June of Doom 2026 - Day 28
Masterlist | Ao3 Series
Title: "there's nothing to see here, it's under control (we're only gambling with your soul)"
Prompts: "Trust me." (29) Photograph | Obsession (AP) | Plea (23)
Fandom: Star Wars - The Clone Wars
Characters: Quinlan & Kix & OC Medics (Vet & Tal)
Add. Tags: Competent Quinlan Vos, Post-Bio Chip ARC, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Clone Troopers & Coruscant Guard Deserve Better
Note: 11 year old me would be so mad to know we love the Corrie's now. Sorry, princess :)
@juneofdoom
Tal, Vet and Kix have been suspicious about the happenings within the Coruscant Guard for a while. They bring their theories up to the only Jedi they think will believe them: Quinlan Vos.
“Would you explain to me again, why you believe the Chancellor is a secret Sith Lord?” Quinlan watches Kix grouch and Tal lean back in his chair, covering his face with his hands.
“Hey now. You are trying to get me to believe your weird-ass conspiracy theory. Bear with me,” he argues.
‘Weird-ass conspiracy’ is putting it nicely, if Quinlan is entirely honest to himself.
‘Weird-ass conspiracy that, would someone act on it, would affect the entire political system of the Republic in addition to thousands of allied systems in either a very good or a very bad way’ would be far more accurate.
He brushes a few stray locks from his face and rests his chin on his hands.
Vet gets up and starts digging through Kix’ desk until he finds a disk-shaped holo projector. The medic looks like he just aged by 40 years.
“Would you like to see our conspiracy board?”
Quinlan nods eagerly and questions, for a moment, why he keeps hanging out with people who make conspiracy boards in their free time. Freaky.
Vet nods, locks the door of the medical office and places the holo disk down on the floor. Upon activation, multiple holo displays shoot up in the room, surrounding them whole.
The sheer amount of material doesn’t immediately become obvious, but when Quinlan looks closer, he notices that there are hundreds of protocols of incidents, information from manuals about the Force and messy notes scribbled in Mando’a on the sides of medical papers.
“You guys really are into some freaky stuff,” Quinlan notes, smugly.
Kix proceeds to rest his forehead on the table. He looks beyond stressed and Quinlan can understand it very well. He isn’t entirely sure if this is treason but considering the jurisdictional situation of clone troopers, Quinlan is pretty sure that less would be counted as treason, already.
“Alright, alright. I’m looking.” He gets up and rests his hands on his hips, inspecting the boards more closely.
“The most notable indicator is what we assume to be some sort of mind control,” Tal explains.
“Mind control?” Quinlan inquires.
“Correct. I noticed it with the command squad first. Fox and Thorn, mostly, but on some occasions also Stone and Thire. They return from meetings with the Chancellor or patrols distressed, with gaps in their memories. Sometimes they lose days at a time.”
Quinlan nods. He is listening, thinking. He had never thought about the Chancellor that much. Thankfully, his role as a Jedi Shadow didn’t require him to deal with politicians often.
Then again, Quinlan thinks, if he were an evil Sith Lord, he would prefer to hide in plain sight too. To think that a Sith Lord would make it to political leader though… unlikely.
In addition to that, he would have guessed that, if not him, the members of the High Council would notice a Sith Lord if they came across one, right? Or maybe not…
To say he is torn on what to believe would be a tremendous understatement.
“After shooting that 501st trooper, Fox insisted he wanted to set the gun to stun but that he wasn’t allowed to. He was erratic about it, almost maniac,” Tal explains.
“He is also paranoid. I while ago I was visiting Tal and Commander Fox was, seemingly, unreasonably hostile. He almost kicked me out of the base. Thorn had to drag him away,” Kix adds.
Quinlan is no stranger to gaps in his memories. Even before the whole amnesia situation, most of his life had disappeared in a thick fog with only a few treasured moments clearing up. For the larger part of his life, he had navigated his actions more on instinct than on experience.
Still, mind control was only one possible explanation. Out of, possibly, millions.
“I’m inclined to believe you, guys. Really. I know you take your jobs seriously. But I fear this is not going to hold up in an argument with the Council,” he explains.
The medics exchange another glance, possibly weighing risks with opportunities.
“Tengaana kaysh burrenaar nynir hets," Vet says grimly. Quinlan doesn’t know Mando’a beyond the most basic phrases, so he settles for watching their expressions.
Kix hums, in thought, while Tal seems rather torn on whatever Vet just suggested.
“Tion cuyi gar morut’ye?” Tal inquires.
"Elek,” Wolfpack’s medic answers and nods once, confidently. “Ni urmankala alor Plo miite.”
The way Vet pronounces ‘Plo’, with a Basic accent raises Quinlan’s attention. Is the other Jedi involved as well?
Tal sighs but then nods and reaches into the desk, only to drop a stack of flimsi in front of Quinlan.
“Flimsi?” Quinlan questions.
“In case there is someone digging around in our data. Someone who… should not know about this,” Tal explains and flips the stack open.
“Mostly the commander but also Thorn, when he was staging as Fox in his armour, started to turn up with lightning scars a few months ago.”
The pictures are truly gruesome. Large branches of lightning are raking up their flanks, backs and thighs. Worse, Quinlan has seen scarring like this before. If only he could remember where…
“We figured early that these wounds are not caused by regular lightning strikes or electric shocks from… technical components or something like that,” Vet explains.
“It tuns out the voltage for wounds like this without causing lasting physical damage is very specific,” Kix notes.
“I don’t want to know how you figured that out, thank you,” Quinlan quickly interrupts him. He really doesn’t have to know everything Kix is getting up to for research purposes.
“Our point being, Thire let me take a look at the Senate and meeting schedules and I figured out that these scars always appear after meetings with the Chancellor,” Tal continues. He sits back down next to Vet and bumps their shoulders together lightly.
“So, why only bring this up now?” Quinlan asks while he continues to flick through the images. They don’t actually differ that much from each other, other than the fact that with progressing time, more and more faded lighting patterns appear in addition to the fresh wounds.
Suddenly, a memory pushes to the forefront of his mind… Asajj’s body was littered with these too, although they were a little harder to spot on her ashen skin. She usually kept them covered with her bounty hunter attire but on a few occasions, he had gotten glances at her battered skin.
“At first, we thought it was a Jedi ability. Still, weird but nothing sinister. General Plo is capable of summoning lightning strikes, after all.” Vet pulls Quinlan from his thoughts. He shakes his head a little to wade off the memories again.
“Yes, electric judgement. It’s rare and not very popular, indeed,” Quinlan answers.
The medics look at him expectingly.
Quinlan thinks, ponders. It is nice to know that they trust him enough to share this knowledge with him, but he wasn’t exactly popular with the Jedi Council right now.
“Tell you what,” he begins. “In order to bring this up, we will need concrete evidence. This is a great start, but I fear it will not be enough to convince the Council. Nor can we just act on this and shoot the Chancellor.”
Actually, that’s not the worst idea Quinlan ever had. He waves the thought off before he can start plotting.
Tal eyes him warily. Vet and Kix look at each other in defeat.
Quinlan sighs. He has a feeling that their suspicions aren’t entirely pulled out of thin air.
“General, you have to do something,” Kix pleads. “I don’t know how much longer they can survive this. And I can’t even begin to imagine the catastrophe that this set-up will cause one day.”
“Alright,” Quinlan mutters and rubs his forehead. “I’m sure we can find out when the senate is holding their next meeting. I can sneak inside the Chancellor’s office and take a peak around, see if I find anything suspicious.”
Tal’s expression lights up. Quinlan knows this is more than they had hoped for.
“Thank General. For everything. We’ll cover you,” Tal says.
Quinlan grins. Sometimes he likes to think that instead of having a tendency to fall for the Darkside, he instead is cut out to be an antihero.