likely the communication histories from the Guard commanders, and the video from Nines’ HUD.
Echo felt a shiver run up his spine at the memory. He was not looking forward to seeing it again.
General Ti selected the picture folder. She pulled up images of the blaster wound and the slash across Sevenset’s back. He felt the room inhale as one when the second image became clear. The hologram slowly rotated for what felt like ages before anyone spoke.
When someone did, it was General Kenobi. “Gentlemen, would you please explain what Fives and Sevenset told you about these injuries?”
So, they did. Echo explained Elevensies’ presence in the room, noting how much the kid had looked up to Sevenset, and that he had helped Sevenset earlier in the meeting. The commander revealed the chancellor identifying the two ARCs as traitors to the Republic, and then explained the fateful order given to the Coruscant Guards that changed everything. Echo stepped in afterwards to recount what Fives had said about the lightsaber the chancellor had used, and he once again felt the air in the round room grow heavy and oppressive as the Council practically held their breath until he finished where General Ti had arrived into the room.
He forced himself to take a slow, steady breath. He forced his fingers to uncurl a little where he’d clenched them into a fist under his helmet. This had to work. They had to be able to do something.
They had to understand they were risking everything just by telling them this.
“Serious accusations these are,” Yoda said at length, his rough voice sounding so much louder than it probably was in the absolute silence.
“Unfortunately,” General Mundi said beside him, “there’s not much argument with those images. We all know nothing else could have caused that wound.”
There were murmurs of agreement around the room.
“Still,” said another Jedi. Echo was glad of his efforts to learn the Council members during ARC training. Jedi Master Saesee Tiin, if his memory served. “Still, the evidence of the inhibitor chips remains in chancellor’s hands. Any evidence of his direct involvement, including in activating them—if indeed he did—is anecdotal at best.”
“Not quite.” General Kenobi looked to Ti. “We did some… experimentation.”
She pulled up the communications histories from the two Coruscant commanders. “These belong to Commanders Fox and Thire of the Coruscant Guard. Commander Sixes has confirmed that the oldest two frequencies used by them both are to other clone commanders, including to himself. But the most recent frequency—”
“I recognize it,” General Windu said. Beside him, Yoda nodded gravely. “That belongs to the chancellor. He was the last one to contact them.”
“What relevance has this?” Yoda wanted to know.
The commander answered. “I called them to help take care of Elevensies and the other Guards from the meeting room. After that, they arrived where we were meeting to sort through all of this. They tried to kill Fives and Sevenset without warning.”
“And they repeated the ‘good soldiers follow orders’ thing that Tup had said on Ringo Vinda,” Echo added on quickly.
The commander nodded. “They weren’t themselves, generals. I’ve… I’ve known Thire my whole life. That wasn’t him. That was the chip talking.”
And on it went. Echo couldn’t remember the last time he had talked this long to this many Jedi—and it probably had never happened. They answered the questions asked as best as they could, and Kenobi and Ti offered as many insights as they had. They repeated what Commander Fox had admitted about the Guard’s mysterious disappearances. The commander told the abbreviated story of his friend and former captain’s fate, to the quiet shock of everyone hearing it for the first time. Eventually, though, they had to show the video.
There was a long pause when Master Yoda asked to watch it. Echo glanced at the commander, who gave no reaction. But after a few seconds, the commander took a breath, then started by explaining the data Ti had received from Tal Mu and the 118th Special Forces Division about the chips. He showed his comm unit to both Windu and Yoda, explaining the mistake Commander Nero had made with the orders deemed “safe”. Kenobi explained his role, explained the theory behind the chancellor’s voice specifically being the one to trigger these preprogrammed orders.
And then there was nothing else to do but watch.
It was… odd, watching the events from someone else’s perspective. Of course, he’d been recording from his HUD too, as had the commander beside him. But watching it from Nines’ eyes… knowing that as soon as the order was out in the air, they were watching events Nines had no chance at remembering…. It made his skin prickle. They watched Nines lunge for his general without hesitation, hands outstretched to do whatever damage was necessary. None of them had been prepared, not really. It had taken precious seconds for Echo and the commanders to even realize what was happening, and that it shouldn’t be happening.
Underlying the later half of the short video was the familiar muttered mantra: good soldiers follow orders; kill the Jedi. By the time their stun rings found their mark (and somehow missed Kenobi), the Council Room had gone deathly still and quiet. The muffled voices and flurry of motion at the end cut off when Echo had pulled off Nines’ helmet to stop it.
The room was now silent.
Echo concentrated on keeping his breathing even and deep. There was nothing else he could do while the Jedi mulled over all the evidence they had shared. Echo understood it was a lot. It had taken them an hour and a half to go through it all. The “attempted assassination” had occurred almost five hours ago now. He just needed to keep his cool, keep his frazzled wits as collected as he could, and he would get through this.
After an enormously sluggish few moments had passed, someone finally spoke. It was Plo Koon, his expression largely impassible behind his mask and eye protection. His clawed hands were interlaced in front of his chin, and one leg was propped up at the ankle on the other’s knee. “The entire Grand Army of the Republic,” he said, “all of the clones currently in service and in training on Kamino… they all have this inhibitor chip?”
Echo and the commander nodded. General Ti did as well.
“And there is…” He trailed off. Echo imagined that, if he were Force-sensitive, the room would feel like a pile of noodles, emotionally speaking. “Somehow, Chancellor Palpatine’s voice can be used to trigger commands in them.”
There were more nods, this time from around the room as well.
“And at least two of those commands are lethal,” General Windu added, his face stony.
“Including one that has unintentionally killed one Jedi already,” General Mundi said, “and has attempted to cause the death of one more.” He looked beside him at Kenobi, whose eyes were fixed on the hologram still floating in the middle of the room. “Not to mention the number of troopers they have put at risk if what the commander reports of the Coruscant Guard is true.”
“Investigate further we must,” Yoda agreed with a decisive nod. His clawed fingers tightened briefly around the head of his walking stick.
There were more murmurings of agreement around the room. Echo licked his lips, his mouth once again feeling dry. He had to ask. “Where do you start?”
Windu and Yoda looked at each other, then glances were exchanged in rapid succession, sweeping around the circle. Echo would never understand Jedi.
“Regrettably,” Windu said, “the evidence you’ve presented all contains a common thread. One point of connection that binds them all together.”
He had been afraid of that answer. Well… not really afraid. He’d been suspecting it for a while now. But he knew hearing it out loud would make it all feel real.
“Chancellor Palpatine,” Yoda said. “Much to answer for he has. At the least, complicit in treacherous plans he is. At the most…” He shook his head. “Capable of great destruction and death.”
“He’s working with the Separatists, is what he is,” a voice from the other side of the circle said. Echo turned. Eeth Koth, in hologram, shook his head, leaning forward in his seat. “Master Yoda, we cannot approach him without an overabundance of caution, given the evidence. At the very least, he has a lightsaber in his possession. Now, whether it is his own—” he opened his hands— “I’ll admit, that’s up in the air. But this is a treason plot at its heart.”
The other hologram, Kit Fisto beside him, nodded. “I’m afraid I have to agree. I’m sure we all do, to an extent. The chancellor is dangerous.”
“Oh, for—” A disgruntled noise accompanied the quiet sound of Kenobi’s palm striking his forehead. “I cannot believe this,” he said, his hand sliding down over his eyes. There was a pause as they all waited for him to continue. Eventually, he uncovered his eyes and explained. “Before the First Battle of Geonosis, when I had been captured, Dooku came to speak with me,” he said. “He said something. I hadn’t given it much thought until tonight’s events.”
“Helpful is it?” Yoda asked.
Kenobi’s mouth pressed into a line, his expression drawn. “He mentioned Qui-Gon, in a way that implied Qui-Gon might have helped him then. I denied it, I had to. But he went on about Qui-Gon’s old displeasure with the bureaucracy and corruption of the Senate, which was true, and said that if Qui-Gon had learned the truth as he had, he would have joined him.”
“The truth?” Windu repeated, his brows furrowing.
He nodded. “He said something like, ‘What if I told you the Republic is already controlled by the Lord of the Sith?’ He named him Darth Sidious.”
Echo looked over at the commander, making quite an effort to keep his mouth clamped shut around the venom he wanted to spit. The Sith had done this? Chancellor Palpatine was Sith? Was he The Sith? The commander gave no reaction, as per kriffing usual, so Echo had to look around the room and wait for someone to keep talking.
“Do we go to the Senate?” Master Tiin asked as other Jedi glanced around the room as well.
“Certainly not if we want something done in a timely manner,” Kenobi mused, a tired smile coming to his face. “But no, the Senate is too…” He sighed. “I fear Palpatine holds too much sway there. While we understand that all of you,” he said, gesturing to the two of them in the middle of the room, “are fully sentient and capable of exercising free will that these commands appear to take away, I’m not sure enough of the Senate will see through Palpatine’s counterargument and join our thinking.”
The commander did a valiant job in containing an eye-roll. “Unless you explain to the senators that every Coruscant Guardsman present could be ordered to kill them without warning. I’m sure that would go over spectacularly well, sir.”
That got a pained, weak laugh out of Kenobi, who then sat forward to rub his eyes while he settled. “Oh, yes, spectacularly.”
“I would also add that while we know the chancellor’s voice triggers these chips,” General Ti spoke up, “that does not eliminate the prospect that other conspirators may exist, and may be capable of the same control.”
Well, that was terrifying.
“Handle this ourselves we must,” Yoda said with some finality.
Windu sighed and shook his head. “But, surely, there’s a better way than marching into the chancellor's office, sabers drawn, and hoping he’s as helpless as he prefers to be seen.”
The commander shifted where he stood. “I have a legion of star fighters at my command. I’m sure lining a few of them up outside his window wouldn’t be any trouble.”
Kenobi shook his head now. “Clone pilots,” he said. “It’s too dangerous, Commander.”
Echo spoke up. “We made it work earlier, didn’t we?” he said. “When we deafened our helmets, no one else was affected but Nines. We want to help, General.”
“We know you do,” Windu replied, his voice gentle but unyielding. “But Obi-Wan is right. The chancellor’s control over these chips is still too much of an unknown for us to safely bring more troopers with us.”
“And since he has a lightsaber,” General Koon added, “there is no telling the magnitude of his powers in the Force, not to mention whatever allies he may have on call.”
In a moment rivaling some of Fives’ more stupid suggestions around the briefing table, Echo replied, “We could wear earplugs and use slugthrowers instead, sir.”
It made Kenobi laugh again, this time with more genuine mirth. “And there’s the Five-oh-first for you.”
The commander shrugged. “I know somewhere we could get a lot of slugthrowers.”
While Echo’s remark had caused some chuckles and quiet smiles, that appeared to garner more looks of concern than anything else. Had Echo not already met the rest of his batch and witnessed Saleha pulling adhesive breach charges out of a cookie tin, he might have joined them. The average clone trooper—even the average clone commander—was not supposed to have a mystery source of non-Republic weapons at his beck and call.
Now, however, Echo couldn’t help but say, “If you say it’s Commander Nero, I will lose it.”
“Of course it’s not Nero,” came the immediate reply. “He’s halfway across the galaxy right now.”
Echo arched an eyebrow at him. “Forgive my assumptions based on several instances of past experiences, sir,” he said, too tired to fully disguise his sarcasm.
“Watch your tone, ARC.”
“Gentlemen.” They immediately stopped their exchange to return their attention to General Windu. “We are not bringing clone troopers to confront a man who is capable of mind-controlling clone troopers.”
Unfortunately, Echo found he couldn’t soundly argue against that point.
Commander Sixes apparently could. “What about Mandalorians?”
General Windu stared at him, then brought his hands up to rub his eyes. He sighed. “What about Mandalorians, Commander?”
The commander explained. “If, hypothetically, I could contact several members of a non-hostile Mandalorian clan who have no qualms with using slugthrowers against people who wield lightsabers, then… what about Mandalorians?”
“Hypothetically,” Windu repeated.
“Of course, General.”
Windu leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. He clasped his hands and raised them to pinch the bridge of his nose between both index fingers. For a few seconds, he simply breathed, and the other Council members seemed to breathe in concert. Even without the Force, it was calming. Eventually, Windu sat back up and addressed them both.
“The Council needs some time to discuss our options,” he said, receiving several bobbing heads in agreement around the circle. “Commander, Echo, if you would be kind enough to wait outside, we will try to make this brief. And we will keep the commander's… resources in mind.”
Echo had expected that. The Jedi always did things as a group, and regardless of the enormous gravity of the situation, they would need to mull this over before acting on it. The commander seemed to accept this easily as well. They both saluted and were dismissed back out the double doors into the dimly lit hallway. He slipped his helmet back on to make it easier to see.
“That went smoothly,” the commander remarked flatly from behind his own helmet.
“I guess,” Echo said. After a beat, he asked, “You really know how to contact a clan of Mandalorians?”
The commander looked at him. “Yeah. One of them trained my batch.”
He blinked. “Wait, she’s the one who grabbed Tup, right?”
“Yep.”
“And… how many are in her clan?”
The commander shrugged, folding his arms. “Dunno. Twenty, maybe? There’s always a few hanging around Coruscant. Easy money.”
“Right….” He stared a few seconds longer before looking away. “And since your trainer is part of the clan, I’m guessing anyone who messes with your batch could rile up the whole lot of ‘em, yeah?”
He nodded. “Absolutely.”
I'm sure Sixes isn't plotting anything at all ever ._. @23-bears @theultimatesandwich @mercurydancer @rndmpeep @xylionet @thechaoticfanartist @501st-verified
anywaaayyyy I think the next update will happen sometime during September (not on the 1st tho). Owlie is using August as a break month. I've been writing this story for like... 2 years straight??? Wild. But the next chapter is almost done, and the story itself is almost done! I shall see you all in September (and perhaps when Owlie is a year older!)
Happy June everyone! I am back from a lovely vacation and I am RARING to go!!!! Sixes has years of training and experience to handle almost any situation he'd encountered so far. This situation does not fit into any of those boxes. What the fuck.
Words: ~7K
Warnings: Some canon-typical violence, also a sensory overload meltdown but it's short and not terrible and at the very end.
Link to Master List of Chapters on Tumblr
Link to full story on Ao3
Sixes hadn’t let himself think about… everything yet. He’d pretty much had tunnel vision since Sevenset had messaged everyone in a panic, mere seconds after Maral had told him two the ARCs had been taken to Coruscant by Nala Se. He had no idea what had happened on the 501st’s most recent campaign. He had no idea what Fives had managed to do to get himself and Sevenset in so much utter shit. Apparently it had something to do with Palpatine and a lightsaber and Elevensies—none of which explained why Sevenset had a blaster shot in his gut, Sixes would point out!
That was for later. Right now, he let his mind and training take over, guiding the Shyyyo Speeder into the garage in the Noodle Bar as smoothly as he always did. He’d thank Maral later for keeping the security forces off their jets. She’d understand. For right now, he messaged her the word safe as he got out of the vehicle to help Sevenset.
Kriffing hells, Sevenset. When he opened the side door, the ARC nearly toppled out of the seat onto the durocrete floor of the garage. Sixes caught him instead by the strap of his chestplate. He hissed when the jostling tugged at his injuries, but Sixes didn’t have time to sympathize right now.
“Let’s go,” he said, putting his arm around his back and practically hauling him out of the speeder. Fives had gotten out already, hovering nervously nearby, although Sixes didn’t miss the way he leaned his hand a little heavily against the speeder’s black body for support.
They were ARCs, for Maker’s sake, and they were this unsteady? Sevenset had survived the Zillo, and Fives had come out the other side of Krell’s command, and they somehow looked worse than he’d ever seen them.
He didn’t say anything about it. He helped (dragged) Sevenset to the door inside, then took them both downstairs to the Clubhouse. How many medical supplies did they have in stock? Bacara hadn’t used any recently. Thire usually had his own supply in his office or barracks, and frankly, Sixes didn’t use such things as often as he probably should. Whatever, it meant more for everyone else. He already had a few scars, he could handle a few more.
But Sevenset… The man was panting by the time they’d reached the bottom of the stairs, his gloved fingers gripped like a vice around the far strap of Sixes’ own chestplate. Sixes didn’t know if he had what he needed to get Sevenset the help he clearly required.
“Bit farther, Sevens,” he said, entering the access code to the Clubhouse door.
When it slid open, he involuntarily tensed at the uncommon noise level coming from the normally near-silent apartment. But that was to be expected with almost all the Numbers in one place. It wasn’t even very much noise, just the odd quiet conversation, but it was still more than usual.
After Maral’s warning that whatever Sevenset and Fives were up to was bigger than they both knew, he’d not-so-gently ordered them all here. He figured more minds were better than a few, and he knew Sevenset and Fives would be grateful to see everyone. That, and he wasn’t too keen on one of them letting something slip to the wrong audience. Better to keep an eye on them.
Proving at least one of his ideas a good one, as soon as he rounded the corner from the hallway into the common space, Do-si-do shot to his feet where he’d been lounging on the slyyyg plushie in the corner.
“Sevenset–holy Force!”
At once, the Numbers were on their feet (if they hadn’t been already), instinctively moving closer to the three of them. Fours and Trees hung back slightly, the most wary of the group. Loops, Nines, Do-si-do, and Echo, however, pressed in to see the extent of what had happened.
Sevenset looked too stunned to really compute what was happening as Sixes manhandled him over to the couch and made him sit. The others parted easily to let him move around the room, quickly reforming their concerned huddle when they could.
As soon as Fives was visible, Echo broke off and grabbed him, hugging him like he’d disappear if he let go.
“What the kark did you do, Fives?” he demanded, but anyone would hear the underlying, bone-deep worry behind the angry front.
His brother sagged against him, digging his fingers into the gaps in his armor, mumbling something inaudible before burying his face against his batcher’s neck.
Sixes tuned their conversation out, finally removing his helmet and setting it on the floor near one end of the couch. “Kit off, Sevens,” he said.
“Why’re you all here?” Sevenset asked, looking more genuinely confused than Sixes had ever known him to look.
“I told them to,” he answered. “Kit off, now.”
“We were kriffing worried!” Do-si-do exclaimed as Sixes lost patience waiting for Sevenset to get his armor off, and sat down next to him to take it off himself. “You sent all that in the chat and then went silent. What were we supposed to think?”
Loops nodded, his arms folded tensely over his chest. “Yeah, something about Elevensies being down and—”
“And an Evil Palpatine?” Do-si-do cut in, his curls bouncing with the force of his concern. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“How much trouble are you both actually in?” Nines wanted to know, looking between Sevenset on the couch and Fives still wrapped up in Echo’s arms.
“So much,” Fives answered, lifting his face to be heard. “So much kriffing trouble, holy shit—” A shaky breath cut him off, and he let Echo push his head back down to his shoulder. The true weight night’s activities were finally hitting home, if Sixes had to guess. Echo walked him over to the big bean bag chair next to the slyyyg, sitting them both down and starting to get his brother’s armor off to make him more comfortable.
Trees spoke up, holding a datapad he’d brought with him. Sixes hadn’t liked the idea of another GAR-registered device in the place, so he’d made Remy clear it before Trees had been let in. “Uh, you’re both wanted for attempting to assassinate the chancellor, as well as—”
“Because he’s evil!” Sevenset interrupted him sharply, managing to undo the clips on the sides of his chestplate. Sixes grabbed the armor piece and started lifting it up off his torso, but a cry of pain made him freeze.
Do-si-do was at Seveset’s other side on the couch in a flash. “What? What happened?”
“Stuck,” the ARC wheezed, blinking back threatening tears.
“The plastoid melted on his back,” Sixes told them both, seeing how the undersuit clung to the marred and blackened armor. “Lightsabers’ll do that.”
“How do we get it off?” Do-si-do wanted to know, looking to him frantically, his hands clasped around his friend’s unarmored arm.
“Lightsabers?” Loops repeated, his brows furrowing.
Sixes sighed sharply, feeling the beginnings of a headache form as his brain tried to process (and not process) everything he had and had not learned tonight. Before he could speak to this point, a new voice from the doorway to the hall had them all turning sharply to see who had arrived.
“Sixes,” Mira said again, taking in the scene with remarkable calm. “Do you want help?”
“You shouldn’t get involved in this, Mira,” he told her bluntly, leaning around Sevenset to try to figure out how to get his armor off without tearing his skin open further.
“I’m afraid I already am,” the old weequay said, stepping forward a bit. “This property is under my name, dear.”
“That’s not–I mean—” He sighed through his nose, closing his eyes to formulate his thoughts. There were so many thoughts.
When Mira spoke again, she sounded closer. “You do recall I was a field medic in the Republic Army for almost a decade before the Noodle Dream reorganized my priorities?”
He looked over at her, at her soft blue dress with embroidered grape vines and flowers, at the quiet open expression she always wore to put them at ease. Oddly, it wasn’t hard to imagine those wrinkled hands in sanitary gloves, smeared with blood, and never shaking once as they applied bandages and sewed stitches. Something about her consistency, her efficiency, and her never ending supply of grace and goodness told him she would have made a formidable field medic.
“This isn’t a simple thing,” he said.
She smiled. “I know. I’ve been watching the holonews.”
Of course she had.
But he didn’t want her getting hurt. If this whole situation was half as messy as he suspected it might be, there was every chance anyone helping Sevenset and Fives—clone or civilian alike—could be labeled a traitor and sent before a military tribunal for trial. Well. The civvies would get a trial, anyway. He couldn’t do that to her. To her, or to Saleha. They had been nothing but kind and generous to him and his batch, even if they were one of the rougher command batches.
Sixes didn’t know if he’d be able to live with himself if something happened to them just because he’d let them help.
Ultimately, Sevenset forced his hand. The ARC made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat, screwing his eyes shut. “Can someone please just get the armor off and make it stop hurting?” he implored, and Sixes could practically feel his resolve crumble.
The faster Sevenset was seen to, the faster he’d be back to his quick smiles and stupid jokes. A steady stream of curses played silently in Sixes’ mind as he realized just how important it suddenly was that Sevenset got back to smiling as soon as possible. This ARC wasn’t even under his command! What the hell had he done to be that important? Clingy little bastard.
“You have the supplies to treat a blaster shot and a lightsaber wound?” Sixes asked Mira. “His armor and undersuit melted together.”
“More than likely, yes,” she nodded. “I’ve been restocking with you and your brothers around. I’ll just be a moment.” She swept out of the room and disappeared.
When she was gone, Trees spoke again. “Not to be pushy, but do we ever get to find out what the hell happened to you two?”
“That’s a long story,” Fives admitted. Echo had gotten him out of his amor entirely, and he was now curled up in the bean bag chair with his brother. “Where do we start?”
“Ringo Vinda?” Echo prompted. “What happened with Tup and General Tiplar?”
Before Fives or Sevenset could speak, the main door to the Clubhouse slid open, making them all jolt again. Maker, they were on edge like the Separatists were next door. But it was just Bacara. Sixes had contacted his batch too. Thire was still tracking down Elevensies, and Nero was gleefully kidnapping another 501st trooper.
“Sixes—” He saw the second his brother recognized the number of unknown people in the room. His whole posture went rigid. “What the hell.”
“Have a seat, we were just about to hear about it,” Sixes said. “Right?” he added, fixing a stare on Fives.
Bacara grumbled something inaudible, but walked over to stand near where Sixes sat on the couch. They all centered their attention on Fives, whose eyes were half-lidded as he struggled against falling asleep. He sat up a little taller, shaking his head a little to clear it.
“Okay. Ringo Vinda. Tup–he’s in our platoon,” he said, rapping his knuckles against Echo’s chestplate. “He uh… he stopped firing in the middle of a skirmish, took his helmet off, walked right up to General Tiplar, and shot her in the head, execution-style.”
“What the kark,” Bacara said.
“Why?” Do-si-do asked, horrified.
They were all horrified. Outside of Umbara, there hadn’t been an incident of a clone breaking ranks to execute a Jedi–and certainly not without obvious cause like this.
“Good soldiers follow orders,” Echo said, and Fives nodded. “It’s all he would say.”
Sixes’ heart thudded to a stop before jolting back to normal. He glanced up at Bacara, largely unreadable behind his helmet still, but he looked down to make brief eye contact. Good soldiers follow orders. He’d heard that before. Years ago, only a few months after Geonosis. Good soldiers follow orders.
“What did it mean?” Do-si-do asked. “What orders?”
“Execution orders,” Sixes guessed, although there wasn’t much uncertainty.
Fives nodded. “Something like that. When we were on Kamino, I… did some scans behind Nala Se’s back. Sevenset and I figured out that we’re all born with an implant in our brains.”
“An inhibitor chip” Sevenset said, spitting the words out like they were bad food.
“A mind-control device,” Fives added with his own stormy glare. “Tup’s malfunctioned. Made him kill.”
“Malfunctioned?” Sixes heard the word come out of his mouth sounding far less sure or steady than he preferred while in command.
The next obvious questions came from Loops. “Why? How?”
Both ARCs shrugged helplessly.
“Where’s the evidence?” Trees asked. Pretty typical of him, even in crisis, wanting the facts. It reminded Sixes of Bacara, actually.
There was silence for a moment, Fives and Sevenset staring at each other. A creeping dread filled both their expressions. It was making Sixes uneasy. What had happened to the evidence? He assumed they had evidence. They weren’t that stupid to have found all this information out and then failed to safeguard it. Then again…. He remembered the explanation Sevenset had given when he’d asked what had happened. Drugs. If someone on Kamino had drugged one or both of them—and there was quite a list of people who might try it—they might not have been in the best state to collect it.
“The chancellor,” Fives breathed. “General Ti gave him the chips, all of ‘em.”
“He still has them,” Sevenset concluded, slumping further on the couch.
Fives’ head fell back against the bean bag. “Kriff me.”
“Why is that bad?” Bacara asked flatly, having missed the earlier discussion of lightsabers and evil chancellors.
But that wasn’t the reason Fives gave. He sat up again, a pronounced snarl curling his lips. “Because he’s the one who can kriffing control them!” he snapped. “Sir!”
“That’s what happened to Elevensies,” Sevenset said, nodding. “He… he was in the room with us, on duty, and he shot me.”
“He shot you?” Do-si-do, Nines, and Loops all exclaimed, turning to him.
“Only after the chancellor told him to,” he hurried to add. “He knew me, he helped me when I got off the gurney they had us on, but as soon as the order was given…”
Silence descended upon the room while they all at least attempted to start processing what had been revealed.
Malfunction. That had stuck in Sixes’ head. Tup—whatever had made him kill, whatever had made him turn against the Jedi… had been a malfunction. An accident, medically speaking.
Good soldiers follow orders.
You are a traitor and must be dealt with as such.
Good soldiers follow orders.
If Tup’s… inhibitor chip could malfunction on a whim, then… it could happen in others, right? It could have just been… an accident….
But the chancellor? The chancellor was another matter. That was dangerous. There was no reason Elevensies would do anything to hurt Sevenset—at least not this badly. The kid practically worshiped him. By that logic, the story the two ARCs told made a degree of sense. But they still had no evidence. Given the chancellor had the entire Guard out looking for Fives and Sevenset, he had no designs to let this incident see the light of day.
A quiet tap on the doorframe from the hall pulled Sixes out of his own head. Mira was back. She had an old-style leather field bag in her hands, the red medical symbol a little faded on the front. Saleha loomed behind her, the old togruta’s face lacking the usual warmth he’d come to expect. A grim sort of expectation replaced it. Oddly, the expression looked at home.
“May I get to work?” Mira asked, looking to the three of them on the couch.
“Please,” Sevenset breathed.
Immediately, Mira slipped into the same quiet authority she radiated when she was playing manager for the Noodle Bar. With a gentle firmness to her voice, the told Bacara and Sixes to move the small oval table to one side, and told Sevenset to kneel on the floor in front of the couch. They did as they were told. She pulled a pillow off the couch to kneel next to Sevenset on the floor. Fives was still royally pissed off, having a whispered argument with his batcher in the corner, but he kept throwing worried glanced over each time Sevenset made the smallest noise of discomfort.
Poor kid.
“I haven’t met you yet,” Mira said lightly. “Look at me, dear,” she said, taking a small light out of her bag. Sevenset set did, wincing when his stomach twinged no doubt. “My name is Mira.”
She flicked the light over his eyes a couple times each, checking to see how hard he’d been hit in the head. Not too hard, Sixes had thought, judging by the color of the bruises. But his pupils still didn’t contract as fast as he thought they should.
When she was done, Sevenset said, “I’m Sevenset. Heard about you, ma’am.”
Mira and Saleha both shot knowing smirks over to Sixes. He rolled his eyes minutely. “I’m afraid I don’t have much to give you for the pain,” Mira explained, pulling on gloves, then beginning to lay out her tools from her bag. “My numbing spray expired while I wasn’t using it, and you’re clearly still under the influence of something, so I won’t risk injections or pills.”
Sevenset’s eyes closed, and he mouthed something to himself. But he said, “Understood, ma’am.”
“I will try to be quick about it.” She got to work. Sevenset laid his front on the couch cushions so Mira had access to the horrific slash across his back. Do-si-do had slid to the floor next to him, almost mimicking his position, to keep him company. Sixes moved down to the end of the couch near Bacara, sitting at the very edge of the cushions. There was still a lot to learn.
“What do you know about these inhibitor chips, Fives?” he asked, knowing Sevenset would be too occupied to answer. Already, Mira’s skill with her scalpel was making him mutter under his breath and flinch occasionally.
Fives rubbed his face, clawing at consciousness. “They’re… partially inorganic. They’re implanted early in our development. Basically at the first sign of a brain, they pop it in so it grows around the thing. They… alter behavior. It’s their nature. We just don’t know how or what kind of behavior it causes.”
“Other than…” Echo added, leaving the obvious unsaid. Other than killing.
Sixes nodded. “And the ‘good soldiers follow orders?’” he asked. “What’s that?”
Fives shrugged. “No clue. It’s all Tup would say. That and… repeating something about killing Jedi.”
You are traitors and must be dealt with as such!
“But they can be removed, right?” Nines wanted to know. He pointed on his own head where Fives and Sevenset both had surgical bandages. “I assumed.”
Removed? Now that was some good news.
Fives nodded. “Yeah, it’s… honestly a pretty straightforward procedure for most medical droids.”
Sixes nodded again, standing up when the buzz of anxious uncertainty under his skin finally got too much for him. He folded his arms, incidentally mirroring his brother beside him. They did that a lot. “And the chancellor, he controls them how?”
“His voice, I guess? Specific verbal commands?” Fives said, unsure. “It’s what it looked like.”
“And he has a lightsaber.”
“A red one,” Sevenset added through gritted teeth. “Hope to hells it’s actually his so the Jedi can take ‘im out–” A hissed curse cut him off, but they understood the implication.
The door to the outside slid open again, and again, they all tensed like a bomb had gone off nearby. Bacara actually growled quietly to himself under his helmet. The other Numbers clustered a bit closer together where they stood near the kitchenette. Two Coruscant Guardsmen entered. Thire came in first, followed by Fox, who, even with his helmet on, was radiating displeasure.
“Okay, anyone wanna tell me what the hell is happening?” Thire asked, their voice doing that thing it did when they were pissed off but still had to be reasonably socially polite. Sickly sweet, Nero called it.
“Now,” Fox added sharply.
“Is Elevens there?” Sevenset wanted to know, trying to sit up and twist around to look.
“No. Stay still, dear,” Mira told him, her voice firm despite the endearment.
The room had gone suddenly tenser at their appearance. It was understandable. If Fives and Sevenset were that badly wanted by the chancellor, these two were toward the bottom of the list of welcome visitors, even if Thire was his brother.
“Why’d you bring him?” Bacara asked, pointing to Fox and voicing Sixes’ thoughts exactly. “Isn’t he half the problem here?”
Fox’s helmet tilted slightly. “Yeah, I know, Fox is always the kriffin’ buzzkill on Coruscant,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm that would, unfortunately, go right over Bacara’s head. “Get some new material, Nova.”
“What material?” Bacara shot back, bristling.
Thire put his hands up between the two commanders. “Okay, both of you, stop it. Fox is here because he helped me make sure the three Guards from that incident in the medical tower were transported to a secure location. We just want to know what the hell is happening, okay?”
“So, Elevensies is safe?” Fives asked in a small voice. He and his batcher had scooched a bit farther from the door when the two new commanders had shown up. Sixes didn’t blame them, considering the night Fives had had.
Thire nodded, waving his hand to move on in the conversation. “Yeah, yeah, he’s fine. They’re all in a secure wing for observation. It’s standard procedure.”
“I overheard Thire talking on his comm like he might know something,” Fox added, looking at Sixes. “So, do you?”
Sixes sighed to himself. He didn’t like the sound of standard procedure for an unprecedented incident, as far as he knew. Then again, Thire had swept a few things under the rug before, so it wouldn’t surprise him if that were the case.
“What’s happening is these two ARCs found out we all have inhibitor chips in our brains that can control our actions without our knowledge, and can apparently malfunction and cause troopers to turn on their Jedi and murder them on the field.” When Thire turned to him with a posture that said they were about to interrupt, he held up a hand to stop them. “Oh, no, it gets better. When they were taken to the chancellor to explain themselves, they’re saying he gave a specific command to the Corries in the room, and they started shooting to kill, and somehow the chancellor has a red lightsaber too.”
“What?” the two Guard commanders both said.
“Yeah.”
“What do you mean it’s ‘standard procedure?’” Sevenset asked, biting back a hiss as Mira kept working. “I don’t remember any karking procedure for sudden mind-control.”
“What do you mean he gave a specific command?” Fox asked in return, some of the defensiveness leaving his voice to make way for wary curiosity.
“No, I wanna hear about standard procedure first,” Bacara answered, folding his arms again. Sixes was inclined to agree. “This happened before? Is that what that means?” he added, leaning forward ever so slightly toward Thire.
Thire shifted their weight from foot to foot for a couple seconds before giving a reply. “No, that’s not what I mean.”
“Are you lying?” Sixes demanded, taking a small step forward. Thire wasn’t nearly as good as Nero when it came to deception, but few were. Unfortunately, he and Bacara were so woefully unskilled in catching lies in the first place, it barely mattered.
“Of course not.”
“Thire…” Saleha’s low voice rumbled from where she stood between the couch and the high counter on the outer wall of the kitchenette. “You are not being entirely truthful.”
“Nothing like this,” Thire said, gesturing to Sevenset and Fives, “has ever happened before!”
“But?” the old togruta prompted, her deep blue eyes fixed on them, pinning them like a bug to a board.
After a couple seconds of staring back and forth, Thire’s posture finally deflated. They looked beside them at Fox, who shrugged minutely. They sighed. “The officers of the Guard have had… episodic memory loss before. They disappear sometimes on ‘missions’ and come back with headaches and no memory of what happened or where they’d been.”
Fox added, “We used to go find them before they come back by themselves—”
“—but when we found them, they weren’t themselves. They would only address us by our designations, and they’d always go on and on about some orders to fulfill. Until they did whatever they were supposed to do, they were stuck like that,” Fox finished, the fight having left his voice as well.
“So we stopped looking for them,” Thire said finally.
Sixes stared at them. Everyone stared at them. Even Mira had allowed Sevenset to sit up to look around at them momentarily before she resumed her work. Do-si-do shuffled a bit closer to him. The other Numbers all wore expressions somewhere between horror and disgust, and Fives looked ready to throw up. Or pass out. Hopefully not both.
How long had this been happening? How long hadn’t Sixes known about this? Thire hadn’t been a commander in the Guard for as long as Fox had, not by a long shot, but they spoke about this like they had intimate knowledge of it.
“What the hell, Thire?” Bacara said through gritted teeth.
“Has it happened to you?” Sixes needed to know. He almost wished he’d kept his helmet on now. A cocktail of fear, guilt, anger, and betrayal was roiling in his gut, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep his expression as neutral as he preferred.
Fox spoke up. “It’s mostly me,” he said quietly. “About half the time.”
Sixes rubbed his face with one hand. Bacara muttered something inaudible, and likely indecent, under his breath. “And Thire?” he said, looking back to them.
His whole batch knew Thire kept secrets about how the Guard ran, about the sacrifices he made to keep his brothers safer or more comfortable. Nero would sometimes transfer them funds to make sure they were eating better, or to make sure they could get better clothes or jewelry they liked to wear off-duty. And time and time again, Thire would divide the funds out amongst his troopers instead. Or he would buy food in bulk, like boxes of chips or cookies or fruit, and hand them out, usually keeping little for himself. Because it was Thire. It was no coincidence Sixes took him out to meals any chance he got, just to make sure his brother was actually eating. But this? This went beyond. This was dangerous.
And Thire hadn’t told them. Any of them.
Even now, they squirmed a little under the direct attention. Fox stood still as a statue beside them, totally impassive. Finally, Thire said, “Only once. It wasn’t that big of a deal.”
“Are you karking serious?” Bacara exclaimed, throwing his hands up. “Not a big deal?”
“All of this is a big deal!” Sixes added, raising his voice. “Unexplained disappearances are a big deal in a security force! You’re both commanders, Thire!”
“Yeah, well, we can’t remember shit, so what are we supposed to do?” his brother shot back, stepping up to him. “If we have no idea how it’s happening or where we go when it does, how do we fix it? Who’s gonna believe us?”
“Us!” Sixes and Bacara both said at the same time.
“After what happened to Vesper, you think I’m not gonna believe you?” Sixes added, and Thire flinched slightly. “After I had to shoot one of my own captains because he claimed to have orders to kill me, and ‘good soldiers follow orders’—” he added air quotes— “you thought I wouldn’t believe you?”
The room was quiet, save for Sevenset’s labored breathing, and Bella meowing from a high shelf. Sixes, in the overwhelming concern for his brother, had momentarily forgotten how many people were in the room, and that most of them were not in his batch. Saleha’s face was stony, her expression harsher than he’d ever seen it. Nines and Trees looked similar, as did Domino in the corner. Loops and Do-si-do were gaping at him, eyes wide and jaws slack. Fours had his hands pressed firmly over his mouth to avoid the same look.
Sixes sighed, willing the anger out of his system. So much for keeping that tooka in the bag, as it were.
After a long spell of silence, Fives voice sounded from the corner, barely above a whisper. “Commander… you’ve seen this before?”
“Yeah,” he admitted, “I have.” He took a step back from Thire and Fox, turning slightly to face more of the people in the room. Gods, he did not want to tell this story, but he knew he should. He took a steadying breath, for all it wouldn't do for him. “Vesper was one of my captains when I got promoted and formed the Death Wings. We fought in Geonosis One together. He got out with a head injury: pretty bad one, but they patched him up and cleared him for duty. Few months later, he was complaining about a headache, but that was nothing new for him. We were in hyperspace, on the bridge,” he went on, keeping his gaze on the carpet in the middle of the room so he could focus beyond the constricting grief that would wash over him as soon as he let it, “and he just…”
He shook his head. He didn’t know what words to use.
“Like a switch flipped,” Fives offered quietly.
Sixes glanced over at him, still curled up against Echo. “Something like that. Said something about receiving orders to relieve me of duty. Something about acts of treason against the state. Kept saying that ‘good soldiers follow orders’ shit. Pulled his pistol on me, so I disarmed him, started calling for backup or medical. When he drew the other pistol…” He cleared his throat and waved a dismissive hand. “Whatever. Long story short, he was one of my most trusted officers, and he ended up dead because of ‘good soldiers’ following orders. And now it’s happening again.”
A long stretch of quiet followed the end of his abbreviated story, which he’d expected, but still didn’t appreciate. It was a hard enough story to remember, let alone share with others.
Finally, Trees coughed quietly. “So, now what do we do?” he asked, sounding less shaken than the others. “I mean. We can’t go after the chancellor ourselves if what Fives and Sevenset saw is the case.”
Nines agreed. “Yeah, we need Jedi, ideally.”
“Lightsabers,” Loops added, still lost in thought a bit. Fours nodded silently.
Mira gave a triumphant little noise and set aside her scalpel. Finally, some good news. The other Numbers murmured amongst themselves about Jedi while Sixes turned to watch Do-si-do and Mira help Sevenset out of his chestplate. He winced when the full extent of his back injury came into view through the hole in his undersuit. The skin and muscle were red and angry where Mira had cut away the melted material, but the rest of the wound was still brown and charred, even a sliver of white showing near his spine. All those tattoos, cut through as well. Sevenset wouldn’t be happy about those when he had the wherewithal to think about it.
Without warning, a shout from Domino’s corner had them all back on edge. Sixes spun on his heel, his hands reaching to the holsters at his sides before he’d even seen what was happening. When he did see, the only thing saving him from Thire’s pistol raised toward him was the training ingrained into his body.
He dove, realizing as he moved that Thire hadn’t been aiming at him. “Cara!” he yelled, hearing his brother moving to neutralize the threat before he’d said anything. He scrambled to the couch on his knees. His hand caught Do-si-do roughly by the shoulder and hauled him close. Mira and Sevenset huddled on the floor without armor or weapons. He put a hand on the pilot’s head, shoving it down as he ducked with him, creating a human shield around the more vulnerable targets.
Behind him, he heard the unmistakable sounds of close-quarters combat. Fortunately, that was Bacara’s specialty.
He chanced a look over his shoulder, keeping his head bent down at an odd angle. Saleha had crouched down under the little counter, behind the bar stools there. Nines crouched in front of her. A brief wave of gratitude flooded his mind at the sight of someone outside of his batch protecting her. Loops and Trees must have gone into the kitchenette or the hallway, because he couldn’t see them.
Bacara had Thire momentarily pinned to the rug in the middle of the room, both putting up one hell of a fight as usual. Unlike usual, however, he was yelling about an Order Sixty-Two, about following orders.
About eliminating the traitors.
Behind that, between his batchers and Domino in the corner, Fours was locked in a struggle with Fox—and holding his own impressively. Sixes knew Bacara trained his Marines relentlessly, most of them sharing the same physical capabilities as an ARC trooper after spending enough time under his command. Fours demonstrated that clearly. He had one hand wrapped firmly around Fox’s wrist still holding a pistol, but his other arm was grappling with Fox for control.
Finally, Fours snarled, bringing Fox’s arm down to pin it under his arm against his torso, twisting the wrist until the pistol dropped. In the same motion, he stepped, placing his foot behind Fox’s leg. With a surge of strength, he pushed, following the commander down when he lost his balance.
“Stun them!” Sixes yelled, more than a little desperation seeping into his voice when Thire wriggled free of Bacara’s grasp. Their hand went to the back of their belt. Sixes’ stomach dropped. He’d never thought he’d be so ungrateful for Maral’s fascinating expertise on knife-work.
“Do I kriffin’ have to?” Bacara demanded, managing to knock Thire’s vibroblade away from his own throat just in time. “Can’t just knock ‘em out?” He wrapped his arm around Thire’s knife arm, now mimicking Fours’ struggle with Fox.
“No!” Sixes told him. “They’re still your brother!”
A stun ring flew out of the corner near the bar stools and hit Thire in the head. Instantly, his body collapsed to the rug beneath Bacara’s weight. Another ring shot out and managed to get Fox in the back as he fought his way upright from the floor where Fours clearly hadn’t quite managed to pin him. He thudded to the ground as well.
It was quiet.
Sixes picked his head up to look at Saleha, the gold-plated mini-blaster in her hand aimed over Nines’ shoulder. “Where the hell were you keeping that?”
Saleha gave a tight smile, patting Nines on the shoulder as her stance relaxed. “Never ask a lady where she keeps her weapons, my dear.”
A very small whimper from Sevenset made him relinquish his hold on Do-si-do and sit back on his heels, now more confident Mira and her patient wouldn’t be shot any time soon. Sevenset turned from where he’d been pinned to the couch, his wide eyes taking in the aftermath of the short scuffle. Bacara had yet to move from where he knelt over Thire, but he had taken their helmet off, presumably to check vitals. Sixes felt his own heart stutter slightly seeing his brother laid out like that, knowing it hadn’t been their choice. Fox was the same, although Fours had moved off to kneel beside him.
A soft hand on his hand made Sixes turn to find Mira’s hand on top of it. “Thank you, Sixes,” she said in a voice as soft as her touch.
He just nodded, unable to find words to reply.
“Everyone alright?” Nines asked, still kneeling with Saleha.
Trees and Loops poked their heads up over the counter top. “Just great,” Loops said shakily, giving a thumbs up. Trees nodded, the motion a bit jerky and his focus looking farther away than Sixes would have liked.
“Domino?” Nines added.
Echo had apparently done the same as Sixes, shielding his brother from whatever might have happened. He nodded, wincing when he unbent his bad leg from his kneeling position to sit down next to Fives. “We’re okay.”
Fives gave a silent nod and a shaky thumbs up.
Sixes allowed himself a small breath of relief. There were still so many questions to answer. How had the chancellor gotten to Thire and Fox all the way out here? Did that mean the whole Coruscant Guard had been compromised? Who could they contact for help?
The unwinding trail of questions came to a halt when he heard Do-si-do quietly hushing someone. Looking down, he saw Sevenset had finally been pushed beyond the threshold keeping his composure in place. Shining tear tracks streaked his face even as his friend gently brushed them away with his fingers. His breathing was erratic and shallow. Do-si-do was doing what he could get his attention to calm him down, but it wasn’t easy in his current state.
“You gotta breathe, Sevens,” Do-si-do told him quietly. “C’mon, please.”
But Sevenset shook his head, weakly batting away Do-si-do’s hands. “Hurts,” he managed, leaning forward so his back was no longer in contact with the couch.
Sixes let out a breath silently. He stood up, offering a hand to Mira as he did. She stepped over to stand beside Bacara and Thire on the floor. He took her place, kneeling back down on the carpet next to Sevenset. Do-si-do looked up at him, the look in his eyes making it very clear he was way out of his depth.
“It hurts,” Sevenset repeated more forcefully, his efforts to get Do-si-do’s hands away gaining more strength.
Sixes reached over and put a hand on the pilot’s arm, stopping his attempts. Do-si-do withdrew his hands, now looking utterly helpless. “I know it hurts, Sevens,” Sixes said, keeping his voice low and even. “Let’s get you up and we’ll find somewhere you can get some rest.”
“No.” Sevenset wrapped his arms around his knees. He started rocking, very slightly, forward and back, but he couldn’t seem to figure out where to look or where to keep his hands. “Don’t wanna move. It hurts,” he said shakily.
“Sevens, you need to sleep,” Do-si-do said ever so gently.
“I know!” he shot back with uncharacteristic ire. Immediately, he put his hands over his ears and ducked his head to rest on his knees, still swaying.
“The lights might be too loud,” Bacara said. Sixes turned to look at him, as did pretty much everyone else. He pointed to the main overhead lights. “They get too loud for me sometimes.”
Mira walked over to the control panel by the door and lowered the dimmer switch, easing the room into a warm twilight. The string lights Thire and Nero had put up over the couch were now the main illumination, casting a soft pink and orange glow over the room.
“Sevenset,” Sixes tried again. “Breathe. In for four, hold for four, out for four. You know the drill.” Despite the blunt phrasing, he did his best to keep his voice as gentle as he could manage. He hoped that perhaps the familiar exercise would cut through the overwhelming emotions that currently had a hold over him.
There was no clear indication his words had been received. It took several seconds of waiting for anything to change. Sevenset still gently rocked back and forth where he sat, his face hidden by his arms and knees. But eventually, Sixes heard his breathing start to settle. It was no longer as erratic or as shallow, and even his motion forward and back slowed down a little. Maybe the lights had been too loud.
Everyone in the room held silent as they waited for Sevenset to calm down. It took a few minutes. Slowly, his posture relaxed. The tension in his shoulders and arms loosened minutely, and he lifted his head enough to see over his knees. He was still swaying slightly, but Sixes hadn’t ever seen Sevenset sitting still for longer than a few seconds. This was probably as close to baseline as they would get.
“Better?” he asked quietly.
Sevenset nodded, wiping his eyes on his sleeves.
“You’re safe,” Do-si-do said, leaning in a little, obviously restraining himself from reaching out to hug his friend. “You need to lie down, though.”
“You up for walking, or no?” Sixes wanted to know. It wasn’t far to the bedrooms, but he wouldn’t be surprised if Sevenset was too rattled to be much use moving himself.
But he nodded back, firmly enough that Sixes actually believed him. He reached out, hooking and arm around Do-si-do’s neck. The pilot shuffled closer on his knees without hesitation, wrapping his own arm around his friend’s shoulders carefully. Together, they got Sevenset to his feet. Sixes followed suit, watching Sevenset with sharp eyes in case he buckled.
“He can go in my room,” Sixes offered, moving ahead of them. “Echo, bring Fives too,” he added, turning to Domino in the corner. “Best to get these two out of sight until it’s safer.”
Echo nodded, helping his brother stand up out of the bean bag chair. They all followed him out of the room.
As they left, Sixes heard Mira say, “I’m going to make some tea.”
So this is fun, right? :D Everyone is having a fabulous time learning Lore, aren't they? yeah... fun fact, when I created these characters over two years ago (wow), I just gave Sevenset all of my undiagnosed ADHD. Anyway! What are they gonna do now?? How do they deal with an Evil Raisin man!!! Idk I haven't gotten quite that far yet!!!! @23-bears @theultimatesandwich @mercurydancer @rndmpeep @gaeasun @beskarmermaid @darth-void (again lmk if you want/don't want tag)
Now we're getting into some deep shit! So... Sevenset and Fives are off to see the chancellor of the Republic to explain why they broke So Many Rules on Kamino. This will surely go very well, with zero consequences ever.
Words: around 5500
Warnings: Canon typical violence, I think? Some shooting, some unsolicited drug use, yknow. Suspense.
Link to Master List of Chapters
Link to the full story on Ao3
Long flights in hyperspace came with the territory of being a soldier in the GAR. The galaxy was a big place, and they were always traveling from one battlefield to the next. Almost every clone eventually got used to the rumble of a ship’s hyperdrive and the blue whorls and streaks flashing past the viewports as they hurtled through space. To most, it was soothing, like the constant roar of the waves on Kamino had been. It was hardly uncommon for the constant noise and subtle vibrations to lull a trooper to sleep on those long flights.
But for once, Fives really did not want to sleep.
He fought it for what felt like hours. But he was strapped down on his back, technically in custody, and was only let up to be escorted to the head. Whatever the Kamino Guard had injected into his neck certainly wasn’t helping, either. Ugh… why had he let them do that?
Mercifully, Sevenset was across from him on the other side of the main cabin, so they still could see each other and talk occasionally. His friend was clearly more alert than he was, his dark eyes sharp and bright as they roamed the cabin interior. He must have refused whatever injection Fives hadn’t. Smart man. He was even more grateful for Sevenset’s knowledge of ARC sign, meaning they could still communicate even when Nala Se was standing too close for comfort.
But he was still exhausted. He’d been fighting a battle on Ringo Vinda for a couple rotations before landing on Kamino, and he hadn’t slept or eaten much in something approaching eleven or twelve hours. He just didn’t want to sleep. He didn’t feel safe enough.
He might not have much choice in the matter.
Motion caught his eye as his head started to loll to one side. Sevenset’s hand was moving again. Signing was a little difficult without the ability to move their hands around to different reference points on their bodies, and frankly, it was a mainly utilitarian language with few words outside of what they needed on the field. But they had managed.
Fives squinted, his brain sluggishly interpreting the signals.
“I've got night shift. Sleep.”
He smiled a little at the joke. He was right, this wasn’t a night shift, and he had no obligation to be on watch right now.
Sevenset added, “You’ll need energy.”
Fives nodded in reply, looking at the ceiling again. Right again. If something happened on Coruscant, he’d prefer the edge a few hours of sleep would give him. He looked over again and signed back. “Hostiles in the area.” His eyes flicked down past his boots to where Nala Se and General Ti stood and sat respectively.
Sevenset chuckled quietly, following his gaze. When the expression faded, he returned his attention to Fives. “I repeat my last. Sleep.”
He sighed. Then he nodded, giving a slurred, “Affirm,” back as he readjusted himself into something resembling a comfortable sleeping position.
It wasn’t an easy task, strapped down to a hover gurney not built with comfort in mind, and being in someone else’s armor. His he had carefully customized with bits of padding, or by sanding down sharp edges. This kit was fresh off the presses, and it showed. But, his brain was still tugging him toward sleep, the noise of the ship growing farther and farther away to his ears as he forced himself to relax.
At least he wasn’t alone in this, he kept reminding himself. He had a friend in his corner. They’d figure something out. They had to.
-scene break-
The jolt out of hyperspace must have woken Fives, because nothing around him seemed too different. Still, as soon as his consciousness returned, his senses kicked into high alert. Or… they tried to. Whatever sedative he’d gotten on Kamino was still making him a bit groggy, although he could tell the effects were fading.
He blinked, trying desperately to clear the fog of sleep. General Ti stood with her back to them both, waiting at the main cabin doors for when they touched down. The Kamino Guards who had accompanied the transport stood near her, and he assumed the two manning the two gurneys stood behind them where they’d been the whole flight.
A shadow fell over his face, and he jolted weakly against his restraints as Nala Se’s head loomed over him, swaying almost imperceptibly on her long neck.
“Wh–are we here?” he asked, his voice a bit rough from sleep.
The doctor didn’t answer. She reached over to something behind him, out of his view, and he craned his neck to try to see Sevenset, but her body was blocking his line of sight.
He had a bad feeling about this.
“What are you doing?” he asked, still fighting for every second of coherency while the sedative worked through his system.
He caught a glimpse of an automated syringe in her hand, but it was a second too late to say anything about it. It hurt, probably more so because his whole body was rigid with anxious tension. Whatever was in the syringe was cool and smooth, and felt far to gentle for whatever insidious plan the doctor was trying to enact with it.
Fives shook his head, his vision suddenly appearing like a slow-motion replay of the world around him. “What… wha’d you do?” he tried to say. His tongue lay heavy in his mouth, inarticulate and mostly useless.
Of kriffing course.
She’d drugged him up, just for the Chancellor.
When the doctor moved, he finally pulled his head over to the side to look at Sevenset. He didn’t look much better than Fives felt. His friend’s eyes were half-lidded and glazed, his lips forming soundless words, and his brow furrowing as he tried to comprehend the new reality his brain had discovered.
“Sev’ns,” Fives said. When his friend didn’t immediately respond, he tried again, hopefully louder. It was hard to tell, when his ears felt three kliks away from the rest of his brain.
Finally, Sevenset’s head fell to the side, and his unfocused gaze found Fives. After a moment of thought, he said, “I prefer uppies, I think.” Just like Fives, his words were slow and clumped together.
Fives rolled his eyes. Jokes at a time like this. At least Sevenset’s personality was intact. Now they just needed to get through this meeting with the Chancellor while hopped up on whatever depressants Nala Se had given them—and would no doubt deny having given them, the kriffing stick of poodoo.
The ship rattled quietly as they touched down, and the main cabin door opened with a hiss as they ramp began to descend. The bright light flooding the cabin made Fives squint, and he was only vaguely aware of motion as he and Sevenset were escorted out of the ship behind the Jedi and the doctor.
Okay, they were going to see the Chancellor. He needed to know about Tup. Tup hadn’t meant to kill General Tiplar, he’d just… he had… The chips! That was why. It was the chips. The chips were bad, that was why Tup’s had malfunctioned. No… the chips… Tup’s had malfunctioned, but his hadn’t. That was dangerous. That was dangerous… because… if something like Tup happened again, that would be bad.
He looked back over at Sevenset, whose brows were creased in thought again. Maybe he was doing the same thing. Going over the story.
The sound of voices pulled his attention to the front of their procession. A blue guy… the Chancellor’s aide… but he couldn’t remember his name. Whatever. The blue guy with the stick met them, then turned around to lead them inside. Fives was pushed in first, ahead of Sevenset.
The halls were dark grey, with bright overhead lighting that hurt his eyes. He had a vague feeling they shouldn’t hurt that much, but there was already so much going on that wasn’t right. His limbs felt heavy, his fingers felt three feet long, his head was filled with thoughts like wet blankets, and the noises around him were muffled and far away.
But eventually, he caught sight of a flash of red to one side. Slowly, his brain supplied the recognition of a Coruscant Guard member flanking one side of a doorway as he was pushed in. More red filled his field of view as he had turned his head to look at the Corrie. More red?
Oh, shit. The… what were they called…? Red Guard? The Chancellor’s personal body guards, the ones dressed all in red. A pair of them flanked the inside of the doorway.
The room into which he and Sevenset were pushed was round and dark. Fives glanced around as he approached the center, seeing a trio of Corries standing equidistant around the perimeter. He swore he saw one of them startle slightly upon seeing them. He might have imagined it. The details of the room were quickly lost, however, when the two of them were put under the harsh white lights directed at the center of the room.
Their gurneys were attached to a pair of rotating tables, and slowly, they were brought to an upright position. Thank the Maker they went slowly, because Fives was pretty sure his head would have spun off his neck if they’d gone any faster. Fortunately, whatever Nala Se had given him didn’t appear to be as long-lasting as the other drugs, but his head still felt like it was stuffed with cotton.
“These are the troopers who caused so much alarm?”
Fives blinked rapidly, refocusing on the old man in front of him. He’d never seen Chancellor Palpatine before—not in real life, anyway. Holograms and pictures, sure. But never in person. He really was just an old… guy. But Fives would be blind to miss the glint of intelligence and something sharper in his light eyes. He wasn’t sure he liked the look of that something sharper.
General Ti and Nala Se stood to one side. The Jedi nodded. “They are, Chancellor. This is ARC trooper Fives, and ARC trooper Sevenset.”
Sevenset shook his head. He looked a little worse-off, now Fives had a better look at him. “She drugged us,” he grumbled, screwing his eyes shut and then blinking several times. “Kriffin’ stick walker stuck me—”
“There, there, trooper,” the Chancellor soothed, an easy smile coming to his face. “Don’t strain yourself, please.”
His voice seemed to draw Sevenset’s attention more fully, and the ARC straightened up almost without thought upon recognizing a higher-ranking person. But his dark expression lingered. Fives recalled the story he’d told the Numbers about his last time on Coruscant.
“Guards.” The three Corries flanking the two tables went to attention. “Let them down.”
The restraints on his chest and legs retracted into the gurneys, and Fives took an unsteady step down to the floor, instinctively holding a hand out toward Sevenset, even though he was too far away to help if his friend fell. Luckily, the Corrie on the far side of Sevenset caught his elbow as he stumbled, and Sevenset brushed it off gently once his feet were under him.
Once a Guardsman, always a Guardsman.
“Now, troopers,” the Chancellor began, pressing his palms together. “What brings you before me?” An open smile graced his face, but now Fives’ head was clear enough to see the expression didn’t quite make it to his keen eyes.
Right. Their mission. He had to get this right. “The chips, Chancellor,” Fives answered, standing straight at attention to speak.
“Chips?” The old man’s face read with genuine curiosity.
“Inhibitor chips, implanted before we even fully develop in our tubes” Sevenset added as General Ti stepped forward with a case.
She withdrew the three sample slides from the case and held them up for the Chancellor to see. “These were removed from all three troopers. Fives believes they are what caused the tragic incident on Ringo Vinda with clone trooper Tup.”
The Chancellor took the slides from her hand, his chin dipping as he studied them closely. The curiosity was gone from his expression, and Fives almost wondered if he had ever truly seen it in the first place.
Nala Se spoke up, and the curiosity was suddenly back in the Chancellor’s face as he looked up to her, like it had always been there. “Inhibitor chips are used to make clones less aggressive and more receptive to following orders,” the doctor explained. Because of course she was still going with that argument. “I tried to explain this to these clones,” she went on, turning to them both. “They are there for their own good, but they removed their chips nonetheless.”
Sevenset scoffed. “Our own good? Where’s the good in Tup’s malfunctioning and making him kill a Jedi?”
“When I analyzed Tup’s chip,” Fives said, hoping to maintain a shred of credibility, “there were signs of rapid decay in function and structure. It was sick.”
Chancellor Palpatine took it all in. “And we’re sure this sickness had nothing to do with a virus?” he asked, stepping closer to General Ti and the doctor.
No! Not the stupid virus idea again! A virus was the least likely answer to this whole thing. If Tup had caught a virus, then how had Fives not caught it? Or Rex? Or literally any of his brothers when they had been eating, sleeping, and fighting together for the past two rotations before Tup lost it.
“No,” Nala Se answered with a tiny shake of her head. “We still do not know definitively what caused trooper Tup to kill. We only know that his chip failed, and now these two clones have removed theirs as well.”
“And we’re fine, thank you so much for asking,” Sevenset cut in. As much as Fives could respect his lack of trust in authority, now was not the best time to be pushing it. Then again. Drugs.
The doctor’s round eyes narrowed slightly. “And that makes them a risk to themselves and to others,” she finished tersely.
“A risk of what?” Sevenset challenged. “A risk of being right? A risk of you being wrong?”
“Sevens,” Fives hissed. Even if he was saying what they both wanted to, he was far removed from Fives’ attempt at decorum, given the current audience.
“They are covering something up, sir,” his friend went on, turning to the Chancellor. “We are ARC troopers, we are trained to be careful, we are trained to be thorough, and we are trained to trust our instincts. My instinct doesn’t like anything about these chips. We still have no proof of their efficacy outside of what the good doctor here claims.”
Well, maybe Fives had judged his friend’s lack of poise too quickly. He had forgotten Sevenset’s uncanny ability to morph to suit the situation.
“And what makes you think the Kaminoans are behind all of this?” the Chancellor asked.
Fives answered. “If it’s not them, it has to be a Separatist plot. Why else would the chips cause a trooper to lash out at the Jedi? Make him lose his senses? Perhaps the true nature of these chips makes us more violent, not less. I know Tup, he’s not like that. That chip completely changed him.”
Chancellor Palpatine’s thin eyebrows rose, deepening the lines on his forehead. “A Separatist plot put into action before the wars even started?” he asked, a ghost of an infuriating smile haunting his mouth and eyes, and so faint, Fives thought he’d imagined it.
When put like that, it did sound lightly ridiculous. But, from what Fives had learned from Generals Skywalker and Kenobi, there was still no real consensus on how the clones had come to be in the first place. Jedi Master Sypho Dias? That was the name Nala Se had given, but Fives had never heard of such a Jedi.
Maybe being an ARC for the Galaxy’s Hero wasn’t so bad, huh?
“That seems highly unlikely, does it not?” Chancellor Palpatine said, turning to General Ti and Nala Se for their reaction.
The Jedi dipped her head just enough to constitute a nod. “It does, Chancellor. Very unlikely.” Her face was unreadable, but grim.
Nala Se was much more passionate in her reply. “It is patently impossible. This was an isolated malfunction of one clone’s inhibitor chip caused by a virus, Separatist origin notwithstanding.”
“And where is clone trooper Tup?” the Chancellor asked. “I was informed he had been… mislocated?”
Oh boy. This could get ugly. Time to hope his acting skills were better than his lying skills.
Nala Se finally looked out of her depth. She blinked a few times, her long fingers fiddling in front of her body. General Ti spoke up. “Unfortunately, yes, Chancellor. Clone trooper Tup disappeared from his room in the medical wing before further testing could be completed.”
“What?” Sevenset cut in, and his surprise was so genuine, Fives almost believed he had forgotten the plan they’d made with Trainer Tumun.
“Rest assured,” General Ti went on, “I have tasked one of our Mandalorian trainers to track him down. Her record is perfect, and I have grown to trust her over the years she has served the Republic in training new soldiers.”
A shadow flitted over the chancellor’s face. “That is troubling. These troopers had nothing to do with his disappearance?”
“No!” they both told him immediately.
The Jedi shook her head. “No. They were in custody when Tup was reported missing.”
“What if the Separatists are trying to get him back?” Fives blurted, trying the first thing that came to mind. “They captured him once, what if they found a way into Kamino?”
“Impossible,” Nala Se insisted. “Our security was redoubled after the attack by Asajj Ventress and General Grievous.”
The Chancellor stroked his chin, studying the glass slides still in his hand. “But the prospect is troubling. Master Ti, I trust I will remain abreast of the search efforts.”
“Of course, Chancellor. You will know as soon as I do.”
“You have to find him!” Sevenset demanded. Shit, that guy could make a theater career if he had half a mind to do it. If it were allowed.
“Perhaps,” the Chancellor said, his attention back on them, “it would be possible for me to speak with Fives and Sevenset without the two of you present?”
Fives found he preferred the Chancellor’s attention anywhere other than on himself. There was a twisting familiarity in the intensity of the gaze, and in the razor-sharp intelligence, boring into him. He couldn’t place it, though….
General Ti took a step toward him. “Chancellor, I must object—”
“Please, Master Jedi, trust me,” he replied, placing his free hand on his chest. “I am not alone, after all.” He gestured to the Coruscant Guards and his personal escort around the room. “I have my security.”
Fives glanced around at the security as it was pointed out. Three Corries in standard gear with standard DC-17 blasters in their hands. The two red guards… he didn’t want to know what kind of weapons they had. Best not to get them involved.
Chancellor Palpatine went on. “I want these soldiers to feel they are getting the proper chance to explain their side of the story. Let us not be unreasonable to them.”
After a tense few seconds, General Ti nodded, and she and Nala Se were escorted out of the room. Fives looked over his shoulder as they left, and as he turned back to the Chancellor, he caught Sevenset’s hand signaling at his side.
“One hostile in the area.”
One hostile? Nala Se had left, who—
He nearly jumped out of his skin when Chancellor Palpaine’s voice appeared at his right side, much closer than he had been seconds ago. “Now, where were we?”
Fives finally found the match to that niggling thrum of unpleasant energy he got whenever the Chancellor looked at him for too long: Krell. That was not a promising match.
One hostile in the area.
The man moved on, circling the upright table behind Fives until he stood between the pair of them. “This is quite an impressive amount of information you two have collected on these chips,” he said. “All to help a fellow soldier? A bit odd, isn’t that?”
“Not in the slightest, sir,” Sevenset answered evenly, despite the flare of suspicion and distrust clear in his gaze. “We help our own.”
“Tup is my friend,” Fives added. “We’ve been through a lot together.”
“A friend? I see. Yes, I had heard from some of the other officers that the Jedi often encourage such things,” the Chancellor said, taking one last glance at the glass slides in his hand, then closing his fist firmly around them.
Other officers was just politician for nat-borns. Fives suppressed a sneer at the insinuation that having friends was some anomaly in his genetic code. Maybe the Chancellor was no better than the politicians scrambling to make it harder and harder for clones to do… well, pretty much everything. Always advocating for budget cuts this, or cheaper materials that, not caring that it meant thinner blankets, worse food, and more cramped sleeping quarters for the men on the front lines.
Not that those people would ever call them men.
Fives could feel a steady build of adrenaline seeping into his bloodstream. He was surprised he still had plenty to put out, considering how much stress he’d been under recently.
“What does my friendship have to do with the fact that the entire Grand Army of the Republic have chips implanted in our brains that can make us do things we don’t want to do?” he asked, struggling to keep his voice level.
Chancellor Palpatine nodded, stepping between them to his previous position. “Oh, yes, that is quite a serious matter. Can’t help but be curious, though, don’t you think?”
“Curious about?” Sevenset said through gritted teeth. His hands were clenched in fists at his sides.
“How they work, of course,” the man smiled, facing them fully, the slides still invisible in his hand. “Must be fascinatingly clever to have gone undetected and without error for so long.”
Fives’ brain was working overtime to combat the drugs and figure out what the hell he was saying. He wanted to know how the chips worked? Okay, fine, so did Fives, but not like this. This guy was talking about it like he wanted to perform a dissection on a frog to see how it croaked.
And Fives had the distinct impression he’d have a hollow smile on his face the whole time doing it, too.
“Honestly? Yeah, whatever these things are, they’re genius,” Sevenset said, out of kriffing nowhere. Fives’ head snapped over to stare at him. Some of the tension had bled out of his frame, his hands resting on his belt instead of clenching and unclenching at his sides. “I mean, they’re a testament to science, if you wanna overlook the tragedy they caused.”
Even the Chancellor looked… vaguely surprised. “Oh, yes. Tragic indeed.” There was a brief pause where he seemed to hold an inner debate, his sharp gaze hovering on the Coruscant Guard standing between the two tables.
Fives’ heart rate ticked higher.
Eventually, he nodded to himself. “You both have been an interesting encounter,” he said with finality, and it was certainly the bad kind of interesting. “Guards. These clones are dangerous and must be considered traitors to their station.” Before either Fives or Sevenset could finish processing the statement in order to rally the indignation it deserved, Chancellor Palpatine said, “Execute Order Sixty-Two.”
Instantly, the Guards raised their blasters, aiming directly at him and Sevenset. Fives felt his heart drop to his boots.
As his mind reeled with the new information it had just gained, Fives’ body was quite done with thinking things through, and he leapt out of the way as blue bolts streaked by. He happened to leap at the Chancellor. He didn’t know if he was aiming to get the slides back, punch his face in, or use him as a meat shield, or what, but he tackled him, pinning him to one of the podium control panels bordering the center of the room.
Probably not his proudest moment, tackling an old, defenseless man, but that was all over for now.
The first cry of pain made him slow down and truly inspect the situation, like he'd been trained. One of the Guards was still aiming at Fives, but the other two were both on Sevenset.
Sevenset lunged at the closest trooper with a snarl, expertly grabbing the guard’s blaster arm as he ducked underneath and twisted around. A sharp tug made the guard drop the weapon, and Sevenset’s elbow came up, catching the clone under the helmet. As he fell to the ground, his bucket clattered down separately, and Sevenset fell to his knees, wheezing, one hand on his gut.
Oh kark, he was hit. He was hit, when had he—he was—
No time. Fives flung the Chancellor to the ground as he dropped to the floor to avoid the blaster shots whizzing over his head from the guard trailing him. He rolled and shot up inside their range, kneeing him in the gut and slamming his head into the table Fives had arrived on earlier. He crumpled, his weapon skittering away. A second guard fired, barely missing Fives’ ear as he flinched away and surged toward him. He put one hand on his wrist and jabbed his fist into the clone’s exposed throat.
As his opponent gagged and fell to his knees, Fives wrenched the weapon from his hands and rounded on the Chancellor. “You!”
He was still on the floor, but Fives realized too late when he’d thrown him down, he’d thrown him toward Sevenset.
“What did you do?” he demanded, circling behind the table that had held Sevenset to get closer to his friend. Sevenset followed his lead, dragging himself across the floor, away from the Chancellor.
“You wanted to know how they work,” the man said, a sinister grin settling on his features far more easily than any of the pleasant smiles had previously. “And you will be the only ones.”
Fives bent down slightly, offering a hand to Sevenset to get him over faster. As he did, the Chancellor moved with a speed unexpected of a man of his age, his hand disappearing into a fold in his sleeve. Sevenset’s hand landed in his own at the same instant something silver and blazing red flashed across his vision, then disappeared as fast as Fives had registered.
Sevenset screamed, his hand clenching down on Fives’ wrist like a vice. Fives didn’t even stop to think before hauling his friend up with as much strength as his body could muster in its state of complete shock.
The Chancellor backed off, a glint of silver disappearing back into his robe as he started yelling. “Guards! Help!”
What was—oh, that little huttspawn demagolka poodoo-stain—
“Elevens,” Sevenset said, his breath ragged as he leaned heavily on Fives’ shoulder.
“What?” he managed, pulling him closer to support him better and heading for the door.
Sevenset pointed, wincing, at the guard he’d knocked down. The soldier’s helmet lay on the floor, and his face was turned to them, four red lines on his face clear as day in the harsh lighting. Elevensies.
“Can’t leave 'im,” Sevenset urged, trying to tug Fives closer to the kid.
Fives pulled him back as the doors across the room opened and General Ti stormed in, lightsaber flaring blue in a heartbeat as she took in the commotion. “No choice, mate, we gotta go.”
“He tried to kill me!” the Chancellor wailed, pointing a shaking finger at them both.
“Lying piece of shit,” Sevenset growled.
Fives nodded, slamming his fist into the door controls. The door slid open, and Fives was suddenly thrown off balance by Sevenset taking a hit to the cheek from another Corrie Guard posted outside. Fives turned them both, lashing out with a kick to the trooper’s hip. Sevenset grabbed his arm and dragged him into the doorway as an obstacle.
“You good to run?” Fives asked.
“We’ll find out,” Sevenset nodded, lifting his arm from around Fives’ shoulders.
They took off down the corridor, a steady stream of quiet curses falling from Sevenset’s lips as they ran like hell. The first thing they encountered was a staircase. A long, spiraling staircase that led down at least five levels. Fives swore and started downward.
“Fives! Follow my lead!” Sevenset called from behind him.
He paused briefly, turning to watch with horror as Sevenset swung himself over the banister, catching under his arms as he began to slide down the sloped rail.
“Are you outta your bucket?” Fives yelled at him, taking the stairs down two at a time. Thing was, Sevenset was faster. Faster meant better right now. Oh, Echo would never let him hear the end of this if he found out.
Please, let him stay alive for Echo to find out about this.
He copied Sevenset, gripping the rail tightly and avoiding the uprights underneath. He still had the blaster, and held it just as tightly. Looking ahead from his new position behind Sevenset, his breath hitched in his throat. A long black line of singed plastoid scored the back of his plate, from his left shoulder down and across, disappearing near his waist. The Chancellor really had used a lightsaber.
They reached the bottom as they heard a door open above them, and that meant General Ti, no doubt. While she was a Jedi, and probably their best shot at not dying immediately, he was in no hurry to find out for sure.
“Down here,” Sevenset told him, and they ran down a corridor to their right.
It ended in a door that slid open at their approach. A massive antechamber greeted them, packed with people and medical personnel. Fives groaned internally, and just kept running, shouting at people to get out of the way. Frustratingly, he found his balance and perception had still not recovered from whatever drugs Nala Se had pumped into him.
The floor would seem to tilt at bad times, he couldn’t turn or stop as sharply as he knew he could. Kriffing hells. Sevenset was still keeping up with him, somehow, his face maybe a shade paler than it should be. But they kept running, knocking over the odd droid or cart to make some obstacles.
They were just over half-way through the room when the massive doors ahead began to slowly… close.
“No!” Fives yelled, willing his legs faster. Sevenset gave a wordless cry of similar sentiment and kept his pace.
The doors were half-closed now, the triangular opening shrinking by the second. They could make this, they could do this. They had to, there wasn’t another option.
Finally, they were close enough, and Fives hurled himself hands and head first through the opening into the night air of Coruscant. He landed inelegantly, rolling clumsily to distribute the force. Sevenset landed partially on top of him with a bit-off cry of pain.
Fives scrambled to his feet as the door closed with a clunk. He dragged Sevenset up with him, ignoring but not unheeding of his friend’s grunt of pain or his sharp breathing through his nose.
“We got this, yeah?” he said, putting a hand at the back of his neck. “We gotta move, so stay with me, Sevens.”
Sevenset nodded firmly, grasping at Fives’ elbow. His eyes were a little misty from the pain and his skin was definitely paler than a healthy complexion, but otherwise, he was as determined as Fives had always known him to be.
“Okay, good,” he said with a small smile, risking the seconds it took to lean in to bump their foreheads together lightly. “Let’s move, ARC,” he said, stepping away and falling into a jog as they fled the medical center.
-scene break-
Double Trouble: ngl i am craving noodles, anyone else?
Leafs: I feel there is an obligation to go have noodles
DressedtotheNines: there is no obligation
Loopy: there is an obligation bc i’m making you go, trees
DressedtotheNines: I stand corrected
d0nut man: Aw :( you guys are making me hungry
Submarine: I would like noodles
Double Trouble: YAY it’ll be a party!!
DEATH: I’ll tell Saleha and Mira to be prepared
Double Trouble: thaaanks :3
DEATH: Never use that face in my presence again
Loopy: uh oh
Double Trouble: ,o_o,
Leafs: Noodles it is, I guess… Echo?
CrispyDomino: Uhhh we just landed, might be there might not
Double Trouble: oh hey has anyone heard from my son lately?
Loopy: ur what
DressedtotheNines: aren’t you gay?
d0nut man: …… do you mean ELEVENSIES???
DEATH: I’m muting this conversation
RedBoiiiii: DONT DO NOT HELP
Leafs: Oh Maker no
Loopy: okay now what’s happening over in crime town
RedBoiiiii: BAD THIGS HELP
Double Trouble: SEVENS WHAT HAPPENED????
CrispyDomino: WHAT HAPPENED???
RedBoiiiii: AT 000. PALPY EVIL. 1111 DOWN. FIVES W ME. OW.
CrispyDomino: WHAT THE KARK
DEATH: What did you do
Double Trouble: ARE YOU OKAY????
Loopy: uhhhhhhhhhh anything to do with the sudden increase in security around here??
Leafs: Is that what this is? I suppose the security probe droids have gotten more frequent
CrispyDomino: I AM GOING TO KILL MY BROTHER
DEATH: Everyone shut up and let me deal with this
ohhhhh they're in troubllleeeee.... anyway, I hope you all enjoyed my version of what happened behind closed doors during that episode. It haunts me to this day :) Also, I might start posting chapters twice a month? I have a lot written, and I am impatient!! And I don't wanna bombard you guys with 10k word chapters. @23-bears @theultimatesandwich @rndmpeep @mercurydancer @gaeasun (anyone can let me know if they want to be tagged or not, I'm just flailing at this point)
Fives and Sevenset are having a distinctly un-fun time running away from every security force on Coruscant. They can only hope that help arrives before any other unsavory company does...
Words: ~5700
Warnings: So…. this chapter has slightly more violence than usual, but it's nothing too dramatic.
Link to Master List of Chapters on Tumblr
Link to full story on Ao3
“So on a scale of running laps to cleaning the freshers with our toothbrushes, how screwed are we?”
Fives looked over his shoulder at Sevenset. His friend was sitting on the ground, leaning carefully against a dumpster in the alleyway. Fives shook his head, leaving his lookout position near the mouth of the alley to sit next to him.
“Half the planet’s security forces is on our tails,” he said, setting the blaster in the crook of his hips. “So. Not looking great. What’s the word from the commander?”
Sevenset lifted his comm and scrolled back through the conversation. “Said he’s on Coruscant, coming to get us. But he said he couldn’t leave immediately.”
“How long?” There was only so long they could hunker down in one place. They had been moving from alley to back street for an hour now, working their way toward Little Sriluur. The commander had agreed with that move.
“Didn’t say.” Sevenset clicked the comm off and leaned his head back against the wall of the building.
He looked terrible. A thin sheen of sweat was forming on his forehead and scalp. His breathing had evened out, but each breath was clearly a painful effort as the muscles tugged at the fresh wounds. Fives had taken time to examine the blaster shot and the saber wound for him, and the nasty bruise forming on his right cheek. None would kill him in the next few hours, but they were slowing him down considerably. After the initial adrenaline had worn off, he’d nearly collapsed, and Fives had to keep checking back to keep him awake. Whatever drugs were in his system still had a hold on him, although he was working through them slowly. He needed water. They both did.
Sevenset’s comm went off again. He peered at it, then answered after recognizing it. “Tumun?”
“Sevenset, I heard you and Fives were headed to Coruscant. What happened?”
How had she heard that? What was she going to do all the way on Kamino?
“A lot,” Sevenset answered, rubbing his face carefully. “Uh… Tup’s all good?”
“Tup is fine. Nero will take care of him.”
Fives let himself relax a bit upon hearing that. Good. Tup would fine, and Dogma would have his friend back. Dharma. Not Dogma anymore.
“I’m on Coruscant now, is there anything I can do?” Tumun added, and that made both of them exchange a confused look.
“Uh, what are you doing here?” Sevenset asked.
“I trust Nala Se about as much as I can kick her,” she replied. “And I just commed Sixes, and he told me you were asking for help.”
Fair points on both accounts. He leaned over. “Fives here. Any chance you could get your hands on a speeder for us, ma’am?”
“Of course. I can take you wherever is safest.”
“The Noodle Bar,” they said in accidental unison.
“In Little Sriluur,” Fives added.
“I believe my brothers have told me about this place, yes,” Tumun replied. “Where are you now?”
Fives got up and poked his head out of the alley, looking for signs or landmarks. He could see one street sign, and he knew they were on Level 10. Hopefully, that would suffice. He returned to Sevenset’s side and told Tumun as much.
“I’ll find you,” she said with certainty. “Stay on that level and near that street. I’ll contact you again when I get close.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Sevenset said, and the comm disconnected.
“Sevens,” Fives said, standing up and offering his hand. “I think tracking down Commander Death was the smartest thing you’ve ever done.”
His friend breathed a weak laugh as the motion of getting to his feet pulled at his injuries. “Yeah, something like that. Don’t think he’ll be too happy to see me tonight, though.”
“He can complain all he wants once we’re safe.” Fives pulled his arm around his own shoulders as they moved down the alley away from the main thoroughfare. Fewer people back here meant it was safer for them, moving at the speed they were.
They made slow progress, dodging or destroying the occasional security probe droid. Fives was eternally grateful he’d kept hold of the blaster, or they would have been reported ages ago. Fortunately, as Sevenset had explained, those droids were so easy to destroy, it wasn’t uncommon to have to replace half of the force every week. Kids would scrap them for fun, that kind of thing. The ones Fives shot down wouldn’t be missed, and that was all that mattered.
He was still pissed they’d managed to find themselves exactly nowhere near any markets or restaurant quarter of any kind. His stomach had given up on growling hours ago, but he still felt hollow for lack of food and water. Sevenset had checked his entire kit for a spare ration bar, but had come up empty. Hopefully, they could get some food at the Noodle Bar, at the very least. Fives’ mouth started to water at the very memory of the shaak and vegetable ramen he’d had last visit.
“So,” Sevenset said. “Palpatine, huh?”
Right. They still hadn’t addressed the most alarming discovery of the most recent crisis.
“Yeah,” Fives replied, checking around the corner of the next alley before moving them along. “Not so much pal in Palpatine, I guess.”
Sevenset’s laugh tapered into a hiss of pain. “Yeah, no kidding. The lightsaber, though? You’re sure?”
Fives nodded. “I know what I saw, and I know saber wounds. Saw enough of ‘em after Umbara to recognize what you’ve got.”
His friend hummed. “So… is he a collector, or…” He trailed off, but his point was made.
Why did Chancellor Palpatine have a red lightsaber? Where could he have possibly gotten one? Perhaps with enough money, you really could buy anything? But that left the question of why unanswered still. He was the leader of the Republic, the face of the home front for the war.
“Never did trust politicians,” Sevenset mused after a spell. “He had the look about him.”
Fives frowned. “Really? A look?”
“You learn the type. You learn which ones look at you like dressed up sandwich meat holding a blaster, and which ones actually recognize your sentiency.”
He dipped his chin. “And he was the first option?”
His friend nodded. “As soon as he saw the chips, I saw something wrong.”
Fives remembered the curiosity vanishing from the chancellor’s face like smoke from a strong breeze as he’d stared at the chips. It had unsettled him, deeply, how quickly his expression had shifted. And the transitions had been flawless, too.
“Yeah, that caught my eye too,” he admitted. “Didn’t know what it meant.”
“Lucky us.”
“Reckon it’s his saber, then?” he asked, wondering how far his friend’s intuition went.
Sevenset sighed, making a vague gesture with his free hand. They paused momentarily, sheltered by a broken-down speeder until the noise of sirens faded. When they were back on the move, he said, “Part of me hopes it is.”
“Why?” Fives asked, his curiosity genuine.
“Because if he’s Sith, the Jedi are gonna kill him,” he answered. “If he’s just some politician with a saber collection…” He scoffed, holding back a grimace. “Yeah, let’s say money gets rich dickbags out of a lotta shit. Especially since the guy he attacked isn’t even classified as a person.” He gave a half-hearted smirk that faded quickly.
Fives nodded, trying to ignore the lump of dread settling in his gut. They trudged along in silence for a while longer, his mind working over the past hours’ events as best as it could. “Huh,” he said aloud when something occurred to him.
“Hm?”
“If he is Sith,” Fives said, “then I was right.” He looked at Sevenset, seeing his confusion. “No, ‘cos I said it could have been a Separatist plot. We know Dooku is Sith, and if Palpatine is working with Dooku, then it really could have been a plot all along. From before the war.”
His friend’s eyebrows rose, his tattoos stretching as they did. “Which means… the Seppies have their finger on a kill switch for the whole GAR.” There was a heavy silence. “That’s a terrifying thought.”
Fives nodded, adjusting his hold on Sevenset’s arm and torso. His head hurt, and all this heavy thinking wasn’t making it better. “Yeah, let’s leave it for later.” Sevenset’s comm offered immediate closure for the chilling conversation. Fives answered it, still holding that arm around his shoulders. “Fives here.”
“It’s Maral Tumun. I have an update.”
“Hit us with it.”
“Sixes is coming to get you. I’m working to keep the security forces distracted for a spell until you’re all at the Clubhouse.”
“Roger that, ma’am,” he replied, setting Sevenset down beside a large stack of empty crates in their current alley hideaway, then crouching next to him. “Should we stay put?”
“He’ll contact you. Stay low.”
The comm disconnected suddenly. As soon as Fives had opened his mouth to say something else, it was off again, blinking white with another incoming connection. He answered. “Commander?” he tried, hopeful.
“You two are some real Class A kark-ups sometimes," came the familiar gruff voice, utterly pissed off.
Sevenset’s face broke in a huge grin. “Commander, you flatter me. Class A?”
“Class A for Are You Karking Stupid?"
That just made Sevenset laugh, and then curl up in pain.
The commander went on. "I’m nearly at your location, stay kriffing put and be on lookout.”
“Copy that, sir,” Fives answered, and the call ended. He shook his head at Sevenset’s lingering grin. “The two of you, I swear. Oil and water.”
Sevenset tried to lean forward, then ended up beckoning Fives closer when his stomach wound protested. “Twenty credits says I’m his favorite.”
“Uh-uh,” he said. “Nope.”
“Thirty!”
“You’re not beating Elevensies in that bracket, and you know it.”
Sevenset smiled, but the expression faded as they both remembered where they’d left Elevensies. Poor kid. He’d recognized both of them when they had arrived in that room to see the chancellor. Who knew what would happen to those guards now? Their chips had been activated, and at least in Tup, once the chip had control, he hadn’t been himself until the thing was out of his head.
“We’ll figure it out,” Sevenset said, nudging Fives with his boot.
He nodded. “Yeah. Somehow.”
“You might wanna go check the street,” his friend said. “I’ll stay put, but the commander will need a visual.”
“You sure?” Fives knew Sevenset was a capable soldier, but he was also a very injured one at the moment.
“I’m fine. Go.” He wasn’t fine, and they both knew it, but there was no point in arguing.
He hesitated briefly, then stood up. As a precaution to make himself feel better, he handed Sevenset the blaster. “Yell if you need something, yeah?”
“I’m good at making noise,” Sevenset smiled crookedly, settling the blaster in his lap ready to go.
He sure was that. Fives nodded his head, then took off at a creeping jog down the alley, keeping his footsteps as quiet as he could with all the glass and trash littering the ground. His legs burned from running half the night, but he pushed the discomfort away. He propped himself up against the corner of the building to his left and crouched down, keeping himself out of the typical line of sight.
Rows of speeders and other work vehicles whizzed by along the street, the bright lights blurring slightly in his exhausted vision. Be on the look out, the commander had said. Lookout for what? He hadn’t given a color, or a model, or anything that might help him identify which of the myriad of vehicles would be his. Fives also noticed, with undisguised frustration, the number of little red dots lining the walkways, floating just over the faces in the crowds. Probes. Way too many of them.
He saw a few police speeders fly by, and a few suspiciously armed people with what definitely looked like bounty tabs in their hands. They weren’t that desperate yet, right? Please? He’d rather not deal with every lowlife in Coruscant with a blaster and half a hope for hard cash.
A new set of noises drew his weary attention down the street to his left, and he peered out around the building. Down the block, invisible down one of the side streets so far, a cloud of flashing lights approached the main drag in front of him. A black speeder—a fairly nice one, too, after a split-second once-over—hurtled around the corner, executing stunts Fives had only ever seen Skywalker attempt and pull off. He swore it looped over a stream of traffic just to land back on top of the flight lane. Whoever was flying that thing had some serious skills in the air, and the police speeders behind them had no chances in any of the hells that might exist of ever catching up.
Shit, that was probably the commander.
All-black speeder. Ridiculous piloting ability. Clear disregard for traffic regulations.
Yep.
As the black speeder tore down the street, earning a cacophony of honks and shouts and screams from everyone around it, Fives took the distraction for what it was. He burst from his hiding place and ran to the railing at the edge of the walkway. He stood there as long as he dared, one hand raised in the GAR-wide signal for help, and he hoped it was enough.
The front lights on the black speeder blinked twice.
Then, in a rush of air, it blew past him, and he stumbled back from the force with the smell of fumes in his nose. The commotion was dying down now, and so was his cover. He left the rail, heading back toward the alley where he’d left Sevenset at a clip. He hadn’t felt good about leaving his injured friend back there in the first place.
The light from the street reached almost all the way down the alley, but not quite. The buildings on either side were largely dark as well, and Fives was still blinking away phantom lights from staring down that speeder. Still. He should have seen it.
“Sevens,” he called, not all too loud, as he approached. “I think—”
His words died on his tongue at the familiar whir of a blaster powering up, priming to shoot.
He looked down slightly to find a mid-size blaster aimed at his chest. An unsettlingly muscular lurmen woman was holding it like a rifle, her tail fluffed up and her gold eyes narrowed at him.
“And that’s two for the effort of none,” came a voice from the shadows.
Fives glanced up to see a group of four people, all of them three feet tall or under, and all of them armed to the teeth. Despite the comical appearances, small weapons were just as deadly as big ones, he knew. Sevenset was pinned where he’d left him, held in place by a pistol belonging to a lannik with half his face covered in a black flame tattoo, and a surprisingly advanced metal spear held by the angriest ewok Fives had ever seen. Finally, a dug stood atop the crate that had been Sevenset’s cover, and a zilkin stood nearby holding two wicked looking vibroblades.
The dug strode over to stand beside the lurmen, grasping the blaster Fives had left with Sevenset. “You’re an awful long way from a base, clone,” he said. “Shouldn’t go wandering around where you’re not wanted. Especially with a warrant on your heads.”
“You can skip the monologue, I’m barely coherent enough to understand what you are,” Fives told him, and it was largely true.
The dug didn’t seem too pleased with that, but he did stop talking. “Fine. You’re coming with us, so get a move on.” Turning to the ewok and the lennik, he barked, “Get him on his feet!”
“Oh, just kill me now,” Sevenset grumbled as the pistol was jabbed under his jaw without care. “This is actually happening.” He struggled to his feet, wincing, but holding back any noise he might have made from pain.
In a heartbeat, the zilkin hopped on top of the ewok’s shoulders, bringing the two of them closer to Sevenset’s height to maintain the threat. The dug leveled the DC-17 blaster at Fives.
“Zari, hop on,” he ordered.
The lurmen, Zari, stowed her rifle quickly, then leapt up the wall of the building and landed heavily on Fives’ shoulders. He stumbled, but found his footing. He also found a cool blade against his throat. Noted.
“Walk with us,” the dug ordered. “Thatch, Yuan, let’s move.”
The ewok and the lannik prodded Sevenset forward. So they walked. This was utterly humiliating. He’d honestly prefer getting run over by an old lady in her speeder at this point, and he had a suspicion Sevenset felt the same way.
“So what are you guys?” Sevenset asked. “The Pipsqueaks? The Shortstacks?”
“Shut it!” Yuan barked, jabbing his pistol into the gap above his thigh plate.
“Oh, oh, oh, I got it,” Sevenset went on. “The Little Leaguers?”
Fives suppressed his snicker, but not well enough, it seemed. Zari’s blade dug into his throat and it twinged. His humor faded when the ewok Thatch jabbed his spear at the blackened stripe cut into Sevenset’s armor, and Sevenset gave a muffled yelp of pain.
Any time the commander wanted to show up would be fantastic.
They were poked and prodded back down the alley, then slowly through the winding back streets between building blocks. He wanted to talk to Sevenset, to check in or something, but they were far enough apart that hand signs wouldn’t be effective, and they clearly weren’t allowed to speak to each other.
“Alright, get ‘em inside.” The dug hopped up a set of ledges on the side of a building. There was a door in the wall about half the normal height, and the zilkin hopped down from the ewok’s shoulders to unlock the door.
A red blaster bolt tore through the grey night and hit the dug full in the chest, and he toppled off his perch to the ground. Instantly, there was a scramble for cover.
Zari’s tail wrapped around his throat as she dropped from his shoulders to cling to his back, using her momentum to turn them both toward the threat to use him as a meat shield. Great. Her rifle reappeared at his right shoulder, and she returned fire. Fives still hadn’t gotten a look at who was attacking them, and he wasn’t getting one any time soon.
This was stupid. He was a kriffing ARC trooper, and a three-foot lady with a tail was holding him hostage? Not if he could help it.
He dropped to the ground, landing heavily on his back and hearing Zari yelp as her breath was pushed out of her. Quickly unwrapping her long tail from around his neck, he rolled off of her and shot his leg out, kicking her away from him. She was smart enough to read the situation and high-tailed it (literally) up the side of the building across the alley, disappearing into the night.
Fives crawled to the doorway the zilkin had been standing in, grabbing his blaster back from the dead dug nearby.
Sevenset had managed to flatten himself against the opposite wall, also sitting, and now holding the pistol Fives had last seen in the lannik’s hands. The lennik wasn’t using it where he lay sprawled out on the ground between them.
With two members down and a third nowhere to be seen, the zilkin didn’t stick around long enough to find out his own fate. He turned and ran as fast as his legs could go, vanishing around the corner of yet another sidestreet. Coruscant was a kriffing maze sometimes.
Now he could hear voices. They weren’t speaking Basic, and Fives didn’t recognize the language. Probably more hunters. Just his luck. Where in hell was the commander?
A quiet clink made him look to the open ground between himself and Sevenset. A small, round device with one blinking red dot rolled in a small circle. Fives’ brain knew it was bad, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember what the damn thing was.
“Cover!” he yelled.
At the same time, Sevenset yelled, “Flash!”
Too late, both of them.
A loud pop was accompanied by a massive flash of white light that seared through Fives’ vision in less than a second, long before his body remembered to close his eyes. The world in front of his eyes was bright red and pink, with white shapes swimming and morphing between the colors. He heard a clatter of boots or running footsteps, and he tried curling himself up in a ball while his vision recovered, but it was no use.
Hands grabbed at him, wrenching the blaster away. He swung out where he hoped a body would be attached to a pair of hands on his arm, and he made someone grunt, but nothing else. All he got was an explosion of pain across his jaw for his efforts. Great, now his head was pounding and he still could barely see. And he could taste blood inside his mouth. A cry of pain made him turn.
“Sevens!” He strained against the hands at his shoulders and arms. He could see blurry shapes now, and Sevenset’s patches of white armor were helping him reorient himself in the alley. “Let us go! Get your hands–” A gut punch from a figure he hadn’t seen coming halted his protests. Even with the flexible armor around his middle, it still forced the breath from his lungs and made him wheeze.
At least these attackers were average sized…
Whoever was holding him made him walk forward, shoving him together with Sevenset. A sharp prod from the muzzle of a pistol at the back of his neck kept him from making any sudden moves.
Fives could finally see well enough to know their newest kidnappers were bith, and about six strong. They wore typical rag-tag armor and gear of cheap bounty hunters and low-life criminals. Two of them were having a conversation in front of them, their gear slightly nicer quality, and the rest were either holding onto him and Sevenset, or training blasters on them. Fantastic.
“S’th’ commander coming?” Sevenset breathed. He was swaying slightly on his feet and had a new growing bruise around his nose. One of his piercings there was bleeding sluggishly where someone must have hit him during the struggle.
“He saw me,” Fives said, bumping their elbows together. His arm was jerked back painfully for it.
The two conversing appeared to agree on something, and ordered the four others. Fives and Sevenset were pushed forward into walking, Sevenset biting his lip to stifle a gasp as he lurched forward. Kriffing hell, he must be in a world of pain. Why the hell was he doing this? He could have stayed on Kamino—he should have stayed on Kamino—and now here he was.
At least the guilt made Fives’ headache feel less important.
Their march was cut short by a series of binary blips and chirps coming from around the corner ahead of them. The pair holding onto the two of them pulled them up short, and the other four, the two leaders and the two gunners, crept forward to investigate.
A droid rolled around the corner, and Sevenset and Fives grinned.
It was Remy, Commander Sixes’ all-black R-series astromech piloting droid, and they were no doubt about to make these bith regret several decisions they’d made in their lives. Mainly, the decision to live them.
Remy spun their dome almost casually. One of the leaders walked over and kicked Remy’s leg, saying something to them that wouldn’t sound polite in any language. Remy’s dome stopped spinning, their green visual receptor light focused on that man.
What looked like water began leaking out of Remy’s undercarriage to pool around the leader’s feet, but Fives had lived with R2 long enough to know jet fuel when he saw it. A flamethrower erupted from Remy’s midsection, hitting the bith’s knees, and then Remy rose into the air on their jets, lighting the puddle of fuel and dragging the flames up the man’s entire body. Holy shit. The man screamed in agony, dropping to his knees from the pain, desperately trying to pat the flames out, but it wouldn’t work. Fuel fires would only go out with water or anti-flame foam, and neither was available here.
The three bith not holding their prisoners opened fire on the droid, now flying directly at the gunner on the right side of the alley. They rammed into him, a spark of electricity arcing as they backed away, leaving the gunner a twitching wreck, barely able to stand, let alone hold his gun. Just when Fives was content to continue watching Remy absolutely demolish these idiots, a flash of steel in the firelight brought his gaze back to the burning man in mouth of the alley before them. The agonized screaming had stopped abruptly, and the reason was clear.
Commander Death’s black armor shone in the fire at his boots, the polished beskar alloy of his scythe Reaper glinting as it moved. His green visor looked unreal in the orange glow and among the red flashes as the gunners fired at Remy. He wrenched his scythe blade out of the man’s back, then stepped over him as he fell to slam the butt of the shaft into the other leader’s midsection, then whipped it up into his chin with a crack. He stepped again, swinging his weapon around fluidly to bury the blade in the bith’s back with a sick crunch of ribs. The motion didn’t stop there.
The commander kept moving, kept the momentum of the swing going to carry enough leverage to pivot and hurl the body at the end of the scythe at the gunner Remy hadn’t shocked into uselessness yet. The man went down under the weight of the body, and Remy was more than happy (probably) to fly over to finish them off. Fives couldn’t see how the droid accomplished this, but he did hear the gunner’s protests quickly cut off.
Commander Death paused about six feet from them, sizing up the two bith left, each with a pistol jammed at the backs of Fives and Sevenset’s necks. Sevenset had the biggest smile on his face, despite the imminent threat of death, and Fives couldn’t fault him for enjoying the show.
The man holding Fives said something sharply in his own language. Remy chirped what must have been a translation to their commander.
The commander tilted his helmet slightly to one side. “You don’t seem to understand that you’re not getting out of here alive,” he said in reply, his voice as steady and gruff as it always was, now used in an undisguised threat. He tipped his chin ever so slightly, some signal to his droid.
Remy whirred, rising into the air over the two dead gang members. They tried hauling the two of them back, desperate not to get flanked by a murderous droid. Sevenset collapsed at the knees, and for a split second, Fives thought he’d missed a blaster shot that had hit him again. But no. Same smile. For the second time that evening, Fives followed his lead, letting himself go limp while the men tried dragging them away.
It worked. As the two bith struggled to drag them a way, Remy flew up and over their heads, landing behind them with an ominous tone. Fives chanced a look over his shoulder and saw a knife glinting in one of their mechanical arms. Where had they gotten a knife?
In the second of panic this caused, Commander Death, who had been creeping closer as they had been falling back, lunged forward. “Stay down!” he ordered, and Fives and Sevenset needed no further instruction.
They hit the ground, slipping from their captors’ hands. Fives saw the commander’s boots braced in a wide stance between them, then there was a sick sort of crunch sound, and two thuds following it. Then there was quiet.
The flames still crackled a bit where the fire ate away at the corpse it had created. The noises from the main drag filtered through the smaller alleyways toward them. Fives’ heart thudded in his chest and ears.
The end of Reaper’s shaft struck the deck, breaking the calm. Fives uncurled and hauled himself to his feet, still a little unsteady from whatever drugs were left in his system. The commander nodded at him, already collapsing Reaper’s shaft into its more portable size, then he tossed it to Remy, who caught it in a pair of pincers. Fives instinctively took a step back when one of the bith’s heads rolled toward him slightly.
“That was the coolest thing I have ever seen,” Sevenset said, still on the ground. He looked paler, the shine of sweat was more pronounced on his face, and his voice shook slightly. But he couldn’t keep a grin off his face, even if it was a little lopsided and bloody.
“Kriffing hells,” the commander growled, crouching down to him. “No one said anything about one of you being injured,” he said harshly, glancing over his shoulder at Fives.
“S’not that bad,” Sevenset insisted. He tried sitting up and literally squeaked, shutting his mouth so fast to cover a whine of pain, his teeth actually clacked together. He collapsed back to the deck.
“Shut up,” the commander barked at him, grabbing him under his arms to pull him upright, then wrapping an arm around under his shoulder to haul him to his feet. “Maker’s hands, what the hell happened to you?”
“Look, we said Palpatine was evil, okay?” Sevenset reminded him, his voice and legs still shaky. “Also drugs.”
“We’ll explain everything once we’re not dodging bounties left and right, sir,” Fives said when the commander’s green visor fixed on him for an explanation. He brushed fingers over his jaw and flinching when it hurt. “Ow.”
“Follow me,” came the blunt order. “Quickly.”
They followed Remy back through the small streets for a few minutes. At some point, when Sevenset couldn’t keep up with the commander’s long strides, he ended up laid across his shoulders instead. It was faster, true, but Fives grimaced each time he saw his friend’s face contort when his stomach wound was jostled.
Finally, they arrived on a side street a little ways up the block from where Fives had first seen the black speeder. It waited for them on the walkway, and Fives was honestly impressed it wasn’t swarming with probe droids right now. Clearly, he'd thought too soon when one whirred into proximity, its red visual receptor scanning over the speeder. But as soon as it got within a foot of the vehicle, a bright wave of crackling electricity ran over its shape, frying the probe in seconds. The droid fell out of the sky.
Huh.
“Remy, start her up,” the commander ordered like nothing had happened, bending down to let Sevenset back on his feet. He kept a hand wrapped tightly around his upper arm, however, balancing Sevenset as best as he could. “Fives, get in the back, help me get him inside.”
Fives did. He crawled to the far side of the speeder and helped his friend inside while the commander rounded the nose of the vehicle to the driver’s seat. Remy’s dome was visible in the nose of the speeder, and the craft was already humming and ready to go.
“Buckle in,” the commander told them. “I mean it.”
Fives had no trouble believing he did. After clicking Sevenset’s seatbelt in place, he fastened his own as the speeder rose off the ground and flew into the flight lane beside it.
“How did you get that injured?” the commander demanded. Force, he sounded pissed.
“Got shot,” Sevenset answered, only a bit impudent. His eyes suddenly flew open from where they had been squinted in pain. “Wait! Elevensies! We gotta–he’s not–what if they do something to those guys?”
Commander Death looked over his shoulder at them briefly before turning back to the flight lane. “What happened to Elevensies?”
Fives held up a hand to stop Sevenset from spilling everything out of order. “Long story short,” he said, “we were brought to the Chancellor to explain what we did on Kamino—which we will also explain later—and then he ordered some Guards to kill us, and one of them was Elevensies.”
“Also he has a lightsaber!” Sevenset added, throwing his hands up. “Because why not! A red kriffing lightsaber!”
“Where’s Elevens?”
Sevenset rubbed his face—or started to, then remembered he’d gotten punched there and stopped. “I knocked him out, he’s still in that room where we met the Chancellor. Or he was. I dunno what happened to him!”
They all lurched to one side as the commander took a corner particularly viciously. “Worry about not dying, Sevens,” he said gruffly. “I can tell Thire to look out for the kid.”
That seemed to take the fight out of Sevenset. He leaned back in the seat, winced, then leaned to one side instead. “Copy that, sir.”
Fives reached over and grabbed his hand, squeezing it firmly. “We made it out, though,” he said, trying to smile, and finding it still hurt. “Nala Se can’t make us disappear out here, can she?”
His friend smiled back, exhausted. “Hope she chokes on a toothpick,” he said, squeezing his hand in return.
“Her and Palpatine,” Fives added, catching a glimpse of the Senate Dome out the window as they sped by.
He could see Sevenset’s eyes drooping. They were both dead tired—had been for ages now, but once again, Fives couldn’t find it in himself to sleep. He knew the commander would get them safely to the Clubhouse, and he knew Sevenset wouldn’t keel over in the few minutes the flight would take. But still. His empty stomach felt like two undersuits left in the laundry that had twisted together during the spin cycle.
The Chancellor of the Republic might be working for the Separatists.
Who would even believe them?
And now.... the big brain time begins... Special shout out to @23-bears for coming up with the idea of a gang of criminals all measuring under 4ft tall, that was hilarious. See y'all in June!
@theultimatesandwich @mercurydancer @rndmpeep @gaeasun @soclonely bc i think you'll enjoy the Shortstacks lol
