A Healing Hand (Warframe x Star Wars SI)

HarakoniWarhawk · Jun 15, 2024

Featuring an SI as an alternate Mara dumped onto Christophsis during the opening weeks of the Clone Wars without a Warframe... or perhaps not?

Music for the chapter is from Ace (Adrenaline)

View: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=C3yrGV8AlAA&si=7io9GtugV1FDjF1A

Run, hide, survive.

Easier said than done in my present state, but fear and childish terror are one heck of a motivator when battle droids with live blasters are involved.

My gloved hands, a small comfort in this chaos, helped me scramble up and over the pile of rubble that blocked the store's entrance. I squeezed through the tiny gap at the peak, my squeak echoing in the tomb-like silence. My stomach churned as I slid down the far side, and I found myself in a darkened antechamber, lit only by a handful of flickering glow panels and a ray of sunlight that managed to filter through the rubble-filled front door. It was a struggle to keep my thoughts in check, to not let the fear overwhelm me... maybe the monsters wouldn't try and...

I grabbed tiny handfuls of hair the same hue as the cyan crystals all over this eerily familiar world and screamed like a little girl, an immature wail of frustrated urges that nevertheless accurately reflected me.

A violet glow permeated the debris-strewn room, my terrified brain calming as curiosity surged to the fore with a fascinated gasp. I raised my glowing hands with wide eyes and twisted the limbs this way and that to figure out the light's source. Feeling none of the aches of my tumble into the shop, I wobbled upright on unsteady feet and clenched and unclenched the incredibly small fists like this was my first time seeing them. These weren't the hands of my memories by any means, even discounting the spacy-looking gloves covering them. Too small, too weak, too... A pathetic whimper escaped my gap-toothed mouth with every mounting realisation that I wasn't just far from home in a strange body; I was also immensely vulnerable.

Searching the darkened hiding spot with frightened eyes, my probing tongue found six gaps where baby teeth had fallen out. None had been replaced yet; when did kids start losing their teeth again? Was it six, no, five, or was it later than that? The answer elusively bounced through my sluggish mental fingers, taunting me with its presence and swiftness while always remaining out of reach. A scowl twisted my lips, and I petulantly stomped the ground with a huffy exhale that blew some of my overlong fringe out of my eyes. Somewhat foolishly and more than a little redundantly, I walked to the closest desk and just about got my outstretched fingers hooked on the worn edges. Unless the residents were giants, I was painfully short, couldn't keep my thoughts straight and... and might be a kid.

In a warzone with battle droids.

"Hey, where'd the small organic go?"

I narrowly muffled my reflexive scream as clanking metal feet paused on the street outside, tasting plastics and rubber as I bit into my gloved hand to stay quiet. M-Maybe the monsters would leave if I stayed silent like a good girl? God, I must be regressing hard if my internal thoughts are reduced to childish stammering and naivety. Hating this latest revelation and literally unable to prevent it, I jerkily inched my way around the desk for the safe space my childish subconscious insisted lay behind the plastic-like furniture. Surely I'm small enough to hide under it until the battle droids left, right? And if I stayed quiet like a good girl, then the nasty monsters wouldn't hurt me like they hurt those men in white arm... Clones!

Half-blind in the gloom, I didn't see the white-armoured corpse until my clumsy feet hit a stiff, thrown-out arm and tossed my shrieking form across a carbon-scored breastplate. Ears ringing from the girly scream, I blinked the stars from my eyes and found myself nose-to-nose with the cloudy eyes of a Clone Trooper, sightlessly looking at and through my petrified form.

This time, the scream grew louder and louder until my entire existence narrowed down to the shrill, frightened wail of a terrified child who wanted nothing more than a protector from the creatures in the dark.

Something tight in my chest built alongside the scream until it erupted with a breathless explosion where my thundering heart lay. The formless, limitless power screamed ahead of the pumping blood through my chest, down my arms and exiting my hands where they lay unwittingly against the clammy, dead flesh of the clone's corpse. Guided by means unknown to my fear-stricken mind, the questing energies hungrily absorbed information from the body and punched through the cloying fear to inform me of the perplexing results.

"Hey, I think I heard something in there!"

Broken fingers, ring, index and trigger from punching a B1 battle droid.

Major burns on the abdomen and cauterisation and thermal transfer to the nearby organs from a close-range blaster bolt that slipped under the breastplate.

"C'mon, maybe we can dig it out!"

Acid burns inside the abdominal cavity thanks to a desperate retreat from the advancing clankers that ruptured the stomach lining.

The deceased clone vanished in a blurry haze as unconscious tears poured from eyes that saw far more than anyone, let alone a child, should witness. A sharper, painful surge like a serrated knife buried itself in my heart, tearing me apart from the inside whilst I remained frozen over the soldier's body. His last moments forced their way into my brain via the wounds and injuries he'd suffered leading to his demise, the clone's imprint burnt into the fabric of reality through the sheer force of his dying will.

Ruptured eardrums and soft-tissue pressure damage after fleeing into the shop and throwing his last grenade over the desk.

Death... Blood loss, bruising of the brain and shock killed the lone trooper as the entrance collapsed in the grenade's wake.

Blinded as surely by terror as the salty tears pouring down my round cheeks, I pressed my tiny hands against the dead clone as the shaft of light grew brighter with every noisy second. I tried to speak, but the crippling star replacing my heart stole the breath from my empty lungs like a blazing inferno hungry for oxygen. A pathetic wheeze was all that escaped, a hollow, ghastly shell of the boiling pains, emotions and jumbled memories rendering my existence hell on earth. Unable to continue and lacking the lung capacity to hold my breath any longer, I collapsed against the corpse and instinctively buried my face into the stiff crook of his neck. With the droids noisily clawing their way inside and the interior lighting up from the machine's ceaseless efforts, it was only a matter of time before I, too, joined this fallen guardian of the Republic in death, alone and frightened.

I'd felt his final moments as if I'd lived them in his plastoid boots, yet the growing part of me that resembled the child I'd become refused to believe the truth of my mind.

"P-Pleathe, wake up, Mister Clone," I begged with a little girl's voice muffled by the cold flesh. "I don' wanna die."

A taut chord in my chest hummed like a live wire and snapped.

The ball of agonising fire where my heart used to be surged from that final, all-too-mortal emotional outburst that only a young kid could achieve and exploded, much like the energies that'd mapped the clone's body. And just like that, ozone-tainted air poured into tiny lungs unsuited for the exertion I'd placed on them in the form of an exhausted sigh as I collapsed in a boneless heap. That star, bloated and corpulent with emotional energies, crossed the intervening space between our faces as a see-through miniature sun before bursting into glowing gasses that poured through the corpse's parted and bloodless lips.

Almost as if it was drawn inside via a breath...

Heralded by the abrupt clatter of tumbling debris, the battle droids incessantly tunnelling their way inside secured a path with an electronic cheer.

I screamed.

The lifeless corpse under me shouted and jerked upright, their forehead clocking me right in the head and knocking me out with a painful flash of light.

CT-5581 had died.

He'd died alone, in horrific pain and trapped inside a tomb of his own creation.

CT-5581 woke up with a miniature human with bacta-blue hair atop him, unconscious with the distinctive clamouring of clankers on the other side of the desk. Confused, painfully stiff and unable to feel his extremities, the perplexed clone trooper's flash-training took over and put a securing arm around the insensate civilian. With the seppies' grating electronic voices boosted by his temporarily hypersensitive hearing, CT-5581 drew his DC-17s pistol, waited until the droids fumbled their way inside the store, and then emptied all seven bolts towards the loudest voices.

Though unbearably loud in the enclosed space, the wincing clone waited out the ensuing ringing until he was confident of nailing the battle droids. He counted ten slowing heartbeats before poking his exposed head over the desk to see both droids collapsed in sparking heaps amidst the rubble and shattered crystal. Squinting against the light flooding through the wrecked doorway and lamenting his lost bucket, CT-5581 warily hoisted himself upright with the tiny human's arms locked around his neck.

What was he meant to do now?

Basic training on Kamino never covered interacting with civilians, and the simulations certainly didn't prepare the foundering trooper for blurred memories of dying in this very room.

"Has to be a concussion," the trooper croaked, subconsciously tasting the lie before the words fell from his chapped lips. "Just a bad knock without my bucket."

Mumbling the deceptive refrain under his breath a few more times, CT-5581 holstered his recharged sidearm and stared perplexedly at his softly breathing limpet. He hadn't the slightest idea what they looked like with all the bright blue hair in the way, so he brushed it aside for a better look. The revealed face was unlike any the clone had seen in his short life off Kamino, with deathly pale skin and soft, round features like the brothers that had just left the creches when CT-5581 departed from Tropica City.

Even without outside experience, something told the trooper this was what a non-clone child looked like. With that said, CT-5581 enjoyed a scant few seconds of relief before the realisation that non-clones wouldn't be trained from an early age to use blasters or follow orders set in.

Alarmed, the trooper pried the blue-haired child off and set them on the desk. "Do non-clones fall asleep sitting up...?"

Even if they didn't typically, this awfully frail example of their kind was no closer to awakening than when CT-5581 woke up with them on his aching chest. So, fearing the child might never wake up if he left them there, he tenderly picked them up and sighed in relief as the tiny arms wrapped around his neck again.

"Alright, Trooper, just pretend this is like the simulations," CT-5581 hyped himself up and began moving towards the deactivated droids. "Find a bucket with working comms, contact command and leave the kid with the other civies."

Getting past the clankers -and driving a plastoid boot into their heads as he passed- and up the gentle slope to the outside world was surprisingly easy as the kid weighed nothing at all. Shielding his eyes from the glare of Christophis' star, CT-5581 warily checked both directions for roaming droids before risking venturing onto the debris-strewn street. Scanning for gleaming white plastoid armour with no luck, the clone worried at his lip and chose to follow the street east if the sun overhead was to be trusted. Within a minute, CT-5581's initial walk transformed into a swifter jog as his body practically carried itself along the empty street. Suspecting adrenaline, he mentally shrugged and paid the limitless energy infusing him no further heed as he traversed Crystal City, intending to rejoin his surviving brothers. And if none remained alive, CT-5581 would find a way to get this child off-world and in safe hands, no matter what the seppies threw his way.

If death couldn't keep him down before, he wouldn't let it try a second time!

...

On second thought, taunting death felt like a monumentally stupid idea behind enemy lines.

Feeling in better form than since he'd arrived on Christophsis with Senator Organa, the lone clone trooper and his unconscious passenger snuck through the deserted streets. Sound echoed strangely within the crystal towers of the business district despite CT-5581's best attempts to pinpoint the distant fighting. He recalled part of the pre-mission briefing had mentioned "sonic resonance", but rummaging around his head in a warzone was a recipe to blunder into a droid patrol. Idle thoughts about unimportant things got shoved to the back of his mind, and focus on the mission took foremost importance. The most CT-5581 dwelt on the issue was the obligatory pause at every blind corner to listen for marching metal feet, just in case the faded echoes resolved into something he could guide by.

It never did, but CT-5581 wasn't discouraged.

He estimated they'd been travelling for a solid hour, give or take a few minutes, on account of the chronic lack of a chrono. Creeping along the fire-blackened gateway to what might've been a loading dock before the hovertruck inside it exploded, CT-5581 adjusted his grip on the unconscious kid before risking a glance. At first, he mistook the soft gasp as an errant gust of wind racing through the crystal towers and paid it no heed. Palming his DC-17s, he drew it to chest height before a warm breath prickled his neck.

Well, fierfek.

Biting back a curse, CT-5581 awkwardly shuffled into the dubious shelter of a recessed doorway and met his conscious limpet's eyes. Sharp green, like the deployment lights on a Larty, was CT-5581's first thought before he noticed the indigo shards floating in the depths of the guilless orbs. The kid smiled in response to his staring, her rounded cheeks dimpling to expose a hesitant, gap-toothed smile, prominently including one of her front teeth. Feeling a grin tugging at his lips, the clone trooper put a bit more effort into it and was rewarded with a nigh-inaudible giggle from the child.

After a few seconds of listening to the strangely nice-sounding noise, CT-5581 holstered his pistol and rapped a finger against his breastplate.

"I'm CT-5581, ad'ika," he introduced himself just like Senator Organa did to the locals. "You feeling okay?"

CT-5581 panicked when the happy kid immediately pouted, her expression falling as she gazed at him with some unknowable emotion. Reading his brothers was one thing, but non-clone humans were an altogether more difficult task without the context clues every brother learned on Kamino. With heat prickling the trooper's heated cheeks, he mentally debated apologising before the blue-haired child huffed and placed a tiny hand on her envirosuit in a mirror of the clone carrying her.

"Mawa... Mawa... Mawa."

As tough as it was to read civies, even the blind could hear the frustration in the child's voice with every repeat of that one word. Wondering if it was a language issue, CT-5581's musings were proven correct when the girl lisped an entire sentence in a language that wasn't Basic and refused to meet the clone's eyes. To his credit, despite never expecting to meet a civilian who couldn't speak Basic, the embarrassed trooper patiently hid within the shadowed doorway out of sight of the street until his tiny passenger summoned enough courage to look at him. A palpable sense of willpower radiated from the little girl in all defiance of her youth and wobbling lower lip.

Drawing a whistling breath through her missing teeth, the kid squared her shoulders. "Mara," she tapped herself after the resultant victorious smile, then CT-5581. "Thee Thee Five Five Eight One!"

"It's CT-5581, ad'ika, not..."

At the absolute limits of the clone's extra sensitive hearing, he detected the rhythmic hammering tread of metal feet on the road outside.

"Fierfek!"

Pulling little Mara tight against his chest, CT-5581 lunged for the path leading away from the droid patrol and then threw himself back against the sealed door with a pained grunt when a second echo of marching feet blocked his escape route. Alerted by the abrupt movement and lurching impact, Mara released a frightened squeak that tore at the trooper's heart even as he crouched in the shadows and drew his sidearm. Distressingly hyperaware of the kid's panicked gasping into the crook of his neck, CT-5581 lined his pistol's sights up with what he guessed was chest level for a B1.

"Whatever you do, kid, don't look. We'll be okay, I promise," he whispered as the droids stomped closer and closer to their hiding spot.

Following the rigorous training drilled into him over ten years, CT-5581 drew a breath to steady his aim just before the first droids appeared... and marched straight past without a glance. Rank after rank of skeletal battle droids walked along without so much as pausing to sweep the doorway not ten feet from their patrol route. Holding his fire only because he had no clue what was happening, CT-5581 eventually eased off the trigger as the second patrol traipsed along as if the clone and his charge didn't exist.

Somewhat tardily, he quit glaring at the oblivious clankers and went wide-eyed in silent shock at the shimmering outline of his arm and blaster composed of swirling whirls and streamers of multicoloured, if primarily golden, gas. CT-5581's entire body, and Mara, for that matter, remained cast as a transparent outline filled with dancing clouds of colourful gasses until the marching droids had long since faded from view and even the trooper's sensitive hearing. Only then did the blue-haired child in his arms suffer from a full-body shudder, the hypnotic and impossible effect popping like a bubble of armour polish as Mara gasped for air.

Dropping his pistol with a clatter, CT-5581 rubbed frantic circles across the child's back in a desperate, ignorant attempt to quell whatever had come over her. It took Force knows how long before the terrifying seizure faded to mere hyperventilating, and the relieved trooper finally expelled the pent-up breath he'd been holding in. What he'd experienced wasn't possible for an average human to achieve, so, in the absence of competing evidence, CT-5581 fell back on the only explanation for the paranormal event he possessed.

Every clone was taught that the Jedi could do things like toss objects with their mind and jump several stories into the air with the power of the Force. And while CT-5581 hadn't yet fought alongside a Jedi General, he knew from brothers in other units that they tended to bring their younger Padawans with them. Viewing the child clinging to him in a brand new light, it made perfect sense that Mara must be one of those small Jedi and, thus, part of the GAR's command chain.

He didn't know how to feel about Commander Mara being alone behind enemy lines, but it was up to CT-5581 to help the tiny Jedi find her lightsaber-wielding friends.

The poor kid must've been terrified if she dropped her lightsaber and forgot to retrieve it, too. CT-5581 could relate, as he felt the absence of his DC-15a keenly and hoped to find another before reporting back to Command with the shame of losing his issued rifle.

"Commander Mara?"

It took a gentle shake to get the young Jedi's attention, her emerald eyes dulled by the sleepy exhaustion that tugged at her drooping eyelids.

"C'mon, we can't stay here," CT-5581 grunted as he stood up. "I promised to get you to safety, and that's an order I won't break."

Easing out onto the blessedly deserted street, the clone warily resumed his initial course eastward, forever grateful for the last-second rescue by the miniature Jedi clinging to him by the neck. As far as CT-5581 was concerned, his orders were to return the Commander to her comrades to the best of his ability. Even if Mara couldn't vocalise those orders, it was clear as day that a lost padawan needed reuniting with her master.

The clone nodded to himself, favouring the top of Mara's head with a fond grin. "Good soldiers follow orders."

This Mara isn't having a good day for a whole load of reasons both physical and mental, that's for sure. Luckily for the pint-sized Tenno, she made a friend via totally not eldritch and Void-related resurrection!

Maybe...

HarakoniWarhawk · Jun 19, 2024

With that said, music for the chapter is from Phil Collins (On My Way)

View: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=vsE0KtttoBs&si=HZSw70WriPg_7n7O

Displaying an indefatigable energy I was starting to believe came from his gene sire, CT-5581 advanced up flight after flight of stairs carrying a whole-ass DC-15a, a supply pack full of, well, supplies, and me.

Like, he hadn't set me down since the... the...

The steady rise and fall of the clone's climbing slowed as I instinctively buried my face into the crook of his neck to hide my stinging eyes. Making things worse, CT-5581 arrived at the next poorly illuminated landing and began rubbing comforting circles across my back as if I were a kid. And despite my crippled pride's virulent wishes, the unintelligible yet caring words from my protector dampened, then silenced, the echoing plod of droid feet deafening me. Heavy, implacable and able to turn my gut into a twisted, fearful knot, I can't even think about what happened without these stupid tears flowing!

CT-5581 sighed above my head. "Let it all out, Commander. No clanker's getting to you while I'm here."

Basic, it turns out, isn't remotely close to English as so many fics liked to postulate. It was a Sol-damned miracle that the emotions behind the trooper's words rang out loud and clear to the Void senses all Tenno possessed, so I felt marginally better from the comfort and pride in CT-5581's voice. The first thing I would do when we escaped this hell was learn Basic, I decided with single-minded determination before snuggling into the clone's neck with a happy mumble. Burnt carbon and some rubber-esque scent had my nose curling, but the fulsome woody aroma under it made the unwelcome scents worth it.

Preceded by another round of unintelligible Basic -and the laughter of the gods at the dark irony- CT-5581 decided that I was consoled enough to move off. Lurking in the dark corners of my heart, wounded pride grumbled at the indignity yet lacked the means or strength to force me to vocally protest the treatment. We resumed our journey skyward through the hopefully empty Christophsian skyraker, CT-5581, bearing me without complaint, a detectible pride, and me clinging to him for support and locomotion. It took another couple of flights of stairs before I recovered enough courage to pull away from his neck and pretend to watch the clone's six to be helpful. By this point, I doubted he expected me to do anything after... before except sleep and cry, but I felt slightly better in doing so than just mooching a ride.

Sol, why couldn't I do what Mara does and shove my negative emotions into the ever-hungry Void? It'd be far better than letting these stupid fears bring me to tears at the slightest provocation!

Stoicly brushing off the watery haze overlaying the bare duracrete stairwell, I vainly tried to clear my blocked nose, lips curling in a petulant pout when my nostrils remained bunged up. With CT-5581 luckily facing the other way and engaged in carrying me up the stairs, I freely poked at the missing teeth with my tongue in the vain hope they'd regrown. Unbidden, the memory of that damnable lisp returned, banishing the unshed tears in favour of burning cheeks as my emotions flip-flopped on a dime between fear and embarrassment. With each passing hour that I was stuck in this body, it was becoming apparent that a shorter attention span and emotional instability weren't the fault of my traumatic arrival.

Unless something radically changed, chances were that I'd... I'd be stuck like this.

I mean, sure, the ongoing mental issues sucked a whole lot when I'm bursting into tears at the drop of a hat, but at least CT-5581 was here to look after me, and I'm a Tenno?

That's gotta stand for something, right?

Right?

"Alright, Commander. This should be it," CT-5581 rumbled, alerting me that I had spaced out.

Halting outside an otherwise unremarkable door, the clone reluctantly set me down, stern face softening as I wobbled on legs that'd fallen asleep. CT-5581 abortively reached for me with a clatter of plastoid before jerking the hands back, looking ashamed that his first reaction was to pick me up. I braced myself against the wall and gave the worried clone a gap-toothed smile, desperately hoping he didn't notice my wobbling lower lip.

I missed the safety already. "Iths okay," I said in English. "Donth worry abouth me."

Wonder of wonders, CT-5581 got the gist through the language barrier and this stupid lisp. Nodding once nigh-imperceptibly, then more openly when he saw me studying his face, the trooper began talking whilst shrugging off his pack and rifle.

"Unless the clankers beat us to it, there should be a fallback post behind the door. If we're lucky, the comms gear still works, and there'll be enough supplies to await rescue." CT-5581 knew I couldn't understand anything he said, but he kept me in the loop anyway. "For me, that means spare armour, and there should be food too."

Complete gibberish to my ears, but he sounded hopeful, so I made a point of grinning from ear to ear even as it exposed the awful gaps in my teeth.

CT-5581 smile was a stiff, unpractised thing, yet even that little shone like a star as he drew his pistol and stacked up beside the door. I crouched behind the heavy pack, holding onto my ridiculously long blue hair so it didn't drag in the dirt. Once in place, it was my guardian's turn to rap out a confusing mix of knocks on the door; presumably a code of some kind set up beforehand. The sound was muffled with the armoured backpack between us, making me wonder when the trooper had picked it up. Narrowing my eyes, I glared at the blocky pack with a frown, abruptly more annoyed with it than my protector banging random sequences into the unopened door. I knew I'd fallen asleep at several points, but how'd I completely miss CT-5581 finding a supply pack and rifle when he'd been carrying me the entire time?

Danger

Understandably, getting metaphorically hit over the back of the head by the personification of danger poured a painful deluge of adrenaline into my body. Jerking upright in a slow-motion crawl that left me breathing molasses, my frightened gaze swept across the doorway and CT-5581's exposed back to the clone in the doorway... and the malevolent black-painted droid behind them. Inadvertently meeting the commando droid's soulless photoreceptors, the gleeful anticipation roiling off their matte plating made me rapidly reconsider my initial impression. A pulsating chorus of multicoloured threads bound the droid to the clone that'd opened the door, CT-5581 and five others out of sight. Harsh jade for the visible troopers and one other besides, and four strands of arctic Cyan not unlike my hair's distinctive hue.

Jade for foes marked for death, Cyan for allies bonded as one.

I had no clue how in the Void's name I knew this, but I didn't need to understand the underlying theory to react in the only way I possessed.

My stalwart guardian had only gotten his blaster pistol to hip level in this existence of glacial movement and wouldn't be in position before the commando droid fired their E-5 through the despondent clone being used as a shield. I couldn't be sure if the trooper's blackened, half-swollen eyes noticed me launching myself over the backpack, but I swore he blinked regardless. Clumsily pawing at the existential terror filling my mind to bursting, I shoved the toxic miasma and every one of its emotional kin out of my head and down into my outstretched hand. Childish desperation propelled me through the otherwise immovable air with the ravenous Void's everpresent aid, making me just swift enough to duck past CT-5581 and throw myself under the captive clone and his prospective droid executioner.

Feeling like I'd just stuck my entire hand in hot water, I screamed through pouring tears as a coruscating lance of pure Void energy hungrily consumed the entire commando droid in less time than it took to blink. Unable to breathe the frozen air, what oxygen remained in my tiny lungs burned away as I tracked the snapped threads to their endpoints.

Another clone missing a leg and an eye lay stretched out on a crumpled sofa, his angry expression slowly morphing into confusion as glowing motes filled the doorway.

A second commando droid crouched behind a counter; the lance reduced its stubby head to a sparking crater before the chassis began consuming itself.

The third CIS robot fell into two disintegrating pieces as I struggled to keep the attack on the target.

As a testament to their design, the fourth and fifth commando droids had their blasters tracking me and were mere inches off bore before the stuttering beam played across their skeletal chassis and the wall at their backs. Terrified, a vice wrapped itself around my aching lungs as the Void lance sucked in something from the decaying commandos and refused to shut off. Realising the danger almost too late as my initial roll started bringing my lance hand around towards the clones, I tore the glove off my free hand with my teeth and desperately bit down on the exposed pale flesh.

My teeth didn't break the skin.

I was so prepared to scream around a mouthful of warm copper that when I barely felt the pressure, the dichotomy between those two points achieved what I'd set out to do without needing to bite myself. CT-5581 rolled under the final dying gasps of the lance in real-time as the coruscating attack expended its last energy in tearing shallow gouges in the ceiling.

The next thing my dazed mind knew, I was being swept up with desperate strength and hugged tight to carbon-scored plastoid as wave after wave of worry rolled off CT-5581. Why wasn't he mad that I nearly killed him? He should be angry and shout at me for being stupid. Where were the furious words, and why did my protector's gibberish Basic sound so concerned for me? Didn't he see the Void lance that'd nearly hit him and why it was all my fault?

I'd have remained in that guilty loop for Sol knows how long if not for CT-5581 holding me up to eye-level with honest-to-God tears in his eyes.

"Thee Thee?" I tried fighting the painfully dry tongue blocking my throat, but the clone beat me to it.

He hugged me tight as only the truly desperate and relieved could. "Never do that again, ad'ika; promise me! We're supposed to protect you, not the other way around!"

With my vision rapidly greying around the edges, I threw the last of my strength into wrapping my arms around CT-5581's neck and promptly falling asleep to the reassuring thud of his strong heartbeat.

I hope he's not too mad at me when I wake up.

It was a sombre, if hesitantly jubilant, trio of brothers working their way through GAR-issue ration packs as the final rays of overly bright Chistophsis sunlight fell below the jagged horizon. Secure in the resecured fallback outpost, each lone survivor of different squads methodically demolished the notoriously bland MREs with gusto only a soldier could achieve.

Spooning a mouthful of Nerf-flavoured mush into his mouth, CT-3384, also known as Legs, stared ruefully at the ragged stump of his left leg with his remaining eye. And yet, for all his poor physical condition, the crippled trooper was genuinely glad to be alive, given the circumstances. Legs didn't bother chewing the flavoured sludge as he leaned back to study the perfectly smooth divots punched into the bare ceiling above his head.

"Nasty work that," he remarked, hoping to fill the silence.

Alas, the brother he wanted to speak with stayed resolutely quiet, ever-so-slightly trembling hands removing the compressed berry cubes from their MRE to be put into an empty ammo pouch. Meeting CT-5581's guarded gaze, Legs glanced at his MRE's desert and wordlessly placed the tray onto the low table between them as a silent peace offering.

On the third side of the lop-sided square, CT-1170 cursed under his breath as he poked himself in the upper lip with the disposable spork that came with the rations. Quieting at a look from CT-5581, -1170 grumbled under his breath and set the ration aside to rub at his swollen eyes in defiance of their first-aid training.

Hissing as he hit a tender spot, the half-blind clone leaned forward. "So, that happened."

Sharing a single brain cell, the three troopers glanced at the mound of emergency heated blankets surrounding a tiny form curled up on the chair closing the square. Besides the egregiously lengthy bacta-blue hair falling like a waterfall over the shiny foil blankets, the only sign of life was the nigh-imperceptible rise and fall of the occupant's chest.

Deciding to jump on the grenade, Legs spoke up. "I don't mean to pry like a longneck, Brother," he began, using the clone's nickname for their Kaminoan creators. "But I've never seen a Jedi do what the ad'ika did."

"You were on Geonosis with the first waves, aye?" CT-1170 queried, getting a nod from his crippled kin.

"First off of the Larty and I kept up with the Jedi leading us right into the fire," Leg's momentary proud grin flipped upside down when he tapped above the stump. "My batchmates called me Legs after that, wouldn't you know..." He managed a smile, but it felt and looked hollow. "Agh, who cares anymore? They're all dead now, and we've got the baby Jedi over there to thank for not joining them."

"Commander Mara saved all our lives."

It was a bristly and defensive outburst, but it was also the most either of the outpost's formerly captured occupants had heard from CT-5581 since the kid had fallen asleep in his arms. The unwounded newcomer absently rubbed the abdomen plates of his armour, seemingly unaware he was doing so where his brothers could see. Not that it mattered much when -5581 decided that now was as good a time as any to vent.

"I'd be dead if it wasn't for Mara," he declared with bright-eyed conviction. "Who knows, I might've been dead when she found me in that pit..."

Exhaling heavily through his nose, CT-5581 ran a gauntlet through his buzzcut hair with the movements of a brother needing something to occupy his hands. If either of his brothers noticed the trembling limbs, they kept quiet out of respect for the fellow clone who'd helped save their lives. Just when it seemed like he'd calmed down, -5581 got up, walked over to the blanket pile and extracted the sleeping blue-haired girl from the shiny cocoon. Returning with tender grace for a fully armoured trooper, he sat down with the mumbling mini-Jedi and rubbed her back until the spacesuit-clad kid settled back to deep sleep.

Only then did CT-5581 lose the twitchiness in his outer extremities, something his kin noted without comment and smiles when Commander Mara unconsciously snuggled deeper into her protector's embrace.

"Are all Jedi padawans that small?" -1170 asked Legs.

Legs shrugged. "Maybe?" He tried rolling his eyes when his brother grumbled and had to stop when the empty socket twinged. "They didn't deploy any of the Commanders on Geonosis, as far as I know. Who knows, maybe the humans from the Commander's world are just short?"

His genekin eventually nodded, though he didn't look entirely convinced. "You'll not catch me hoofing it with a full kit and a baby Jedi in my arms." -1170 squinted in -5581's direction, though only because his eyes were all but swollen shut. "No offence, Brother."

"I barely noticed the weight, to tell you the truth. And, besides, she saved my shebs from two droid patrols thanks to being carried."

Faced with immediate interest from the wounded troopers, -5581's tanned face cracked open to reveal two rows of perfect white teeth. The clone proudly glanced down at his tiny limpet and tenderly ran a hand through Mara's metallic cyan hair.

"There we were, hiding in a doorway with the clankers bearing down on us. Figuring we were going to die, I had my DeeCee out when the droids just walked past our hiding spot." Faced with simultaneous disbelieving expressions from his audience, CT-5581 scratched a flushed cheek. "I swear on our gene sire that the Commander turned us invisible; some sort of Force cloaking, I think. Mara was wrecked afterwards, so I don't think it was conscious on her part."

A choked snort interrupted his retelling; CT-1170 leaned back on his chair and attempted to roll the spork between his fingers with a modicum of success. Though his face was more bruised than tanned skin after the beating he'd received from the commando droids, there was no missing the cynicism in his body language and voice.

"Where was she when my pod mates were being lined up and shot by the clankers, huh?"

"1170..." Legs tried, only to be glared into submission by his squinting brethren.

"The Sith-spawned droids killed my entire pod and were using me as bait to kill even more brothers while he," an accusing finger was jabbed at a stony-faced -5581. "Gets a baby Jedi that can turn him invisible, teleport and shoot disintegrator beams from her hands!"

Unable to move from his sofa, Legs cursed his injury even as he held up warding hands toward the angrily gesticulating CT-1170.

"We've all lost brothers, that's true, but there's no need to get angry at the ad'ika. She didn't do anything."

"Exactly!"

CT-5581 hugged Mara tighter to his chest, and Legs pressed back into his seat when their enraged brother leapt up with a howl of absolute loss and agony. -1170 barely managed a second standing upright before he collapsed back down with his face buried in his hands, openly weeping now, much to his kin's concern. Nothing was left of the cynic from before, merely a distraught trooper who'd lost everyone he'd been raised with from birth.

"W-W were lined up by the c-clankers when I h-heard a scream," CT-1170 ground out between heaving sobs and snotty breaths. "The d-droids had j-just put t-t-two shots through -1171 a-and -1172 when she screamed."

-5581's sharp-eyed face snapped towards his weeping genekin. "What'd you say?"

His distraught brother tore his hands from his battered face, bloody tears rolling down the purpling cheeks from their barely visible bloodshot eyes, unerringly glaring daggers at Commander Mara.

Even from across the table, Legs heard the grinding teeth. "I said that she saw my b-brothers die, -5581! The only reason I'm alive is b-because that brat of a Jedi distracted the clankers long enough for me to escape here."

CT-1170 choked out a horrific, rasping mockery of a laugh, his bloody hands jerkily moving between his lap and his head while never reaching either.

"Why me?! Why'd I get two chances to live when the others died?"

Nobody had the answers he wanted, not even the bleary-eyed Mara, who'd roused herself to stare at the weeping clone with purple-flecked emerald-green eyes. Being the only one at the right angle, Legs winced as a spark of recognition made the blue-haired Jedi's expression crumple. And then, between one blink of his remaining eye and the next, Commander Mara had materialised on the sofa beside CT-1170 and was hugging the stunned clone for all her fragile body was worth.

"Sorrysorrysorrysorrysorrysorry..."

On and on, the unfamiliar language rolled from the kid's mouth, muffled yet recognisable as an apology for something Mara had no control over.

And yet, apologise the little girl did, clinging to the trooper who'd moments before appeared ready to attack her in a grief-filled rage. Legs caught CT-5581 observing with a peculiar expression caught halfway between worry and pride, clearly concerned for his charge yet prideful of her chosen action.

In the privacy of his mind, CT-3384 wondered what CT-1170 was feeling right now, what with a miniature Jedi padawan hugging the grief out of him one squeeze at a time.

He'd never been hugged before.

Enjoy.

HarakoniWarhawk · Jun 21, 2024

Y'all can thank Fusou and Ember for this, as well as my getting temp-banned on SB for a bit.

Music for the chapter is from the Soviet Union (Their National Anthem)

View: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=U06jlgpMtQs&si=VFpqyKERApPByBs-

Suppressing the urge to knead his aching brow, Senator Organa kept his hands flat on the rickety desk loaded with far too many datapads and serenely met his guest's concerned eyes.

"The Republic will come to your people's aid, Overseers," Bail reassured the high-caste Christophsians. "Before the latest Separatist push, I received word that Generals Kenobi and Skywalker from the Open Circle Fleet were on their way with a fleet of battlecruisers. I have unwavering faith in their ability to break the orbital blockade and allow the resumption of food shipments, a beacon of hope in these trying times."

A well-timed chirp somewhere under the datapads saved the Alderaanian from listening to more depressing news of the local's crumbling morale. Offering the contrite pair a sympathetic smile, Bail inclined his head towards the buried combead. Internally, he couldn't help but sigh in relief when the high-caste officials hurried to depart his closet-turned-office. He carefully extracted the earpiece with a minimum of incidents -three pads falling off the desk, to be precise- and braced himself before activating the buzzing combead, the weight of the situation palpable in the air.

"This is Senator Organa."

"Senator, Sir, would your protocol droid be willing to come down to the medbay?"

Bail sat up, his experienced ears hearing the stress in Commander Duum's request through the otherwise impeccable facade the clone threw up. Snapping his fingers, the Senator waited for K-3PO's silver form to stir in the corner before answering the officer on the other end of the line.

"K-3PO and I will be with you momentarily, Commander."

A stressed hiss filled Bail's ear. "Ah, Sir, there's no need..."

"If there's a situation that requires a protocol droid, Commander Duum, I fail to see how I cannot also lend my assistance." Eagerly escaping from behind his overloaded desk, the dark-haired Alderaainian rubbed his trimmed beard and made for the door. "After all, we're in this together regardless of our respective backgrounds."

"... Very well, Sir. If you wish to be present."

Was that a hint of petulance from the cynical Duum, Bail wondered with a raised eyebrow? The channel shut a moment later, leaving the question unanswered until however long it took for K-3PO's plodding pace to make it down four flights of stairs to the medbay. The young Senator for Alderaan used the quiet interlude to work out the stiffness from spending so many hours bent over a desk doing paperwork with several rounds of unseemly noises. Luckily, the early hour preceded any meetups with the locals in the stairwell, and Bail's impromptu limbering went unnoticed, much to his silent approval. As the Senate's assigned representative on the strander aid mission, it wouldn't do to break the composed aura he'd carefully cultivated for worried people to draw mental strength from.

What Bail arrived at in the medbay was enough to crack the facade with a wide-eyed goggle and a hurried second look when his mind refused to accept the first glimpse.

Of the seven clones inside, the four bedbound troopers were snickering despite their wounds as their three healthy comrades did their best to coax a blue-haired child from the top of a medicine cabinet. Bail spotted Commander Duum, hands outstretched towards the little girl off to one side, with the grumpy-looking medic holding an inoculation needle beside him. The third trooper able to stand unaided wore no helmet, allowing Bail to see the clone's frustrated expression that morphed into a lop-sided smirk the longer Duum proved unable to coax the child down.

"What seems to be the matter, Commander?" the bemused Senator queried, bringing the circus show to a frantic halt.

Cheeks bearing the faintest of embarrassed dusting, Commander Duum whirled and snapped a perfect salute, betraying himself a split-second later by glancing back at the sulking little girl out of reach.

"Senator Organa, Sir!" Duum pointedly glanced at K-3PO. "I'd appreciate it if your protocol droil could inform our petulant guest that she requires antibiotic shots before leaving the medbay." He stood at attention, body language ever so slightly aggrieved. "We picked up survivors of several lost squads and this child during a morning patrol sweep after the Separatists went quiet last night.

Vaguely familiar words erupted from the top of the cabinet as the child fired off an unintelligible rebuttal bearing the air of a pointed refusal. Hearing an intrigued coo from behind him, Bail glanced back at his silver-plated droid as it stepped out of his shadow and into the limelight.

"Kay-Three?"

The protocol droid's yellow photoreceptors turned to her owner. "Pardon the interruption, Master, but I do believe the child's speaking an archaic version of Old High Galactic. It'll require a larger sample size to narrow down the exact dialect, but I possess the necessary language files to facilitate communication."

At a curt nod from Bail, the overly verbose droid rattled off a more stilted, at least to the dark-haired politician's ears, mirror of the child's words. Plagued by an unexpected chill, the Alderaainian noticed he wasn't the only one who shivered as the girl's attention, sharp as cut jade, locked onto Kay-Three. She cocked her head, disturbing the inordinate expanse of metallic blue hair in her possession, and hesitantly replied in kind. Throughout the following conversation, Bail wondered why the child kept glancing at the helmetless trooper as if seeking assurance.

K-3PO returning to Basic sidelined that idle thought.

She swept an arm towards the somewhat less upset young girl. "Master Organa, may I present the Princess Mara Jade Lyselle nee Hask-Entrati, scion of the Noble House Lyselle and Royal House Hask-Entrati." An almost panicked babbling from the aforementioned princess distracted K-3. "Obviously, I accurately translated your titles into the closest Basic equivalent, Your Highness; what kind of protocol droid do you take me for?" The barbed response made the silver droid jerk back with a scandalised gasp. "I did not lie, Princess! Translating first into High Galactic and then Basic will induce some minor grammatical quibbles, but not to any degree that might be categorised as a falsehood!"

Princess Mara's response was a petulant sulk and withdrawal into the space between the top of the cabinet and the ceiling. Drawing her voluminous hair about her like a gleaming blanket, she scowled, exposing baby teeth punctuated with several visible gaps. Viewing the earlier byplay in a new light, Bail once more studied the nameless trooper observing the scene in pensive confusion, curious as to how a child from an insular Alsakan colony in the Core found her way to Christophsis and into the protection of this clone. A girl who was barely old enough to begin schooling at that, if not only just starting, judging by what the Senator could make out of her age from his present position.

"What's a princess?" A wounded trooper asked.

"Some kind of hereditary military rank, I think," the scowling medic opinioned. "I heard one of the trainers say that it's passed along the gene line or something."

A Clone missing an eye scratched his shorn hair. "Does that make Commander Mara a regular human version of the Alphas? They were a gene lineage meant to be officers, too, right?"

Even with a helmet in the way, Bail had spent enough time with Commander Duum to recognise the contemplating tilt of his head as he turned to the sulking child princess.

"From the report you, CT-5581, and CT-1170 provided, -3384, I'm half inclined to agree... Half inclined." Duum's tone brooked no argument. "Regardless, prestigious gene line or not, the princess still needs to come down from her hiding spot, Buir." This was directed at the embarrassed-looking trooper lacking a helmet.

The trooper blinked and glanced about himself in evident confusion before wordlessly tapping his breastplate.

"Yes, CT-5581, I meant your shiny butt. She's your kid, and I don't have nearly enough caf in my system to play nursemaid."

As a round of laughter at CT-5581's expense raced around the medbay and provided some much-needed cheer, a metal hand tapped Bail's arm.

"Buir is a term of endearment in Mando'a, Master Organa," Kay-Three whispered, insomuch as she could. "It translates to..."

"Father, I'm aware," Bail rolled his eyes.

'Which goes some way to explaining the apparent relationship between the trooper and the princess he'd rescued.' Rubbing at a throbbing vein on his forehead, Bail subtly directed K-3PO to clomp into the middle of the laughing Clones and relay his words in Old High Galactic.

"Kay-Three, please relay to Princess Lyselle that I hope she feels well enough after her ordeal to receive what medical care we can provide." Bail waited for the droid to translate his words and thus gain Mara's intense attention before gently smiling at her. "And if she wishes, I believe I have some hot chocolate hidden away for after the inoculations."

While the amused Senator for Alderaan had no children, babysitting for Breha's nieces provided Bail with sweet leverage to ply even the most irascible child -or Senator, he mused with a mental snort- into compliance. And, sure enough, Mara's eyes lit up at the mention of hot chocolate, heralding a disorientating fuzziness that ended in the girl clinging to Buir, much to the trooper's delayed surprise. Goggling openly, senatorial composure be damned, at the casual usage of the Force, something the one-eyed clone had said beforehand snatched Bail's fixation.

"Pardon, but did one of you say Commander Mara?"

Every clone in the medbay nodded simultaneously in an unmistakable echo of their cloned nature.

With his hands full of shyly smiling child, the newly nicknamed Buir proudly hefted Mara up for Bail's bemused amusement, much to the blue-haired girl's indignant squawking.

"Mara here dusted a whole squad of commando droids with her Jetii powers, Senator!" The trooper declared with what could only be called fatherly pride. "I didn't know the Force can do that, but I'm damn glad she saved my shebs..."

"Language, Trooper!" Duum barked.

"...Saved my six, Sir," Buir corrected to a round of laughter, his embarrassment not entirely able to disguise his affection. "I wouldn't be here if not for the Commander, and that's the honest truth."

Two of the wounded, the trooper missing an eye and another with a face that resembled mashed meiloorun, chorused. "Hear, hear!"

"That's enough rabblerousing!"

Forging towards Buir and Mara like a battlecruiser through a debris field, the clone medic hefted his needle with a gleeful smirk as the tiny princess turned a deathly shade of pale and tried to hide in her guardian's arms. Deciding that this was as good a time as any to take his leave, Bail directed Kay-Three to tag along when he slipped out of the medbay, thinking of contacting Obi-Wan when his friend arrived.

His last sight of the worryingly young Jedi learner was the girl bearing a rictus grin as the medic prepared to inject the inoculation jab.

"They're always a handful at that age," the Senator murmured.

Pleasekillmepleasekillmepleasekillme.

Why did that stupid silver droid think it was okay to tell everyone I'm technically an Orokin Princess!

Just because I felt compelled to answer honestly before my mind caught up with my brain didn't mean I was really Mara! Nuh uh, even if I looked like a younger version of her, sounded like her and acted like her a little bit too well at times...

Drat.

Much like a pulp novel detective hiding their emotions by taking a drink, I hid the mortified train racing around my brain by performing the child-friendly equivalent of sipping from my buttery smooth hot chocolate. Curled up on a ratty chair beside the medicine cabinet I'd stupidly decided was a great hiding spot, I hissed in delight after the next sip.

"Iths really good," I lisped under my breath.

And it was by far the tastiest, most creamy example of the beverage I'd ever had the honour of drinking packed in a mug I barely had enough strength to lift. Burning arms were so darn worth it, I decided as the blood in my sugar stream thinned a little more. Bail Organa had to have snuck the hot chocolate away for himself to have it in a refugee camp under siege by the seppies... Huh, that's a new one.

Lowering my heavy mug and pausing to breathe the delicious fumes, I must've picked that up from CT-5581... Buir.

The word tasted familiar when I rolled it around my mouth, but nobody bothered to tell me what it meant yet. But if it was related to that 'ad'ika' word he used on me, then the stuffy Commander must've named my protector that to screw with him.

Harsh as it was, Buir deserved it for not rescuing me from that evil medic with a needle bigger than my finger!

I bit my lip before the delighted giggles slipped out, for once unflustered by the missing teeth when it kept the medbay quiet and filled with the rhythmic snoring of sleeping clones. CT-1170, just across from me, with his entire head smothered in bacta patches and only a little bit of stress leaking into the Void. Legs, sporting a high-tech eyepatch, which I'd picked up from osmosis was meant to stimulate the healing of the optic nerve and a cap I couldn't see over his leg stump. Another pair shared the sleazy-looking room with the troopers I knew, both of who had put on oxygen masks before they went to sleep and radiated ghostly fire into the local Void.

Burn victims, maybe, or superheated air damaging their lungs.

Most of the details were somewhat fuzzy, but I'd finally figured out where I was on the Star Wars timeline. Christophsis, before Obi-Wan and Anakin broke the blockade, which, confusingly, preceded the show's first episode? Wondering how that worked had me frowning at my hot chocolate for a hot minute, but a nice deep sip washed the worries away with sugary sweetness and a warm feeling in my stomach.

Darn, this was a good hot chocolate to stay heated for so long.

But as much as the fantastic drink made me feel all fuzzy and warm inside, the outside fuzziness from my paracausal senses kept me from falling into a slumber. Halfway through the hot chocolate with no intent of finishing it this side of the hour, my face scrunched in second-hand pain for the wounded clones. If I had to describe it, the unconscious pain leaking from the sleeping troopers was like wearing a facemask and developing an inch on the end of your nose. You wanted nothing more than to tear the mask off and scratch the irritation, but you couldn't. Buir wouldn't be alive without my Tenno healing powers, so what's preventing me from helping the clones I knew and those I didn't? What was fixing a leg and an eye, as well as some burns and bruises, compared to resurrecting the dead?

...

Nothing, that's what!

So I decided to do something about it... after finishing my hot chocolate.

Half an hour later, according to the chrono on the wall, I realised I might not have thought that plan through properly. Slipping off the chair, I grunted and wobbled as my boots hit the floor, having forgotten about the gap between them and the tiles. I caught myself on the chair's arm quickly enough if you ignored the couple of times I hit empty air before accounting for being so darn tiny.

'Off to a great start there, you dummy.'

Making a wobbly beeline to the possible burn victims, I forwent dragging a box over to stand on and settled for grabbing the lefthand's clone's limp hand where it hung off the side of the bed. Closing my eyes, I spent a frustratingly long time wrangling my sugar-fuelled thoughts into order and tapping into the Void that dwelt within my heart. Breathe in, breathe out, ignore the stinging liquid leaking from between my closed eyelids and see.

Lungs and throat scorched through the mucus and down to the blood vessels in some cases from inhaling superheated air. The web of glowing veins, arteries, and oxygen-capturing things that looked like broccoli loomed malignant and crimson in my mind's eye. Glittering blue motes resembling happy little spess jellyfish flowed into the damaged lungs with every raspy breath. They wriggled their adorable tentacles over their section of damaged flesh to soften the hard reds into a softer orange, yet lacked the density to cover the entire area. Now, I'm not the smartest girl in the realm of spess wizards and laser swords, but I assumed the sinfully cute healing blobs had to be bacta at work. Nibbling on my lip in the outside world, I paused my first plan and, after a moment's hesitation, willed a mental hand weaved from golden gasses into existence and waved at the cheery puffballs.

Faster than I expected, I'd attracted an audience of bacta balls -my totally original name for the little moeblobs- only to stall on what I wanted to do with them.

Hold on, don't I have kuva inside me?

Beckoning with a golden finger, I convinced a small multi-blob of bacta balls to detach from the lungs and take a quick slip and slide through the circulatory system to the tip of the ring finger in my grip. Once there, I cracked open my eyes and cooed in wonder as a blue glob the size of a pinhead squeezed through the clone's skin and dropped into the palm of my hand. Seeing the tips of their tentacles shrivelling outside the suspension fluid, I helped my new friends enter my body and dive headfirst into the shining vein they'd chosen. My lips pursed as the friendly-looking moeblobs rapidly turned purple and sprouted, like, a bazillion tentacles across six, no, nine dimensions. But their delighted squeaking in my mind didn't sound evil, so I let them nom away until they were sated.

"Okay, lithhle friends, thime tho go home." A Void nudge pushed the thimble-sized purple blob back onto my palm and then returned to the clone. "Pleathe work."

I needed to have worried, for the kuva komrades- another fantastic name from me- swiftly returned to the lungs and latched onto the nearest broccoli thingy. Air whistled through my missing teeth as the somewhat more tentacle-y healing friends spread like wildfire in a self-replicating wave powered by the gift of the golden lords. Every fresh inflow of bacta blobs had a brief dance with their purple cousins, including the most adorable tentacle slap code that had me awing out loud before joining the rapidly spreading kuva komrades.

Above me, the trooper's rasping breathing smoothed out as the komrades covered half of his lungs, then cleaned up entirely once the protective purple layer shielded healthy emerald lungs from outside interference.

I gave myself a pat on the head and fist-pumped. "You go, Girl!"

Before I pulled away, I manifested the golden hand and waved at the kuva komrades until they allowed me to make contact.

Help!

Blinking rapidly in the aftermath, I eventually translated the cheerful concept as a promise from the excited kuva komrades to unite as a shield against further outside attacks like the evil hot air. Finding nothing wrong with that, I waved goodbye to the friendly nine-dimensional healing blobs as they sang a nigh-inaudible working song and pulled back to reality with a woozy shiver.

Luckily, the obscene amount of sugar in my bloodstream banished the wooziness, and I turned to grab the other burn victim's hand.

One down, three to go!

Medic Jax was unfortunately used to wounded brothers and having to ration the mission's limited bacta supply.

Jax decided that CT-9941 and CT-9942 would require full-immersion bacta tanks once the siege was lifted as he browsed the medical scans from last night on his datapad. Sipping from the semi-solid fluid masquerading as caf stubbornly clinging to the inside of his mug, the medic steeled himself to any deteriorations in CT-1170 and CT-3384's conditions.

Knocking the ersatz medbay's door open with an armoured knee, Jax looked up and dropped his pad and mug when he walked in on CT-3384 stretching an intact -if presently hairless- left leg and squinting with his undamaged right eye. The clatter drew the attention of the other wounded brothers, each whole and hale under the probing scans of the medical monocle over Jax's eye.

"...What the shebs?"

CT-9941, who'd been coughing up blood after foolishly laughing during that mess yesterday, whistled a cheery little tune in all defiance of the shrivelled mess that was his baked lungs and inclined his head towards the medicine cabinet.

"Princess fixed us," was the curt, unworried answer.

Jax took one look at the tiny slip of a sleeping girl buried under enough bacta-blue hair that it covered her completely and pooled on the floor before throwing his arms up in defeat.

"That's it, I give up! One of you can tell Buir and Commander Duum that the bratty little jetii performed miracle cures on your underserving shebs!"

Snatching his dropped pad and caf from the floor in a grumbling fit of pique, the torqued medic bit another mouthful of sludge and angrily chewed it all the way out of the medbay and beyond.

He'd return in a few hours once his professional pride was less prickly and liable to explode, but there was no way Jax was praising that teleporting brat for pulling healing miracles from behind her ears.

He had professional standards, dammit!

Unless required for plot reasons, each chapter is mostly their own thing.

Anyway, hope y'all enjoyed Mara being a bit of a feral brat and bringing the concept of bacta buddy unions to Star Wars with help from the Void.

New Thread Edit: Will keep posting these at one a day until I'm caught up or distracted with writing Warframe lewds.

HarakoniWarhawk · Jun 21, 2024

Once again thanks to Fusou, Ember and Decim, we've got more Mara Jade Lyselle nee Hask-Entrati.

Music for the chapter is from Nickelback (When We Stand Together)

View: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=eTKSuKbIowE&si=i-MBpHDcCBWOwgpR

'Okay, Mara Jade, you can do this.'

Sucking in a whistling breath, I struggled through wrapping my floor-length hair around my neck like a heavy scarf and then risked the barrack's door. My heart thundered in my ears as the barrier silently whisked open upon sensing my approach, doubts already surfacing before I'd travelled half a dozen feet. But I grit my teeth and persevered despite the pain, sparing only a single look back to Buir's sleeping form before ghosting outside and into the halls of the repurposed miner's hab block. I'd told myself I'd do something independent for my own sake, and the stinging in my rapidly blinking eyes and subdued sniffling was worth it for the plan's sake.

Well, not so much a plan as a thought that'd popped into my head five minutes ago...

It was too late now as my creeping pace carried me through eerily silent halls of bare duracrete and bare-bones light strips providing just enough illumination to navigate by. And this was the middle of the day, too! Frustration at this immature body scrubbed the sulky pout from my pale, baby-faced features and its constant demands to sleep. Buir had gone on patrol- at Duum and his insistence- at four in the morning, and I'd felt sleepy enough to take a short nap. Shamefully, the shock of being woken by an exhausted Buir twelve hours later had brought me to tears. Actual, unprompted crying because of missing an entire day by sleeping too much. You'd think that a Tenno wouldn't need to sleep much, but nooooo, that's too much for me to ask after being forcibly dumped into Star Wars!

Pausing as my legs turned to unstable jelly, I leaned heavily against a pockmarked wall and let the fat, salty droplets roll down my round cheeks to vanish in my blue hair scarf. Spite kept me upright when all I wished was to slide down to sit on the floor, curl up with my legs against my chest, and pour my emotions out, irrespective of appearance. That'd be the easy choice, given the faintly condescending treatment I'd received from every adult who wasn't a clone trooper.

Stupid adults think I'm a kid.

I snottily wiped my eyes as faint laughter tickled the edges of my hearing, but it vanished when I scrabbled upright and began patting my envirosuit down for something to clear my nose. Finding an unremarkable cloth in a belt pouch, I quickly thanked the original Mara for preparing for such an incident and eagerly blew my nose into the impromptu tissue. Once inundated, I breathed through my now cleared nostrils and gingerly packed the filthy rag away for later cleaning, though experience taught me that I'd forget about it soon enough.

Stupid brain making me think like a kid.

After giving my mind time to clear, I blinked away the last of the unshed tears and petulantly ignored the salty aftertaste every time I habitually probed my missing teeth. Intellectually, I knew it was rapidly becoming a bad habit I'd struggle to shake, but I couldn't stop. Sol only knew what other habits I was picking up without realising, and wasn't that a depressing thought? Was being alone causing all these upsetting thoughts? Long stretches of empty hallways and locked doors didn't provide much stimulation when it was like a copy-paste map made in Source Engine. Annoyed, I shook my head, banished the stupid thoughts cluttering my already overburdened brain, and focussed on what mattered to me.

I'd only seen the first six movies and the Clone Wars movie from 2008. There's a chance I might've seen a few episodes from the TV show, but the fuzzy depths of my memories stubbornly refused to hand out any morsels that might be useful to me.

My feet slowed me level with a door plaque covered in the weird squiggles of Aurebesh, a language that literally was gibberish to my eyes. I ran a gloved hand across the unknown letters, wondering what they meant for a few seconds before giving up with a snort and walking away from that mystery. One day, I'll get the chance to learn the words and letters everyone in Star Wars used, but it wouldn't be today or any time soon. Not with the evil droids outside the camp that Buir and the others kept deflecting from any time I was in earshot. I wasn't stupid; I knew what was going on when the clones offered hugs any time I walked into a room in case I overheard them talking. Even though Basic was gibberish to my ears. Even though I only had emotions leaking into the Void to guess intent from words.

Even when the low-level insistence on treating me like a child grated at my already damaged pride.

Out of the blue, I walked into someone's legs and bounced off with a strangled cry of shock. A strong hand grabbed my shoulder before I rebounded out of reach, Senator Organa's concerned face being the first thing I saw when looking up at him.

Releasing another mortified squeak that sounded awfully juvenile to my burning ears, I squirmed out of the bemused politician's grip and reflexively sketched a clumsy curtsey. Guided by my pure muscle memory, I held the pose for what felt like hours as befitting greeting a royal like Organa, hoping my long fringe hid my flushed cheeks. I didn't know what to make of the iconic Alderaanian senator, but our only interactions had been reasonably positive overall, even if he came across as a little condescending. Reminded of the hot chocolate, I licked my dry lips and belatedly rose from the curtsey just as that lying liar that lies protocol droid of his blundered up to us.

Senator Organa spoke before the silver menace got a word in edgewise. The droid stumbled to a halt and stiffly bowed, unaware I ignored its existence and pretended that the translated speech was from Organa's mouth.

"Are you feeling alright, Princess?" the bearded man asked, looking down at me with obvious concern. "I didn't hurt your shoulder, did I?"

I glanced at his comparatively massive hand, large enough to grab most of my skull, and rapidly shook my head. "No, S-Sire... Your Highness," I corrected too late to hide my slip-up. "You didn'th hurth me."

'Darnit, Mara Jade, you silly girl, why'd you call Bail Organa Sire?'

Floundering and so far out of my depth that my lungs burned in second-hand sympathy, I was blindsided when the senator chuckled and offered a hand.

Worst of all, he didn't feel condescending. "How about you tell me what has you out here alone while I do my rounds?" Worse than that, Organa felt honest. "That's only if you wish, Princess. Far from me to pressure you after everything you've experienced."

Glancing up and down the corridor and failing to hide my indecision, I worried away at my pouty lower lip and wished that the Alderaainian politician wasn't so darned friendly. With Organa's warm brown eyes watching for my reaction, I felt trapped between a cold, lonely place filled with wandering alone while Buir slept and the implicit warmer offer of travelling with Bail.

Drawing myself up to an unimpressive height, I shyly nodded. "'Kay..."

Winking, the senator gently took my hand and gestured for the protocol droid I'd been ignoring the presence of to follow behind us.

"We should be in for a quiet morning," Bail informed me with such confidence and inner conviction I believed every word. "The Christophsians are an insular people with a defined caste system, so keep that in mind if troublemakers take umbrage with your presence."

I needed a few moments to wrap my head around the warm fuzz of being led along, and then I absently nodded, thus giving Bail permission to continue speaking as we walked hand in hand towards the sounds of living people.

"Now, Princess, feel free to ask Kay-Three to translate for you..."

'Not a chance, Mister Organa. Thanks for the offer, though.'

"... with General Loathsom's forces holding back from the camp, tensions are lower than before you arrived." Bail favoured me with a reassuring smile. "And if you're feeling hungry, tell Kay-Three, and we'll take a break to eat, alright?"

Feeling more like a broken record with every minute, I ducked my head and responded with an embarrassingly shy nod I hadn't the will to override. It was a bit upsetting to my pride with how easy it was for me to stay quiet and just agree with everything Senator Orgnana suggested. My brain wanted to be independent and able to look after myself in this strange new world with a Tenno's powers, but my heart wanted to be comforted and held by Buir and his brothers.

So, until Buir wakes up from his ill-timed nap, I guess Mister Organa can keep me company in the meantime.

Glancing up at the Alderaanian noble -this is gonna kill my neck if I'm stuck on the stupid floor- drew a squeeze of my hand and a wink that totally forced me to smile back with twice the intensity. The happy expression had nothing to do with the comforting ease with which I'd fallen into stride with Organa, not in the slightest!

Stupid missing baby teeth making me look like a kid.

Yet I still held on tight to Bail's hand and all but melted into the senator's shadow when we encountered our first crowd of the locals and their scarily loud voices. Better the devil you know who gives hot chocolate than the lonely road with no protection, I assuaged my bristly pride where it lurked in a dark corner of my cluttered mind. We did this to learn about Christophsis, nothing else, and any side benefits like a temporary guardian were just the cherry on top.

Somehow, the self-reassurances rang hollow to me despite coming from me.

Stupid Bail being too friendly to walk away from.

"Commander Duum."

"Senator... Commander Mara Jade."

Such was the reception for Bail and his miniature companion when they entered the command centre, once an observation deck looking out over the otherwise abandoned eastern exurbs of Chaleydonia. Duum stood undaunted as a bastion of order in the middle of an otherwise chaotic dance. His subordinates, clones one and all, operated management consoles repurposed into what Bail understood to be an ad-hoc CnC system. The exact granular details were far less important than what it represented; a unified command network allowing the disunited Christophsian militias to work as a united whole.

If not for Duum's leadership, he doubted the local PDF would have held their lines nearly as long as they had without relief.

Hearing cloth rustling, Bail glanced to his right with a light grin as the young Princess Mara peeked out from where she'd hid behind his legs and gave the Clone Commander a tiny wave. Duum's curt, acknowledging nod left the child's green eyes practically glowing in the command centre's dimmed lighting. She remained silent, bar the nigh-inaudible crunching as her jaw worked through the honeyed bar provided from a ration crate, content with the wave and sticking to Bail like a particularly adorable limpet.

An attentive child when the mood struck, though the Alderaanian senator had found Mara distracted more often than not during the walk around the habitation block that made up the centre of the refugee camp. Then again, Bail mused as he gazed out the windows at the darkening cityscape; everyone was easily distracted at that age, let alone the sheltered daughter of nobility he suspected Mara Jade Lyselle nee Hask-Entrati was,

If the name wasn't a dead giveaway that the waif of a Princess hailed from Alsakan stock, her poorly-hidden courtly manners bore all the hallmarks of behaviours taught at a very early age.

"Commander Mara."

Amusingly, Bail and Mara raised an eyebrow in response to Commander Duum's approach. The stern clone officer stood at attention with his hands linked at the small of his back, wavering in the face of two amused nobles. Faint squeaking betrayed canted helmets from the console operators as they strained to catch the byplay without breaking sight of their displays.

Stiff and awkward, Duum took a knee and removed his helmet, exposing the tanned, ruggedly handsome features of a Jango Fett clone marred by a crooked nose. Broken at some point in the past, it now stood as a mark of individuality that Bail was only seeing now because the reserved clone officer hadn't taken their helmet off in his presence.

"Commander, I..." Duum's entire demeanour screamed 'uncomfortable' in block capitals. "Thank you for healing the vod. With your aid, I've managed to form an additional liaison squad to stiffen the militia companies. More personally, three of my brothers were looking down the barrel of decommissioning before you healed them." Something about how that word hung from Duum's thinned lips set Bail's teeth on edge. "So, on behalf of the 32nd Independent Company, we're glad to have you with us."

Kay-three, practically forgotten since the timely encounter with a red-eyed Mara Jade in the hallway, rattled off a translation in the background. An unheeded one at that, for the child Princess swallowed the last of her honey bar with an upset expression and walked up to Duun with leaden steps. A dark cloud hung across the girl's narrow shoulders as she stared into the clone's questioning eyes and laid a tiny hand on his cheek, the contrasting skin tones stark in the low light.

Sucking in enough air to have a short-lived whistle tease Bail's hearing, the perplexed senator shivered as discordant whispers joined the unexpected symphony. Folding his arms against the abrupt chill, Bail rubbed the goosebumps prickling his forearms, wondering if the locals had messed with the old air conditioning again. The Christophsisian natives preferred an overall cooler standard than what the Alderaanian politician was comfortable with, after all.

"Healed."

With one word from a blushing Mara Jade, the whispers and eery chill vanished as if they'd never existed, which they might never have had in the first place. Distracted by the ever-shifting flowing hair wrapped around the child's neck like a metallic scarf, it took Bail a second to notice something wrong with the picture.

"Commander Duum," Bail's brows furrowed in consternation. "Your nose is fixed."

Alarmed, Duum's gauntlet flew to his straightened nose, blank incomprehension dominating the dumbfounded officer's face as he repeatedly poked and squeezed the intact cartilage between them.

"How..."

Unable to restrain himself in the face of Force-assisted healing, Bail pet Mara Jade on the head twice before the blushing girl squirmed out of the way and ran into Duum's unprepared embrace for protection. The clone's continued dumbfounded expression contrasted hilariously with the Princess's adorable attempt at a glare ruined by a face too soft with baby fat to carry any heat. Lifting a hand, the senator paused in surprise when Mara Jade hissed like an enraged tooka kitten until he returned the limb to his side. She was missing the ears, fangs, and tail needed to complete the picture, but she deserved a gold star for the attempt.

Was physical contact an allowance only granted to clones like Buir and his kin? That said, Duum's continued lack of reaction to the tiny slip of a blue-haired girl pressed against his breastplate implied he was just as taken aback by the move as Bail was by the literal hissing.

Somewhat perplexing, but he wasn't in any position to chastise such a young child for reacting badly to unexpected physical contact with her head from a blindside.

In the interest of defusing the palpable tension gathering around Mara Jade, Bail ducked a hand inside his cloak and withdrew a foil-wrapped bar. Sharp jade eyes tracked the rectangular snack as it was first lowered to Mara's level and then extended with an apologetic smile.

"You have my utmost apologies, Princess," Bail offered just loud enough to cross the intervening distance. "Take this as payment for indignities caused."

The honeyed bar was plucked from his hand long before Kay-Three finished rambling through the translation. Mara Jade's gaze remained suspicious of the bearded Alderaanian until the sugar hit, and she forgot all about the prior annoyance. To reference an earlier expression, sugar acted much like catnip for tookas where the tiny Princess was concerned, placating an otherwise sulking child.

"Might I have a word, Commander Duum?"

Shaking himself out of the funk, Duum glanced at Mara Jade. "Sorry, Princess, duty calls."

Mara Jade gave a distracted wave goodbye as Duum stood up and followed Bail to a quiet corner of the command centre, much too engrossed with her sweet treat to pay attention. Glad for the welcome distraction, Senator Organa pursed his lips and voiced an otherwise unpalpable fear that only the clone officer could hear.

"We can't allow General Loathesom to get ahold of the Princess, I hope that needs no explanation. I can only imagine that she's on Christophsis against her and her family's will, and I'm loathe to imagine what Count Dooku would do with Mara Jade under his control."

Lips curled in a scowl, Duum glanced sideways and hacked a glob of spittle on the decking. "Aye, Sir, it doesn't bear thinking about what the seppies would do to the ad'ika." Curiously, his helmet remained clipped to his belt. "I assume we're to plan against that eventuality?"

Sighing, Bail was forced to grit his teeth and nod. "Do whatever it takes if necessary."

Rubbing a weary hand down his face, the suddenly exhausted senator looked over at Mara Jade and found the blue-haired girl walking from clone to clone. She'd pause at each one and wait for them to remove their helmets before making skin contact and presumably healing whatever minor injuries bothered them. To see such dedication from one barely old enough for dedicated tutoring was a genuinely humbling sight and as sure a sign of a pure heart that ever existed.

"Should the worst come to pass... I'd like you to take what men you need from my detail and hide in the city until Kenobi and Skywalker break the siege."

Briefly closing his eyes, Bail met Duum's impassive gaze with an internal surety that came rarely in his line of work.

"Can you promise me that, Commander?"

The officer's answering rictus grin was a terrifying thing to behold. "Over our dead bodies if required, Senator Organa, Sir."

Bail's lips pursed. "That's exactly what I'm afraid of..."

As you can probably guess, Mara Jade's not exactly in the best headspace with so much stuff in her brain.

Next up, the first Separatist viewpoint and some combat.

HarakoniWarhawk · Jun 22, 2024

Okay, so this wasn't meant to get so dark, but...

I'm really sorry in advance.

Music for the chapter is from Chris De Burgh (Ship to Shore)

View: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=lSXvdgYfle8&si=7GKTQKgZPXydCQeJ

"And you're certain this child is a Jedi initiate, General?"

Count Dooku, the ideological and literal head of the Confederacy, quirked a pure white eyebrow as he awaited a suitably acceptable response.

"Every local with Separatist sympathies on my payroll agrees on this, Count; the girl has been observed teleporting across rooms and vanishing without a trace on multiple occasions." General Loathsom inclined his head as he conceded the unsaid point. "One or two known spies feeding false information, I can understand, but even the Christophsisians selling intel to black market brokers report the same thing."

Unfortunately, rebuying the information from the Hutt-affiliated underworld operating on the crystalline world had excavated a noticeable dent in the Kerkoiden's personal finances. Capturing Christophsis and delivering its vital extraction operations to the Retail Caucus would fill that hole and more besides if only that cowardly Harch admiral in orbit could keep the Republic fleet at bay!

"General?"

Forcing himself to break free from the maelstrom of thoughts about Admiral Trench, General Loathsom clenched his jaw, realising he had to play a card he had hoped to save for a more opportune moment.

"I claim no knowledge of the Jedi's ways, Count, but would I be remiss in assuming the healing arts are rare gifts?" He slyly asked the foot-high hologram of the patrician ex-Jedi nobleman. "No less than a quarter-cycle ago, I received word from my informants that the young Jedi has been witnessed healing injured civilians and militia alike."

"A healer, you say?"

The patrician hologram of Count Dooku rubbed his impressive pointed beard with a considering hum, nearly lost to the command AAT's thrumming repulsorlifts. Despite the tens of thousands of light-years between the men, Whorm Loathsom cringed when Dooku's face snapped to his, unnerved at the hungry expression on the noble's aged features.

Dooku languidly waved the fears off. "Calm yourself, General. With this new information, it appears the girl-child might be something more valuable than a mere initiate."

"And what would that be, Sire?"

"The girl, this 'Mara Jade Lyselle nee Hask-Entrati', as the spies inform us, evidently possesses a tremendous natural talent for the Force, and Christophsis has, in the past, been known to produce Khyber crystals known for their Force resonance. Now, consider this, General; why would a noble house of Alsakani lineage risk a Force-sensitive daughter -one they've taken immense pains to hide from the Jedi- on a trip to Christophsis during this war?" Dooku's holographic eyes threatened to drag Whorm's soul from his body, such was their hunger. "A child who, by the spy's admissions, is scarcely old enough to know her letters and numbers."

Heart racing, the blue-skinned Kerkoiden leaned back in his commander seat, laying a hand on his chest when the priceless answer became known to him. Scarcely believing it, General Loathsom was struck dumb by the enormity of it all, a profitable opportunity he'd have remained ignorant of if not for Dooku's assistance.

Taking a few seconds to regulate his breathing, Loathsom's four clawed hands clacked once. "How did our spies miss the evidence of an exploitable Khyber deposit?!" He shook his head before expecting an answer. "Nay, I imagine the secret was deliberately suppressed while prospective buyers were sounded out on a need-to-know basis. For riches of this magnitude, the price of revealing the secret would be... inevitably fatal." The Kerkoiden didn't bother hiding his greedy expression. "We must secure the child before she reveals the deposit's location to the Republic! If they were to mine the crystals for their own purposes..."

Dooku raised a hand, silencing Whorm as surely as if he'd been sharing the command AAT with the alien general.

"Peace, General. In light of this vital intelligence, your orders are now to gain control of the girl and the Khyber deposit through any means necessary. Is that understood?"

"Aye, Count, I understand and wholeheartedly agree."

"Good... Good." Dooku's hand brushed the lightsaber hilt visible on his belt. "I shall leave the plan up to you, but I hope you understand that I wish to take the child into my care upon your seizure of Christophsis?"

Thereby denying Loathsom and the Retail Caucus sole dominion and rights to the exceedingly valuable Force-sensitive crystals. A more foolish officer might consider lying to Count Dooku and spiriting the girl away upon discovering the deposit, but Whorm was no fool. Having had the pleasure of meeting the Count on multiple occasions, he'd learned first-hand of Dooku's honourable nature and considered it a stain on his own honour to betray such a worthy liege.

He bowed as deep as possible within the tight confines of his tank. "You have my word that I shall personally deliver the girl into your care, Count." Then, as a flattering afterthought. "Unlike those Republican dogs and their Jedi allies, I know you'll provide such an impressionable child with a far superior upbringing."

Dooku remained silent, but the nigh-unnoticeable lift to the corner of the nobleman's mouth proved that the flattery had found its mark.

"Our spies report that Kenobi and Skywalker are at most two days away. Should Admiral Trench fail to deny the enemy control of the orbitals, I expect you to expend your forces securing the child's safe passage to Separatist space." Count Dooku granted the now-incredulous Kerkoiden officer a stern glare. "More droids can be built, General, but Force-sensitives such as this Mara Jade are worth more to our cause than disposable troops. If you can't hold Christophsis, secure the child."

The holographic emitter snapped closed with that last command, leaving an apprehensive General Loathsom habitually tugging at a tusk in deep thought.

An all-out assault on the refugee camp would guarantee the girl's capture and security within a single cycle, thus winning Whorm time to locate the Khyber. Still, the collateral damage and danger to her health were significant, let alone if the dishonourable meat droids stiffening the militia ranks decided to liquidate the asset before she fell into Whorm's claws. Mulling the conundrum over in his head, the Kerkoiden senior officer tapped a beat on the communications array at waist level and considered the forces at his disposal. Grabbing the unpowered hologram unit, Whorm punched in a specific com code and waited for the holographic representation of TJ-55 to fizzle into existence in the palm of his hand.

"General Loathsom," the spindly tactical droid greeted. "You have new orders for our assault..."

The Kerkoiden sliced the air with a hand. "Shelve the plan, TJ-55! Count Dooku has ordered us to capture the Jedi child, and we can't risk them being harmed by the blaster fodder."

TJ-55 buzzed. "Understood. Your orders?"

Grinning, General Whorm Loathsom leaned in with green on his mind and credit lust in his crimson eyes.

"First, I want you to relay the existence of the militia storage bunker in the eastern exburbs through our spies to the Republican's ears. Once that's disseminated, I want the commando droids strung out between the refugee camp and the bunker while our primary forces..."

Spotting movement further along the boulevard, Buir brought the magnoculars up to his visor and cursed.

"We've got clankers approaching!"

The call was repeated up and down the line as brothers and militia alike heard the warning and relayed it to their brethren until the entire barricade was swarming with activity. Twelve feet high and composed of tons of crystalline rubble, duracrete, and ruined civilian and Separatist vehicles, it was as solid a defence as the Republican forces were able to construct with the resources in hand. Standing along the primary transport artery into the eastern exurbs, they had two liquid-cooled repeating blaster cannons from militia stocks and a reasonable supply of anti-armour rockets. One such disposable launcher was shoved through the window of the ruined groundcar Buir was using as a spotter hide by a harried-looking Christophsian and thumped against his shoulder.

"Shebs," he cursed, more out of habit than pain.

Lowering the magnoculars to tuck the tube out of the way in the footwell, Buir slid his DC-15a out through the shattered windscreen and braced the long rifle on the bonnet. Blinking twice at a specific corner of his HUD, the resulting picture-in-picture view through the rifle's scope magnified the approaching droids with intimidating speed. Skeletal B1s at the front in twenty-droid-wide ranks to soak up blaster bolts, bulkier and top-heavy B2s following behind as fire support, and an entire platoon of snail tanks with their distinctive single-track unit for the breakthrough. They outnumbered the Clone/Militia defenders fifty-to-one, only counting the clankers Buir could see, and there were undoubtedly more behind the first wave.

"Alright, troopers, pick your shots and make every bolt count. We don't have the tibanna for wasting ammo." CS-4518's voice never strayed an octave as he relayed the bad news. "-15A's on the B2s, carbines on the chaff and for the love of your brothers, don't waste the AT rockets! For the Republic!"

"For the Republic!" Buir echoed before following it up with a quieter personal oath. "For Mara'ika."

Keeping a watchful eye on the range counter steadily decreasing in the corner of his HUD, Buir held his breath and fired at a super battle droid near the back of the formation. The DC-15A's kick barely registered as he watched the ionised plasma streak in slow-motion downrange to core the lumbering B2 through the torso. Durasteel slag erupted in a fatal spray behind the heavy droid as it managed two further steps before collapsing in a sparking heap to be crushed by its implacable brethren. Sparing only enough attention to avoid hitting his brother's targets, the stock-still trooper methodically punched hole after hole in the clanker's packed ranks before his rifle beeped as the power pack expired.

Releasing a stale breath, Buir squinted at the indicator and obligingly ejected the power pack to double-check that it'd indeed been drained. Sure enough, it had, perplexing the trooper as he retrieved a charged copy from his armour's pouches and recharged his blaster rifle. But with a seemingly never-ending wave of droids bearing down on the beleaguered defenders, Buir took another steadying breath and resumed laying down the accurate fire drilled into every clone.

With no need to preserve ammo, a veritable hailstorm of crimson bolts erupted from the head of the clanker advance as the B1s compensated for their poor accuracy with the sheer weight of fire. At this distance, it was more luck than skill to hit anyone in cover, but several cut-off screams and drawn-out howls audible through the defender's blaster fire proved that not everyone was so lucky.

Pausing to let the heat haze gathered around his rifle's muzzle to dissipate, the distinctive crackling hiss of the local's blaster cannons announced their entry to the fight. Overbuilt masses of durasteel, coolant jackets and triple-strength ionisation chambers, the unfamiliar emplaced weapons were the products of some obscure Mid-Rim armament conglomerate purchased centuries ago by Christophsis' leaders. Having aided in hauling the uncrated blaster cannons out of dusty storage bunkers in the early days of the relief mission, Buir was now glad to have participated in the back-breaking task of rebuilding and emplacing the ancient cannons. Fed by dedicated power generators and protected by masses of doonium-faced durasteel plates, the slow-firing orange-red bolts stuck out among the ionised tibanna used by the clone's blasters.

Not that it mattered for the B1s on the receiving end whether the defender's tibana gas was ionised or not when a single blaster cannon bolt tore six-deep holes in their packed formation.

Where organic forces would've gone to ground amidst the rubble littering the transport artery, the mindless droid ranks marched over their deactivated comrades with no end in sight. Deeming his rifle cool enough, Buir plucked another cell from the half-empty pouch and continued picking off B2s before the heavy combatants entered range with their paired twin-repeating blasters. The world outside the wrecked groundcar ceased to exist, bar his NCO's shouted orders to hold the line; time being marked by stale breaths from untroubled lungs and the steady depletion of the trooper's ammo supply.

A shock of red erupted from behind the B2 lines and tore a shuddering hole in the barricade, tossing screaming militia and silent chunks of such off the top of the rubble wall.

"Knock out those snail tanks!" CS-4518 bellowed to be heard as another handful of shock blasts shook the wall.

Relatively insulated from the detonations, Buir set his rifle aside and ignored the smoke from the burning upholstery to retrieve the AT weapon. Forced to squeeze between the front seats to aim the far bulkier disposable launcher, he spent precious seconds fighting to fit his broad shoulders before wrapping both hands around the passenger seat and breaking the backrest off. Tossing the useless irritant away, Buir expelled a frustrated grunt and lined the launcher's simple optical sight over the lead snail tank. Counting down from three, he tensed his body and got to one before a blaster bolt took him in the chest.

...

...

'Pleathe wake up, Mister Clone!'

CT-5581 smashed his helmet off the perforated roof, the harsh impact joining the burning in his lungs as he returned to consciousness, certain that he'd heard Mara Jade speaking to him. A familiar cold fury overtook Buir as his ad'ika's plea fell on receptive ears, sensation returning to stiff fingers as they clamped down on the launcher's trigger.

His rocket bore down on the crawling snail tanks and struck the armoured hull directly adjacent to the central track unit just as the droid tank charged another salvo. The clanker war machine detonated like a bomb amidst its identical copies, hypersonic shrapnel and ravenous fire flaying open the tanks on either side, which in turn reduced them to burning wrecks, throwing their disintegrating track links forward into the ranks of B2s. Thrown into disarray by the unexpectedly violent detonations, the remaining five tanks in the platoon hewed to a shrieking halt as their overwhelmed primitive droid brains struggled to process which direction held the most significant threat. Even when built to commercial bottom-line standards, the snail tanks only required a few seconds to run through their decision trees before resuming the advance.

More rockets streaked from atop the wall before the corporate enforcer vehicles could react, tearing the immobile and defenceless war machines apart without ever making that critical decision.

Lost in a world of his own, the gleeful cheering of the defenders fell on deaf ears as Buir pawed at the smoking hole in his chestplate right over the heart. Feeling like he couldn't breathe, he tore off his bucket and fumbled through removing the blackened plastoid with hyperventilating breaths deafeningly loud in his ears. Pulling the breastplate off with a grunt, Buir's expectant horror transformed into stunned incomprehension as his fingers probed the melted bodysuit and touched reddened but, most critically, undamaged flesh. Frantic efforts widened the hole, ruining the underlayer to prove to the disbelieving trooper that while his skin appeared to have been lightly burned, it was nowhere close to what a penetrating hit would cause.

Not even in the same parsec!

"How... Mara'ika?"

Reminded of the battle by a miniature swarm of blaster bolts tearing over his head, Buir hurriedly reattached his armour and helmet before taking up his DC-15A. Buoyed by some perplexing emotion he hadn't the time or mental energy to untangle in the middle of a fight, CT-5581 opened up on full-auto into the depleted droid ranks with a wordless warcry that stretched on and on until his tibanna canister ran out with a pathetic fizzle instead of a blaster bolt.

He was still alive, and that's all that mattered.

"Hold on, Mara, I'm coming."

"Hold her down!"

Just this once, Jax was glad for his helmet as the noise dampeners took the shrill edge off the gut-wrenching wail escaping Mara Jade's throat. Trusting in CT-1170 to keep the thrashing child pinned to the medical bed, Jax wrenched the scanner off his belt and played it over his most unexpected patient for whatever was afflicting her. One moment, the kid had been curled up sleeping on the chair that'd been set aside for her use the first night; the next, Mara Jade was screaming loud enough to wake the dead and nearly blow out the medic's eardrums.

Counting down the seconds until the scanner crunched the results, Jax hissed in disbelief at the wildly contradictory readouts.

"She's been shot?!"

CT-1170's head snapped around to goggle at the clone medic. "WHAT?"

"She's been kriffing shot!"

Or, Jax admitted after forcing the scanner to break its conclusion down into discrete results, it was more accurate to say that Mara Jade was suffering the shock of a close-range blaster bolt to the chest. Dangerously thready heartbeat, collapsing blood oxygen levels, and what had to feel like every nerve in her chest feeling like they were on fire. That didn't explain the endless screaming from lungs that were far too small to contain that much air, the unnatural glowing motes gathered around Mara Jade's tiny clenched fists and...

Lifting the kid's right eyelid, Jax stared uncomprehendingly at the solid blue orb glowing in the socket. No discernable pupil, sclera or blood vessels were visible -unlike the bloodshot left eye, which he double-checked- only a biology-defying cyan ball in the shape of an eye.

"Kriffing hells..." CT-1170 cursed in Jax's ear. "What's that?"

Gathering air to shout over the wailing, the medic choked when the heartwrenching crying peaked at a curdling apex, then vanished as Mara Jade bonelessly slumped against the bed. A lightning-quick blow knocked a cursing CT-1170 out of the way before he fell across the girl, leaving Jax's ears full of clattering plastoid and muttering brother while he scanned the kid again.

"Nothing," Jax muttered in disbelief as it came back all clear. "She's fine..."

A pair of gauntlets latched onto the edge of the bed as a scowling CT-1170 pulled himself high enough to squint at Mara Jade's eerily placid face.

"So's her eyes."

"Huh?"

Tugging open both eyelids, Jax discovered no trace of the evil-looking glowing eye or the burst blood vessels he'd previously witnessed. A barely visible violet glittering existed deep inside the jade-green iris, but he'd seen it before and dismissed the odd hue as a natural biological quirk.

Non-clones were weird like that, sure, but not so odd as to suffer from second-hand phantom trauma from non-existent blaster wounds!

"What in the Nine Hells is going on here?"

So, yeah, that happened. It's going to get worse before it gets better, unfortunately.

BUT! That said, when things get better, they get really better.

HarakoniWarhawk · Jun 22, 2024

So I heard y'all expected some trauma as this is a Warframe cross, and it wouldn't be the same without children being traumatised for life?

What, no? Ah, in that case, I did say things would get darker before they get brighter.

Music for the chapter is from Sabaton (Last Dying Breath)

View: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=udFyRZ9wq34&si=t6WLxH6jYS1avjZR

"General Kenobi, General Skywalker, I wish we'd met under better circumstances than this."

Bail Organa's features were haggard and worn down as he urgently addressed the occupants of the Resolute's CiC via holographic transmission from the surface. His finely tailored clothing hung loose around the shoulders and waistline, a subtle sign to the perceptive among the audience that events on Christophsis were taking a heavy toll. Yet, the senator for Alderaan, despite the circumstances, stood tall and resolute.

"The Separatists have been relentlessly assaulting the refugee camp these two days, and we're running low on all critical supplies; medicine and potable water most desperately." The hologram frizzled from hostile jamming before reforming. "When can we expect the resupply ships?"

"I'm afraid that the Separatist admiral in command of the blockade has proven unusually tenacious." Forwarding his holographic presence from the Negotiator, Obi-Wan stroked his beard to hide a grimace. "Anakin's task force attempted to break through but suffered heavy losses."

Unseen by all but an unmoved Admiral Yularen, Anakin's gloved prosthesis clenched with the sound of creaking nerf leather as he recalled the deaths onboard during the abortive assault. Fewer than the death flare that'd erupted from the pelta that came apart under the enemy's guns, yet these hurt more because they were his men.

"Ah, that's unfortunate news..." Bail admitted to fill the awkward silence. "Do you have other means of getting supplies through the blockade?"

Obi-Wan shared a considering look with his former padawan, now Jedi Knight and General, before nodding at the worried senator.

"Anakin?"

Taking his cue with his distinctive cocksure lop-sided smirk, Skywalker approached the hologram dias and clapped both hands on the handrail to get everyone's attention.

"We've got a stealth corvette prepped that should get us and the necessary supplies past the enemy fleet without a fight, Senator." The still-raw deaths of his men dampened the knight's otherwise raring battlelust. "It'll not be as much as a dedicated supply frigate can hold, but something's better than nothing at this stage."

"On that, we're in wholehearted agreement, Knight Skywalker... Hold one moment."

All present on the naval side of the call frowned as the senator turned to one side and accepted a datapad from an armoured arm that briefly popped into the frame. Whatever was on the pad had Organa wavering on the spot, the visible half of his face drawn in well-disguised fear. The Jedi picked it up quickly enough with their abilities, while Admiral Yularen was a veteran commander of sailors and knew terrible news being delivered when he saw it.

"Senator Organa?" Yularen called. "Has something occurred on the surface?"

Ever the classically trained orator and public speaker, Bail Organa's voice remained steady as he turned and faced the holocall pickups with a palpable aura of despair.

"Commander Duum informs me that General Loathsom's tanks have just breached the western perimeter, inflicting heavy casualties on the militia and my escort. I fear, Generals, Admiral, that we may not be able to hold with such a hole in our defences. Unless you arrive soon, there may not be a refugee camp to deliver supplies to."

Anakin's upper body twisted toward Admiral Yularen.

"Can we...?"

Having already guessed his Jedi General's query, the steadfast flag officer shook his head with a nigh-inaudible sigh even if his expression remained unperturbed.

"Even with General Kenobi's battlecruisers in support, we lack the weight of doonium hulls and snubcraft to defeat the Separatists in a direct fleet engagement, Sir."

Before Anakin could snap a rebuttal, his old master intervened.

"Yularen's correct, Anakin. Our Venator's holds are full of troops, not starfighters. We have to eliminate the enemy flagship before we have any hope of getting the entire fleet through."

Frustrated, metal crunched beneath Anakin's hands as he put dents in the solid duranium handrails through frustration alone. Throwing his arms up with a barely withheld shout, the impetuous Jedi General stomped a circuit around the holoprojector without care for the worried glances thrown his way. Still fuming, Anakin completed his circle and glared at a wide-eyed Senator Organa with chips of cometary ice burning cold inside his eye sockets. Obi-Wan's concerned expression went unnoticed with the frigid silence between the Senator and Jedi, yet the distinct lack of hostility aimed at Organa rather than general anger stayed the elder Jedi's hand.

"You'll get those supplies, Senator, even if I have to board the flagship and beat the admiral into submission with my bare hands," Anakin eventually declared.

Breaking away in a tense-shouldered stride, the young knight stormed off towards the hangars without another word, having delivered his ultimatum and willing to stick with it to the bitter end. Sighing, Obi-Wan habitually rubbed his beard with the expression of a teacher well-used to dealing with a problem student and their quirks.

"I can't promise any miracles, Senator Organa," the master folded his arms across his armoured chest. "With that said, Anakin will do his best to deliver the closest thing possible, Force-willing."

"May the Force be with us," Organa agreed, momentarily clammed up before he looked at the Jedi in a new light. "General Kenobi, there's a militia storage bunker on the outskirts; allow me to transmit the coordinates..."

A console beeped, prompting Yularen to break off from the call and study the information relayed from the surface of Christophsis.

"My remaining escort will escort her to the bunker and lock themselves inside to prevent General Loathsom from securing his prize. They number but eleven from a compliment of one-hundred-and-five clones, General, and she'll need every one of them to escape the Separatist's clutches. I shall remain in the command centre and buy time with my surrender if needs must."

Catching a harried edge to the Senator's distant presence, Obi-Wan held up a hand with a frown.

"Who is this 'her' you speak of, Senator? And one valuable enough to remove your escorts and risk capture?"

Unexpectedly, the Alderaainian politician smiled, momentarily radiating a fond affection at odds with the droid army bearing down on his position.

"A childe-princess whose heart is too large and soul too young for these dark times, Obi-Wan." Bail replied with abrupt informality, his holographic features drawn in pain. "Mara Jade is her name, whom I beg you to rescue even should I be taken hostage. Whilst I will be ransomed or exchanged, I can scarcely imagine what the Separatists would inflict on the girl should they..."

Bail Organa's hologram devolved into a hissing mound of static in the shape of a man before cutting out completely.

"It appears the transmission is being jammed by the enemy fleet, General Kenobi." From his position at the console, Yularen delivered the bad news. Shall I provide the bunker's coordinates to General Skywalker?"

"Please inform Anakin of the bunker's location and that we may have to perform a hostage rescue in the near future... Oh, and Admiral?"

"Yes, General?"

"Remind Anakin that we can't afford to lose the stealth corvette."

Clicking his heels, the moustached flag officer withdrew a loaded datastick from the console with the vital information and inclined his head toward Obi-Wan.

"Rest assured, I shall endeavour to avoid such an eventuality. Good luck, General Kenobi."

The holographic Jedi master inclined his head. "And may the Force be with you, Admiral."

"Communications with the Resolute has been jammed, Sir!"

Snagging a tossed pistol out of the air, Commander Duum shoved it home on the opposite hip from its partner and looked at the tight-lipped Organa.

"We'll keep the princess safe, Sir," he promised.

The senator kept his peace for a drawn-out silence of gazing through the command centre's windows at the multi-coloured light show on the streets outside. None of the sounds of battle reached this height, but everyone knew that the steadily darkening crimson tint to the backwash off the crystal towers meant only one thing. It was a determined squad of troopers that filled belt pouches and webbing with what little ammunition and supplies remained.

"I know you will, Commander." Bail replied without looking away from the colourful, multi-hued skyscrapers. "How is she?"

"Buir?"

CT-5581 bore no weapon like his brothers, yet the precious cargo in his arms was more valuable than any simple blaster or grenade launcher. He held Mara Jade close as Legs severed her metallic blue hair at the nape of the neck, refusing to move an inch until the several feet of cumbersome silken locks had hit the floor. Only then did Buir step over with the unconscious child, his armour blackened and scored by several direct hits.

"Mara'ika won't leave my arms," Buir promised the senator and his senior officer.

Bail absently nodded, taking a split-second glance at the inordinately powerful young healer out of the corner of his eye and deflating slightly. Then, turning away from the dying of the light outside the darkened chamber, Bail Prestor Organa folded his arms behind his back and curtly nodded at the assembled clones.

"My people are a peaceful one that prefers for conflicts to be resolved with diplomacy and mutual agreement and finds open warfare the sign of a failed state," the senator offered the non-sequitur and then touched two fingers to his brow. "These prior days and weeks have shown me that if Alderaan must be defended by force of arms, there are no more honourable soldiers in the galaxy than you brave men."

Not clones or troopers as so many referred to them, but men.

Some unidentifiable feeling choked the words from Duum's throat as he tried to voice them. The salute he substituted them with felt awfully inadequate to express himself, yet the clone officer literally hadn't the time to find the right words.

"It's been a pleasure working with you, Senator," he eventually rasped, burning the politician's face into his brain. "Until we meet again."

Organa snorted, the corner of his mouth climbing in an unrequited grin, which vanished as he gestured at the propped-open stairwell door guarded by a pair of troopers. Duum locked eyes with the other man through his bucket's visor and knew in his heart that they'd never meet again as they were; politician and clone bonded through mutual respect and trust. So, swallowing past the lump in his throat, the Commander delivered a curt dip of his chin and rounded on his expectant troops with what may well be his last command.

"Alright, Boys; keep the tooka kitten of Buir's safe." A round of wry chuckles raced around the terse squad as Duum took point. "Beaker, Jolly, at my back. Jax, stick near the ad'ika in case she wakes up," delivering rapid-fire orders with a lifetime's training behind him; the officer drew his pistols and started down the stairs. "Everyone else, keep moving forward and don't stop until we're inside the bunker!"

And so the last survivors of the 32nd Independent Company of the GAR departed with a rattle of plastoid armour and heavy footfalls, leaving Bail Organa alone to walk across the room and sit on an abandoned chair. Leaning into the rickety seat with a discouraging squeak from the furniture, the Alderaanian man put a hand inside his robes with a moment's hesitation. He withdrew a sleek white-panelled target blaster made especially for him by Breha's royal artisans and held it up to the flickering light. Lightweight and comfortable though it was, Bail shook his head, laid the weapon atop a nearby console, and returned his hands to his empty lap.

"Was it worth the cost?" Bail whispered, addressing neither the command centre nor himself.

Did the lives of one child outweigh those of the militia who might've lived if Bail hadn't ordered his remaining escorts to flee with Mara Jade? Did the noble girl's healing powers allow her more chances at life than those who fought and died to defend their homes from outside invasion? Should Bail have kept her close in the vain hope his presence might, against all odds, stay General Loathsom's hand?

Or was it because he'd become fond of the absent-minded little girl's presence at his side these last few days, heartened and despairing in equal measure that one so small and vulnerable possessed such a large heart? Though having no parental claim to Mara Jade -such lay with Buir and the other clones- the dark-haired senator might have, in some alternate universe, fostered the dreadfully young child if her family couldn't be found.

A fool's hope, perhaps, yet when had the harsh light of reality ever had any bearing on the dark cloak of willful naivety and the dreams it engendered?

Bail rolled his tired eyes with a snort and a wry smile. "Never, I say."

He was still on that chair wearing that smile when the battle droids breached the command centre and flagged the senator with their blasters.

He was still on that chair when the tan-painted B1s were forced aside by matte black commando models armed with various ranged and melee weapons.

He was still on that chair when General Loathsom arrived, waved his escorts away and approached the unperturbed senator with a victorious swagger to his lumbering steps. The LEP-model assistant at the Separatist officer's side carried a datapad in its claws and began tapping on the screen when Loathsom addressed Bail.

"Senator Organa of Alderaan, we meet at last," the Kerkoiden General greeted with a flourish of his clawed hands. "Before we get down to the pleasantries of negotiating your surrender, I'd like to ask a simple question."

Something in the alien's tone had Bail sitting up straighter. "Go ahead, General, though I won't promise to answer it."

"Oh, ho ho ho."

Still chuckling as the LEP droid drew up a chair for his use, General Loathsom struggled to fit his bulk into the narrow frame for a few seconds before leaning forward with steepled claws.

"Tell me, Senator, who do you think instructed Christophsian sympathisers in the militia to give you intel about a secure bunker on the far side of my army's advance?" Loathsom laughed with greedy victory burning in his crimson eyes as his foe blanched. "Oh, yes, Senator Organa, the child you so desperately hid from me is running straight into a trap."

Until the end of his life, the Kerkoidan's gleeful amusement at wishing to kidnap a child by murdering her devoted protectors would stick with Bail.

He'd unknowingly handed Mara Jade to the despicable and loathsome Separatist officer on a plastoid platter...

I awoke amidst a blurry nexus of shining blue threads connecting my heart to the eleven Clone Troopers surrounding me.

As I stirred from whatever had left a massive gap in my memory, I made eye contact with the trooper taking up the rear of the formation as we hustled through an enclosed bridge connecting two skyscrapers. Momentarily perplexed by the ease with which I raised my head, the trooper twitched once he saw me watching, and we locked eyes through his visor and the ethereal ribbon connecting us. Externally no different from any other clone in his white armour, I knew and healed him as Lumpy, his unfortunate nickname a dig at how badly he backed his kit into the issue bags.

The corkscrewing missile that punched through the crystal glass windows to detonate at Lumpy's feet cut that thread like an explosive pair of scissors.

The Void's song rose to a deafening crescendo alongside my horrified scream as I threw out a hand towards the roiling fireball currently consuming one of my protectors and crawling in slow motion towards me. Ravenous, gluttonous flames engorged by their organic meal lashed and blackened everything in reach with coiling tentacles of fire heading straight for my head.

And stopped dead.

My outstretched hand, violet motes swirling around the tiny digits in dizzying, nonsensical patterns, held the inferno at bay until it'd consumed all its fuel and vanished into the ether. If not for Buir's death grip on me, the resultant slump as the shield broke might well have sent me tumbling to the hard ground. Words near and far bounced between the troopers, yet the muffled speech and frantic stroking of my awfully cold head held no candle to the cut thread replaying in my mind's eye again and again. I remained stuck in that macabre loop even when the stroking transitioned to a firm hold as Buir jogged alongside his one-fewer brothers to distance us from the ragged hole in the bridge.

The song in my heart transitioned to a mournful dirge as I summoned my mental hand and wrapped the golden fingers around the flapping cut thread. Few in number, they might be, but I still held the memories of Lumpy close to my soul where the Void's light might forever remember the lost clone for me.

Ten threads remained.

Our pursuers hounded us as I was carried through the grave-like emptiness of an abandoned skyscraper replete with the offices of people forced to leave them when the war came to their homes. Actinic plasma bolts and skeletal machines radiating deathly intent clashed with the stalwart white knights of my defenders in brutal, close-quarter duels with blaster and fist. Borne in Buri's arms like a helpless babe, my memories of these scattered fights were through the blurred lens of teary eyes and the sympathetic pain carried along the cyan threads. I was so absorbed by the agonising pain in my soul that the insidious needles penetrating me weren't noticed until a tremendous example punched a bloody hole in my stomach.

Ahead, a trooper, Legs, fell heavily with a smoking hole in his gut as I projectile vomited the chunky remains of my breakfast over Buir's shoulder. My vision went white around the edges from the pain as my stomach felt like a bladed fist was crushing the entire organ in a merciless grip. And yet, even in the depths of agony beyond anything I remembered, I latched onto the sole thought remaining in the foggy agony of my mind.

Legs won't die.

Buir had drawn level with the mortally wounded clone, and Jax crouched over them when I stretched my mental hand towards the Void in my soul and begged of it a boon. Eagerly, almost too much, I gathered the glittering power beyond mortal ken and shoved it down the wavering thread binding Legs and me with a scream.

Two things occurred then, close enough in my mind that they were basically the same event.

Legs momentarily spasmed like he'd grabbed a live wire bare-handed and leapt upright, knocking himself and Jax backwards into the path of CT-1170 and CT-4444.

A bone-shaking thump came from the ceiling above our heads before several tons of rubble and office equipment came smashing down with lethal force.

My lips had barely parted to let slip a terrified howl before Buir, acting on the desperation in his heart, utilised all his strength and then some to throw me out of the rubble's path. My vision went white as I slammed into the outstretched arms of another trooper, the top of my head clipping the rounded lip of their helmet's chin with concussive force. All I could hear was the rolling thunder of however many tons of debris crushing everything in its path, including myself if Buir hadn't thrown me free...

...

Dazed and half-blinded by tears and the head impact, I struggled against my new carrier's grip to twist around with dizzying speed to gaze uncomprehendingly at the cloud of dust and rubble where my Buir had been. I tried to scream, wail, shout my despair to the uncaring universe, except the necessary air never came. Creeping fear slithered up my spine as I fought to breathe -even if it'd fill my lungs with dust- and couldn't shift the crushing weight on my chest. A pathetic whimper escaped my blocked throat as I glimpsed a cyan thread disappearing under the blockage waver, unravelling around the edges... and falling apart as the last of my final breath left my emptied lungs.

I can't breathe.

I can't...

I...

The unconscious darkness swooped in like a vast cawing raven, and I welcomed its embrace with a childish whimper and a single, hopeless thought.

I want my daddy.

I'm so very sorry about this.

Mara Jade really deserves to be with her daddy, but, well... let's see how things go next chapter, eh?

HarakoniWarhawk · Jun 23, 2024

Spoilers for Jade Shadows ho!

Music for the chapter is from Samuel Kim (The Clones Theme)

View: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=beS8IHbm8jQ&si=P4ktEarNEDKaU9RY

A long time ago, in a solar system far, far away, there lived a clone.

He was a generic example of his gene line, possessing nothing that made him stand out from his brothers.

But then death found him, and it took a miracle in the form of a tiny blue-haired girl-child to save the clone from an ignoble end.

Gifted a second chance at life and powers beyond mortal ken, he took it upon himself to protect the child from threats within and without to the very limits of his soul.

Even when events conspired to tear him away from his sworn charge, the clone refused to be defeated and stood head and shoulders above his brothers.

But not as some ur-clone superior to all. No, this loyal clone took from his charge's example and lifted his gene kin to his level. Most never reached those heights, yet the attempt made the formerly indistinguishable gene line one of heroes great and small.

Heh, listen to me ramble on like Vor when he's had one too many rotguts.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that, even by the Void's nonsensical standards, we're more alike than there's any right to be.

And honestly? I'd have loved to sit down with you and have a chat about our respective handfulls... But I'm only an echo of that lucky clone who received a second chance to live.

Good luck, Brother Buir.

...

The next time you see Mara, please tell her 'Kaz says, "Don't do anything I wouldn't, Little Spitfire."' Your Mara might not be wholly mine, but they're close enough to be sisters.

She'll understand.

It's time for you to get on your feet, Trooper. Your war ain't over yet.

"Three, two, one, heave!"

On Jax's orders, Legs and CT-1170 hauled on the slab of duracrete with a yell and succeeded in lifting the half-a-ton block up several centimetres. Waiting for the gap, Jax yanked the pair of blackened boots out from under the quivering slab, causing Buir's unmoving body to pop out like a cork. Not a moment too soon, the massive block hit the floor with a tremendous bang that didn't entirely drown out the lifting trooper's exhausted sighs.

"I think I pulled something," CT-1170 squeaked, both hands pressing into the small of his back as he turned to the medic. "How..."

For the second time in what was only fifteen minutes, going by his HUD's chrono, Jax was tossed off his feet with a grunt as his nominally expired patient jerked upright with a shout. Throwing an accusatory glare at a shirking Legs, the frustrated medic left his standing brothers to their confusion and narrowly managed to stay crouched near Buir. One hells of a nasty crack split the other clone's breastplate down the centre, to say nothing of the multiple burnt holes from blaster bolts. By all rights, Buir should be deader than poor Lumpy, yet Jax's medscanner -working perfectly fine on Legs and CT-1170- stubbornly refused to display anything except a clean bill of health.

"Buir," Jax opinioned amidst the catastrophic devastation of a close-range explosion. "I'm never going to sign off on your death receipt until I've got your corpse in front of me and literally dead."

The guilty as-feth trooper cocked his head like a confused Akk hound. "But I'm not dead?"

Groaning through his clenched teeth, Jax turned to his understandably alive brothers and spread his hands in an imploring, unspoken request for help.

Both of the unhelpful idiots shrugged.

"Alright, fine, you're not dead yet."

Standing with a somewhat falsified grumble, Jax gave Buir a hand up and took stock of the wall of rubble blocking their path. Every few seconds, a scattering of chunks would tumble down from the collapsed ceiling and kick up more dust for the already choked atmosphere. To be blunt, it was a steaming pile of osik that Jax knew the four clones had no hope of clearing. Which was somewhat sobering when the rest of their brothers and Mara'ika were on the far side... hopefully. Stars, the aggressively clingy kid had grown on him at some point, hadn't she?

"What're we going to do?" Legs voiced the single question dominating their minds.

Plastoid rattled as Buir snagged a dropped pistol from the floor and shook the worst of the duracrete dust off it. Popping and reinserting the battery cell, the seemingly immortal trooper was in the midst of finding an intact holster for the sidearm when he pivoted to one side and aimed straight at Jax. A hissing plasma bolt snapped by close enough to fizzle the HUD on that side and blew the head off the dust-covered commando droid sneaking up on the distracted clones. Pulling the hand off his chestplate where he'd reflexively grabbed his racing heart, the medic was genuinely too stunned by the sight of the sparking battle droid to rightfully complain about Buir flagging him.

"You could have hit me!"

Alright, not that distracted.

Sauntering over in a piss-poor attempt to appear unrattled, Legs awkwardly clapped the fuming medic on the shoulder, moving a little stiffy on his left leg.

"Take the luck when you get it, Doc," he commiserated. "Me? I'd rather be rattled than sucking air through holes in my back."

"Didn't need that mental image, Legs, so thanks a lot for nothing," CT-1170 snapped back, sounding rattled despite his sarcastic quip.

"Hey, I'm only trying to keep morale up!"

"Yeah? Then why aren't you named Joker 'cause your attempts are a kriffing joke!"

"Enough!"

Blowing a divot in the ceiling with his blaster as a violent bit of audial punctuation, Buir's cracked visor glared down Legs and CT-1170 until the bickering troopers bowed their heads and settled down. Stomping over to the smoking commando droid, he pilfered the machine's stripped-down E-5 rifle and a vibrosword from its back. Under his brother's bemused stares, Buir cannibalised his empty ammo belt and a length of flexible power cord from under a collapsed office desk as an impromptu strap for the sword to hand over his back. Legs and CT-1170 made a bunch of impressed noises, but Jax finally understood something neither of his brothers realised when Buir went through a quick series of motions with the vibrosword before holstering it.

CT-5581 was a line trooper, not an ARC or one of the rumoured Alpha survivors the younger brothers like to whisper about during meal times. So how in the Vode's name was Buir running through a sword drill with practised movements as a shiny?

As if summoned by the thought, the impossible clone looked at Jax and beckoned him over. "C'mon, we've got a princess to save."

Jax looked at CT-1170 and Legs for support, received more shrugs and gave up wondering with a shrug and a sigh before clambering over the rubble after Buir. With luck, CT-5581 might even know where the annoying tooka kitten was.

Beaker, Jolly, Trumpet, Nibbles and Duum himself.

Five troopers from an escort of eleven arrived at the militia storage bunker under fire from multiple elevated assailants. Wrenching the last smoke grenade from his webbing, Duum joined Trumpet and Beaker in lobbing the canisters along the dangerously exposed secondary transitway. Knowing the road itself was clear right up to the ramp leading to the discrete armoured checkpoint, the Commander counted to three and didn't cheer when roiling clouds of red, blue and white smoke exploded from the mismatched canisters. Ducking to avoid a buzzing crimson bolt that narrowly avoided his head, Duum glanced around at his remaining brothers behind the ornamental planter and the unconscious ad'ika in Jolly's arms.

"One final effort, Vode," Duum snarled through the thunder in his blood as the smoke crept closer to their cover. "Wait for it, wait for it..."

Waiting for the gaseous tendrils to crawl towards them was an almost physically painful experience that the tense officer quashed with a lifetime's training and brutal pragmatism. The sensor-masking smoke grenades would be worse than useless if they ran across open ground to enter the intangible cover. So Duum held his breath with a pained grimace and began counting from one until the blue tendrils caressed the white-knuckled edges of his gauntlets.

"GO!"

Running into the multicoloured fog bank felt like diving underwater without his armour to protect him. Duum's sight reduced to near zero, sounds became muffled and distant, and he relied on dead reckoning and simple luck to sprint across the road without eating a clanker's blaster bolt. Faster than he imagined, the surprised officer felt his ribs creak as he smashed into a human-sized door in the narrow bubble of clear air at the bottom of the entrance ramp. As the first, the following seconds stretched out to gut-churning years in Duum's head as he waited for his brother to arrive.

Trumpet barrelled out of the smog, nursing a smoking pauldron as he narrowly twisted aside to avoid his commanding officer. Wasting no time, the injured clone pawed along the immense blast door and squeezed himself into the alcove the militia indicated contained the entrance scanner.

Fifty seconds of coverage on the smoke grenades, half that in windy conditions. Twenty seconds down and... Jolly sprinted into view as a hazy spectre, realised he was moving too fast to halt and shifted to hit the blast door with an armoured shoulder and disquieting crunch. Duum was there instantly, holstering his pistols and taking Mara off their hands while Jolly reared back and drove his total body weight against the duranium barrier, dislocated shoulder first. Warily eyeing the slightly less opaque smoke clouds, the worried officer ensured one hand constantly stroking the little tooka's head in the vain hope she woke up sooner rather than later.

"C'mon, boys, we got this far..." Duum prayed for any sign of Nibbles and Beaker.

"I got it!"

Alerted by the cry, Duum turned just as two limping outlines stumbled into view through the rapidly dissipating smog. Unable to assist, he used a hand sign to order Jolly to run over to the missing troopers and hurried towards the opening human-sized blast door. Belatedly at the threshold, Duum awkwardly halted and allowed Trumpet to light his bucket's headlamps and take the lead, unburdened as the lightly wounded trooper was by an armful of a thirty-pound child. When Trumpet made it ten feet inside without being shot, the senior officer and his precious charge ducked through the half-open door and beheld rows upon rows of silent doonium statues.

No, not statues.

He distantly heard and acknowledged Jolly assisting a cursing Nibbles and Beaker inside before the door shut with a bone-shaking clang at their back, sealing the five clones and their charge inside a mechanical tomb.

"Are those kriffing Hulks?!"

Nobody knew who had spoken, but the question was pertinent as Duum played his headlamps over the nearest robotic giant in nervous fascination. Balmorran Arms SD-6 Hulk Infantry Droids, his flash-training provided with a soft prod, 3.5m tall armoured juggernauts mounting as much firepower as a small starship and easily capable of shooting such down. The Commander's gaze lingered on the twin E-Web blaster cannons on each shoulder and the long-barreled ion guns on swivel mounts, shuddering as he imagined the carnage such weapons would deliver onto the clones's flesh if the droids woke up.

Mercifully, the company-strength force of autonomous turrets remained in their storage rows with barely enough space to squeeze through the machines and no hope of seeing the bunker's rear.

"The locals must have sealed them up when the war kicked off," Duum voiced, unaware of Mara stirring in his arms. "Imagine what these things could've done to the clankers when they landed."

A wet-sounding cough from Nibbles' slumped body killed that line of thought in favour of brotherly worry. Again, he missed the faint air intake as the child in his arms slowly returned to her senses.

"How is he?"

Trumpet looked up from where he was trying to get the wounded clone's breastplate off. "I... I don't know, Sir. Bad? The best I can do, ugh," Nibbles' breastplate pulled away with a wet pop and a small puddle of blood from the bubbling wreckage of his perforated torso. "Osik!"

A dreadful silence lingered as the clones took in the extent of their brother's injuries, occasionally broken by a bubbling wheeze from Nibbles.

In the end, it was Duum's horrified freezing as he tried and failed to come up with a plan to save his fellow clone that allowed Mara to wriggle out of his grip. Quick as a greased mynock, the blue-haired girl ignored the trooper's frantic calls and vanished between the legs of a Hulk droid. Duum gazed at his empty hands in stupified confusion at where she'd gone before he noticed the green motes floating in Mara's path, ethereal crystals of jade light tracing the kid's path into the dark, droid-filled bunker complex.

"Mara! Come back!" Teeth grit, Duum turned to Jolly. "Trooper, you're in charge. Don't let the clankers in, and especially don't let Nibbles die!"

"Yes, Sir!"

Glad to be so low on equipment that he was already stripped down, the Commander took off after the hunting trail, weaving under and around the quiescent Hulks. It was slow and painful going for a man of 6' in the heaviest infantry armour worn on the modern battlefield compared to a child just over half his height wearing no armour beyond an envirosuit. And yet, every bruised limb and disorientating whack on a protruding mechanical part only served to make Duum more determined to stick to the Jade light. Ever deeper, the Commander forged along the ethereal trail in search of the missing ad'ika, his path a maze of trunk-like legs, lowered weapon arms and enormous crushing gauntlets that required navigating around and thus losing time.

"Mara?! Mara, where are you, ad?"

His words echoed strangely in the storage bunker, the heavier sounds echoing distantly while the sharper noises rebounded off duranium hulls right back into Duum's ears. Perversely, in the increasingly battered clone's mind, the glittering intangible gem lights marking Mara's path remained stubbornly just out of reach. No matter how often Duum hit his head or squeezed around a Hulk's legs, the trail's end always remained a hand's length away from the officer's outstretched fingers.

"Mara?! Mara?!"

Only vaguely recalling how many rows of automated mobile turrets he'd struggled through, Duum wasn't prepared to force his armoured body between a Hulk's legs and stagger into an inexplicably present barrier of bright green glowing something. Understandably, the cumulative costs of the fighting escape, and the painful trek through the forest of metal juggernauts meant the officer floundered when he threw a hand out to stop from running into the blinding wall. So when his palm met nothing substantial enough to halt him -as if light could achieve that- Commander Duum fell through the jade light with a cry.

And collapsed into the arms of a brother?

White, familiar plastoid clattered off Duum's battle-damaged plates as their owner chuckled, the amusement familiar to his ears yet bearing a queer undertone that set his teeth on edge. Shaking off the disorientation clouding his brain, Duum's eyes widened as he followed the brother's arms up to the shoulders and head, not believing the truth it was attempting to tell him even as he saw the crooked nose broken by a training accident as a young trooper.

Duum's doppelganger grinned at him with a mouth that stretched from ear to ear.

Literally.

"Surprised to see yourself in the warped mirror, Commander?" The burning embers replacing Duum's eyes crinkled as the dark copy winked. "You're lucky the Kiddo loves you and your identical brothers so much, you know that?"

"Huh?"

The doppelganger rolled their burning eyes. "Ugh, I can't believe I'm doing this to help save a bunch of walking meat muppets that make ghouls look bright and chipper."

Before Duum could do more than scowl at the contextless insult -and it was an insult, he knew it- his copy spun the Commander so he could gasp and reach out a hand.

"'Ad'ika!"

The shout rolled off Mara's back like so much water, unnoticed by the tiny slip of a tooka kitten as she sleepily walked toward a kneeling figure composed of a perplexing blend of armour, fleshy-looking white feathers and inexplicable and somewhat tacky golden accents and baubles. Eyes closed yet moving confidently in her sleep, Mara ignored Duum's shouted cries to come back to a halt in front of the living armour and abruptly halted before entering arm's reach of the massive creature thing. Without the girl's movements drawing the Commander's singular focus, he finally noticed what he could only describe as a gold-framed cage holding a gas-filled sphere of enormous size dominating the unnerving organic armour's midriff.

"W-What is that thing?" He rasped in bafflement, watching the creepy flesh feathers woefully fail at hiding even a quarter of the globe from sight. "Why is Mara... How'd she... Where is..."

"Blah, blah, blah, lemme cut this short, Test-Tube Baby."

Silencing Duum with a hand over his mouth, the doppelganger's voice dripped with an odd mixture of condescension and fondness.

"Reverse order. Teeny tiny Void pocket located two seconds ago and fifteen local dimensions counterclockwise of the local black hole cluster whirlpool of hate and megalomania. She's a Tenno. Also, because she's a Tenno, frustrating little shits are great at breaking the rules of causality over their knees." An audible smirk crossed the creature's unseen face. "As for the ridiculously gravid "angel" over there, that's a Warframe. Conduit, Guardian and Babysitter rolled into one disgusting nanite flesh puppet golem coated in far too much gold, ugh. It was meant to greet Mara when she got dumped here, but that sanctimonious fleshlight known as the Light Side thought I was trying to breach into this universe." It scoffed. "Stupid bitch deserves all the headaches that are coming her way."

"Were you trying to breach into this universe?" Duum felt obliged to ask, even if the question was nigh impossible to wrap his head around.

In what was rapidly becoming an annoying pattern, the doppelganger snorted.

"Well, duh. What did the self-absorbed wannabe deity think a Tenno was?"

"Doesn't that sort of make this your..."

"Oh, would you look at that! It's bonding time!"

Blatant deflection aside, Duum's eyebrows climbed into his buzzcut hairline as Mara stirred from her unnatural slumber, gave an adorable wee gasp upon seeing the 'Warframe' towering over her, and immediately hugged the abomination of flesh and armour. Violet and Jade light gathered around the connection figures until the Commander had to avert his eyes lest he be blinded by the incredible radiance. The doppelganger hissed when their hand slipped off Duum's mouth, yet there was no relief to be found.

"Oops, I nearly forgot to wipe this memory. Sorry, slightly less funny Test-Tube Baby, but no freebies from this Wally."

Then, there was the laughter of an irritating shard of an eldritch being, and Commander Duum forgot everything after he entered the Jade light.

"Owwwwwwwwww."

Another phantom contraction hit me like a stun prod to the gut as the three jostling emerald-green spheres bounced around the glowing thunderdome of Jade's glass womb thingy.

Fucked if I know what to call the crystal-clear, not-glass framed and held in place by excessively golden filigreed bars that made the Jade Warframe look pregnant. I'd literally only played the quest before this shit went down, but I'm pretty fucking certain that the game version of her didn't have the glowing belly the size of a medicine ball with three occupants that I had! Energetic and exhaustingly active, I rolled with six phantom contractions in as many seconds when the spheres hit the sides before splaying my fingers across a small patch of the incredibly clear dome.

Just like that, the trio of troublemakers stopped moving with a faintly-detectable sense of contentment and safety.

Sweet Sol Invictus, how many puppies did I kick in my last life to wake up as Jade's even more pregnant twin sister? Not that this theoretical sister existed, but I sure looked and, most importantly, felt about ready to pop at any fucking moment.

"Hi?"

I glanced through subdermal sensor arrays at the blue-haired girl held close to my breast, using my massively gravid faux pregnant belly as a seat. Her baby-faced features were awfully familiar for reasons that presently evaded me. Jade green eyes? Check. Six missing teeth, including a front tooth? Check. Metallic blue hair cut to the nape of her neck despite it being floor length this morning when I was sleeping in Jax's...

HOLD ON A FETHING MOMENT!

"Mara?" Synthetic yet husky, my vocaliser's voice carried a perpetual hint of maternal exhaustion. "What's the first thing you can remember?"

Looking no younger than six, maybe seven at a stretch, Mara's adorable face scrunched up in deep thought, which I felt every part of through our bond. Low-key enough to have missed it, what with the dodgems going on inside my huge Void baby bump and all, this had to be the link every Tenno and their Warframe shared. There literally wasn't any other explanation as to why I was undeniably Bigger Jade, and I was privy to the somewhat muddled thoughts going on behind Mara's somewhat glazed emerald eyes.

Geez, was I this absent-minded around Buir and Senator Organa... My feathers rustled around me as I mistakenly accepted Mara's memories as my own.

Or were they also mine?

...

Fuck, my brain hurts.

"I saw clones be shoth by the evil roboths," Mara snuggled tight against my bust as she whispered her way through those painful memories. "I... I ran away thoo a thafe plathe." I began stroking her back in comforting circles as a shudder wracked my young self. "Thaw Thee Thee all dead and... and thhen he thaved me."

Looking back on it with a Warframe's mind and a whole truck full of lost maturity, it was a bloody miracle Mara escaped and resurrected Buir's corpse without hurting herself.

I stifled a grunt as my unwelcome hitchhikers suddenly bounced against the crystal, urgently rubbing circles across the clear surface until the emerald sphere stopped stirring up the gasses inside. Stupid fucking phantom contractions were going to be the death of me, swear to..."

"You okay?"

"I'm fine, Kitten," the white lie slipped out before I stopped it.

Proving beyond a doubt that our bond wasn't a straight two-way memory sharing, Mara's pouty face lightened as her internal suspicion shifted to innocent belief. She trusted me with her soul, as I did with her, enough to believe a lie meant to protect her.

Without eyes to screw shut and both hands engaged, I flared my head feathers and mentally smiled as Mara made this most delightful oohing noise I'd ever heard.

Okay, Jade, one last thing to lock the proof down. "What about before that, Honey? Do you remember anything else?"

Her negative shake was immediate and backed with a complete absence of anything before waking up on Christophsis. But when I went to speak, Mara surprised me by lifting a tiny, pudgy hand and laying it on my cheek.

"You keep ith safe," she declared with all the imperious confidence a child her age could achieve. "I'm small me, and you're big me!"

Could it be that simple?

We shared the exact same memories of waking up on Christophsis up until entering the Jade light in the bunker, yet here I was with the memories of my old life in the shape and existence of a Warframe. All my fanfics had the Tenno and Warframe having two distinct souls that joined to create a composite when bonded, after all.

Yet the longer I studied Mara's innocent face and the window to the young soul behind it, the more I couldn't dismiss her words as false.

Were we one soul split in two? Mara as the Tenno child half, and me as the Warframe adult half?

Able only to bite the golden rod permanently inserted into Jade's mouth, I bit it to hide the pained grunts of struggling upright as an enormously gravid Warframe. Finding myself surrounded by eagerly flared feathers of white exteriors and pure jade insides, I looked about the area and found Commander Duum joining me in the land of the upright.

He looked much shorter up here compared to Mara's memories of looking up at the officer. Feeling the pinch of time, I risked a contraction to lift a hand to my mouth and cough into it.

"Ahem."

I stared down the barrel of a quick-drawn blaster for a dangerous second before Duum noticed Mara shyly waving at him from my arms.

"Commander Mara? Who are..."

Striding towards the oddly short clone, I demurely extended a hand, and we both pretended that the crystal dome of my gravid midriff hadn't nearly reached the clone before my hand did.

"You can call me Jade, Commander Duum," I huskily greeted the senior officer before inclining my chin toward Mara. "And this is my Tenno daughter, Mara."

"She's big me!"

Luckily, Duum tuned out my child self's rambling and made a show of looking me up and down.

"What are you, Miss Jade?"

I instinctively covered my mouth to giggle, unable to stop the sultry inflexion this vocaliser forced my voice into.

"Why, Commander, I'm Jade, she who delivers judgement with purifying light."

One soul in two bodies now.

Smol Mara is the kid half, Thiccccc Jade is the adult half.

Gotta go to work now, so bye and enjoy!

HarakoniWarhawk · Jun 24, 2024

FIRST NEW CHAPTER IN THE STORY THREAD, WHOOOO!

Music for the chapter is from Stan Bush (Dare)

View: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=S_xsawAtKi4&si=0r4GkwYvNe7ZlvUq

Things were going rather well, given the present circumstances.

On command, another salvo of laser cannon and LTL fire erupted from the turrets and barbettes surrounding the Invincible's bridge trench. Admiral Trench immensely enjoyed the strobing crimson waves bathing the bridge and his six eyes in rubescent illumination. True, the continued failure to detect and defeat the Republican's latest cloaking technology demonstrator was a mild caustic irritant to the Harch's mood. Yet, every failed interception was a boon for intelligence, as Tl-99's top-heavy chassis crunched the numbers with the occasional errant twitch or thrumming buzz.

The tactical droid sirred as the slowest of the gunnery units finished their fire patterns. "All available information on the cloaked vessel and their observed flight characteristics assures their destruction with a 97.122% probability." Tl-99's flat monotone betrayed none of the frustration such a statement engendered. "Conclusion: Republican stealth craft is being piloted by a Jedi."

"As was my prediction," Trench commiserated, idly gesturing with his command baton for the bridge crew to fire another salvo. "Has there been any response to my open transmission?"

"None, Admiral."

Trench's six arms languidly shrugged before the upper two pairs interlaced their hands across his torso. His solid crimson eyes, however, were not relaxed. They tracked the stealth ship's probable locational arc with a hunter's intensity, anticipating the Jedi's next move.

"And the republic fleet?"

Dedicated to their own isolated repeater, the holographic globe of Leesis, Christophsis' primary moon, bore a crown of crimson wedges in polar orbit. Telescopes and more conventional sensor arrays provided a reasonable enough fabrication of the enemy's intentions, though such was never infallible when the Jedi were involved.

At Trench's side, Tl-99's photoreceptors momentarily dimmed. "78.1% chance that they are engaging in what repairs can be affected outside a spacedock. The probability of intercepting and destroying the hostile fleet before they escape to hyperspace is only 3.774%, with a margin of error of..."

The Harch officer raised his middle left hand. "Then it is well that I do not presume to break orbit. Doing so would only open us up to isolation and destruction as our fleet is spread out too far from mutual support." Unexpectedly, Trench chuckled and beckoned the tactical droid closer. "We shall catch the stealth ship in good time. Prepare tracking torpedos for firing and have the thermal shields cycled," he ordered the bridge crew, then side-eyed his droid companion. "What of our little diversion on the surface?"

With two entire squadrons of Munificent-class heavy frigates in orbit, a third of which still retained their as-built electronic warfare suites, it'd been farcical to eavesdrop on Count Dooku and General Loathsom's communications. From there, it'd been a logical choice to eliminate a valuable resource Trench and the Retail Caucus had no ability to capture, lest it fall into the Corporate Alliance's hands. Tl-99 had slipped a few additional orders to the commando droids through discrete back channels and, by all accounts, had thinned the target's escort considerably.

Another salvo fruitlessly attempted that most simplistic pattern of destroying a hard-to-hit starship, grid square removal.

"General Loathsom's tactical droid is growing increasingly suspicious of the commando's falsified reports, Admiral. I predict another twentieth of a rotation before my backdoor is discovered and your involvement becomes known to Loathsom."

Trench stroked his left chelicera. "Hmm... Very well, this sideshow has grown stale. Activate the bunker's droids and order them to engage all organic targets..."

"Admiral, we've locked onto the republic ship's magnetic signature!"

The Harch broke off his conversation and bellowed. "Fire the tracking missiles!"

Four blazing streaks erupted from concealed magnetic launchers, two to each side of the bridge, and rapidly consumed the distance between them and the cloaked vessel. Chittering contentedly, Trench leant back in his chair with a proud air and beckoned Tl-99 closer with his baton.

"Soon, General Loathsom will be sent back to Raxus Secundus in disgrace, and I shall command the orbitals and all of Christophsis. Was the signal sent?"

Tl-99 buzzed. "My communication was interrupted mid-transmission, but I calculate a 96% chance it was received."

"Very well."

The Harch narrowed his eyes as the projected location of the stealth ship transformed into an active sensor plot at the behest of a brilliant plume of energised ions. A split-second freeze infected the B1s at their stations as the republican vessel and the green icons denoting the tracking missiles raced toward the Invincible and the Separatist flotilla.

"Uh, Admiral," the droid at sensors jerkily turned to Trench. "The republic ship dropped its cloak and increased speed in our direction."

Ignoring the lamentably dull automaton, the Harch admiral's suspicious six-eyed glare lingered on the rapidly fluctuating sensor picture before rearing back with an alarmed hiss.

"Raise the thermal shields!"

"Thermal shields are still charging, Admiral!"

Doomed long before he'd known it, Admiral Trench could only exist as an observer to his final seconds of life as the Jedi-piloted stealth corvette raced across his flagship's hull toward the bridge. The droid crew had enough time to flinch as the needle-shaped craft raced overhead before the magnetic tracking missiles locked onto the vessel crashed into the transparisteel viewport and detonated.

A clap of thunder and flames were the last things Trench saw before the boiling inferno consumed him and Tl-99.

Kneeling with palpable difficulty, the so-called Jade ignored the clone's wary gazes and stances to lay a slim, armoured hand on Nibbles' cold cheek. Her uncomfortably flesh-like feathers rustled and flared out from her torso and head, exposing glossy metallic green internals to the serene jade light emitting from the Warframe's swollen midriff.

Against Duum's wishes, Commander Mara stood at Jade's side. "Can you helth him?" She whimpered, reddened eyes locked onto the deceased trooper in a pool of his own blood. "I mith him..."

"I know, Kitten. Trust me, I know."

"We tried, Commander," Beaker's morose self-loathing disguised which Commander he meant. "Maybe if Jax was here, but we had a couple of compresses and a tourniquet for that," he jerkily motioned to the gory ruin of his brother's torso.

"And none can ask more of you, trooper," Jade began, only for a bone-shaking hum to permeate the bunker.

Instantly, the clones turned outward from their charge, weapons at the ready and headlamps panning over the rows and rows of shut-down Hulk units. Duum's pistols felt somewhat inadequate facing down his chosen mobile turret, yet what choice did he have? Catching Beaker slamming his bucket on in the corner of an eye, Duum heard the trooper's voice join the reduced squad net as each man sounded off their present lack of targets. Nobody dared move with the humming vibrating their bones and internal organs, not when some sixth sense told the soldiers that something was deeply, terribly wrong within the bunker.

Four units down and two rows in, a Hulk sluggishly rose to its full height, twined photoreceptors lighting up with a steadily brightening cyan and red light.

"Hulks! They're waking up!" Trumpet shouted.

Between one blink and the next, Trumpet's fading warning died with the screams of the damned piped directly into Duum's ears for a split second. Reeling as the cacophony drove an ice spike into his brain, the Commander made to wrench his helmet off... and the noise ceased. Panting, he wavered on unsteady feet for the ringing to fade, only for a bubble of green energy to envelop him and the other troopers. Relief arrived on the wings of a divine choir, unseen hands teasing the audio-induced agony from Duum's body until he stood blinking in subdued and delayed shock at its absence.

The pain might have vanished, but duranium thundered and crashed as three activated Hulks turned malevolent optics on the unprepared and underarmed clones.

Training kicked in, and Duum's initial volley spanged off his chosen target's thick torso plating with all the effect of a spitball. Coruscating cyan streams of ionised plasma lashed out at the other autonomous turrets as the officer backed up and expected to order Commander Mara to run and hide. Below the hum of what he now recognised as powering fusion reactors came the far more familiar electric whine of charging power capacitors.

"Commander, you need to...!"

Once, twice, thrice, a luminous arrow cracked past Duum's visor at supersonic velocity and buried itself in the awakened Hulks' blackened but undamaged torso. Lowering an ornate, curving bow nearly as tall as she was, Jade's head feathers flared as she stared down the glowing barrels of the droid's heavy anti-vehicle weapons. With no sign of Mara, Duum prayed to whoever might be listening that the tooka kitten had taken the Warframe's advice and fired a last brace of shots before the trio of Hulks opened fire. Blaring in droid-speak, the mobile turrets erupted in a multi-coloured light show of vibrant streamers from six E-Webs and globular actinic blobs from the ion rifles.

The incoming fire unerringly impacted the four clones at this point-blank range with nowhere to run.

Having squeezed his eyes shut at the last second, Duum's expected cessation of existence felt oddly like being hit with water balloons filled with warm water. Sure, he rocked back on his feet from the impacts, but recovery was purely reflexive and left the blank emptiness of his mind spinning in ever-increasing circles. A blurt of droid-speak convinced the Commander to open his eyes and behold the Hulk droids facing each other and exchanging rapid-fire verbal communications. Still not entirely convinced this wasn't the afterlife where he didn't get vaporised by anti-vehicle cannons, Duum experimentally fired a shot at the nearest droid's back.

The pistol bolt left a dull mark on the unpainted duranium with the expected pop of expanding air as the plasma heated the surrounding atmosphere.

"Okay, so I'm not dead," Trumpet's bewildered declaration met understanding silence from his brothers. "This is the afterlife, isn't it?"

"Not quite, Trooper."

Moving with a fluid grace far beyond the exhausted waddle Duum had seen from the Warframe, Jade practically glided across the bunker floor to stand at the front of the defensive cordon. Ethereal whispers accompanied her oddly weightless steps that barely reached the clone's ears, dying down when she dismissed the bow into the ether and summoned a massive scythe. The two-headed melee weapon looked to weigh a damn lot, yet the gravid Warframe twirled the scythe in the air before her as if it weighed as much as a lightsaber. Alerted by the swirling movement, the Hulks's chatter abruptly ended before the lumbering automatons turned as one to face their new foe with glowing weapon barrels.

Jade looked back over her shoulder. "Mara's safe."

Perplexing, but that didn't hold a candle to the abrupt hyper-violence of Jade dashing toward the Hulks and floating through the heavy barrage with only the shimmering outline of a figure-hugging shield to denote she'd been hit. Despite being a foot taller and considerably heavier than a clone, the Warframe lunged at the closest bipedal turret with speed befitting a Jedi and lashed out with her scythe. Entering low on the right hip joint, the lengthy handle allowed Jade to bisect the Hulk from hip to the joint bearing the righthand ion rifle with one impossibly smooth motion. Duum's composure snapped as ravenous corrosive liquid erupted from the impossibly clean cut and ate away at the duranium automaton before it'd even collapsed in two pieces.

Duum wandered over to his clustered brothers for emotional support while Jade contemptuously demolished the second Hulk removed limb by removed limb. Surrounded by his genekin, the officer's thoughts remained unvoiced as their white and golden angelic saviour defied several laws of physics to erupt in a blaze of emerald light so that her downward stroke could cut the final rogue Hulk in half.

From above.

Both halves of the acid-eaten droid smashed down on either side of Jade as she serenely floated down with her extended feathers surrounding her like a shining disk of light. Touching the floor toes first, Duum caught a barely audible gasp from the Warframe before the ethereal glow faded away, and she laid a hand on her midsection. The scythe, perpetrator of unfathomable violence for a weapon that wasn't a lightsaber, vanished with a flurry of green motes, thus allowing the burdened and undeniably alien Warframe to offer Duum a very shallow bow.

Given her size, even that much surprised the Commander, who reciprocated with a curt nod and a questioning look he hoped would be interpreted appropriately. It wasn't that he was apprehensive to question what'd occurred -alright, perhaps a little bit- so much as the lingering concern for Mara's continued absence and the remaining Hulks. Duum pursed his chapped lips, holstering his useless pistols and allowing himself a steadying breath.

"Is Mara still safe?" His voice rebounded strangely amidst the crackles and sparking of the wrecked Hulks, making Duum hate the audible indecision in his own tone. "Is she..."

It took Jade a few seconds of confused head-tilting before she gasped and desperately pulled the hand off her prominent belly. Head feathers fanning, the tall alien couldn't shake her head quickly enough.

"No, no, no, no, no!"

Visibly struggling not to follow her instincts and rub circles across her midriff, Jade's slim hands curled and twitched with an aborted need that convinced Duum far better than any explanation could.

"Mara's powers allow her access to abilities many would consider unnatural and eldritch," Jade explained in the hurried tone of a woman speaking without a filter. "Her, mine, our bond is one such power, Commander. She's not in there," she briefly glanced downward. "I really don't know how to explain things without sounding insane and/or like I'm dumbing it down too much. Mara's with me, not in me!"

"It's Jeti osik, ain't it?"

Jolly took his brother's silent condemnation for breaking the conversational back-and-forth with the unconcerned shrug of an unbothered trooper.

"Way I see it, Sir, Ma'am, I trust the rotund angel lady when she says the Commander's safe," Seeing that he was unopposed, Jolly rambled on. "The Longnecks never bothered to teach us about anything close to what the Princess can do, so what's so wrong with her and Miss Jade being even more weird?"

Breathing loud enough to be picked up over the squad net, the clone finally discovered some embarrassment and rubbed the back of his neck.

"What? I was just saying what we're all thinking..."

"He's out of line, Commander," Beaker stood up for his brother. "But he's right as far as we're concerned until the battle's over."

Damn them all, but they're right, Duum admitted to himself. Wanting to rub the growing ache on his head and too stubborn to remove his helmet in a combat zone, the aggrieved officer groaned in the privacy of his bucket and bowed his head. He knew his subordinates would easily translate the body language as only another clone could. Duum ran a gauntlet over his visor one last time before pushing his irritation deep into a pit and sealing the lid with professionalism.

Only then did he look around and meet everyone's eyes -and eye equivalent, in Jade's case-.

"Okay."

Stoked with far too much frantic energy to stand still, Duum started pacing a loose circuit around an invisible perimeter, not once taking his gaze away from a silently observing Jade.

"We're low on ammo, presumably surrounded by most of the droid army and are down one... one... one combatant," it took divine effort not to glance at Nibbles' corpse. "Make that four clones and one Jeti angel against the better part of..." Duum noticed the aforementioned angel holding up a hand. "What?"

She waggled her raised arm, bringing the clone's attention to the diamond-bladed dagger inexplicably now tied to the underside of his wrist. No, Duum corrected himself with a squint, a sizeable dagger connected to Jade's wrist.

"Let me guess, another Jeti thing?"

"Yesn't."

Dumm wasn't amused, and his glare at the Warframe indicated as such.

Jade's response was to drift over to the nearest powered-down Hulk, stand on her tippy-toes with a strained grunt as she manoeuvred around her own body, and plunge the wrist dagger into the droid's maintenance port. Nothing happened except for a few errant twitches of the blade before the white, green and gold Warframe pulled it free with an airy giggle and a pirouetting flourish for her confused audience.

"Watch and learn, Boys~."

The Hulk at Jade's unguarded back rumbled to mechanical life with the actinic glare of ethereal green optics, wholly unlike the rogue units. Straightening under the wary eyes and guns of the remaining troopers, the bipedal slab of cannons, duranium, and massive claws leaned forward to peer at the Warframe at its feet and blare a question in droid-speak.

Without looking, Jade reached back and fondly petted the war droid's piston-like thigh like a massive, incredibly dangerous pet dog.

Despite expecting to die to the selfsame Hulks not ten minutes ago, Duum's victorious grin exposed far more teeth than anything friendly deserved. A good thing then that his smile was a bloodthirsty one resurrected by the implications behind Jade's unexpected stunt and the palpable air of smugness hanging around the flesh machine angel's narrow shoulders.

"How many of those can you hack?" Duum dared not risk another word.

Dipping into an unfamiliar stance, which he would much later discover was known as a curtsey, Jade spread her arms wide to be mimicked by the subverted Hulk a second later.

"Why, Commander, all of them."

"...you understand these orders?"

B1-887's three-digit hand banged against their skull-like head. "Roger Roger!"

TJ-55's miniature hologram briefly studied the OOM command droid before nodding and cutting the connection.

"What a glitch-helm," B1-887 muttered before picking up their megaphone. "Come out with your hands up, Republic Dogs! We've got you surrounded!"

Six platoons of AATs, several clusters of spider droids, and enough regular battle droids to fill the road in both directions for a hundred feet surrounded the sealed militia bunker. Notably absent were the commando droids initially holding the skyscrapers flanking the roadway, the assassins being ordered away by TJ-55 the moment B1-887's troops arrived. Glad to be rid of the creepy BX models, the OOM groaned when the bunker door remained shut despite their super-convincing orders to open it up.

"Ugh."

Turning the megaphone over, -887 discovered a switch that made the voice amplifier crackle and squeal. Feeling too ashamed to admit they'd forgotten to turn it on, the yellow-painted B1 officer pretended that never happened.

"REPUBLIC DOGS, WE HAVE YOU..."

THUNK

"Uhhh."

THUNK

"Aghhhhhh!"

THUNK

"All units, aim at those doors!"

Far too late to matter, the bunker door finished unbolting and began creeping upwards on recessed rails, allowing a blinding pulse of jade light to spill out and blind the droid's sensors.

B1-887 threw a hand over their photoreceptors as the commercial-grade optics were dazzled by the unnatural glow to the point the command droid was still seeing the emerald light in their processor. However, their audial sensors had zero issues discerning the strut-shaking footfalls of a great many somethings marching in lockstep. Panicking, -887 banged and clattered as they fell back inside their command AAT and blindly fumbled with the gunner's sight until the static quit blocking their vision.

Putting an optic to the sight, the OOM regretted it. "We're doomed!"

An incandescent irregular blob of emerald light stood outside the unsealed bunker, burning so bright even the tank's hardened optics struggled to discern anything detectable. Reflecting the miniature star's hue, four clones emerged from the gloom and took up firing stances alongside their light ball, pathetically underequipped to deal with the OOM's force.

Unfortunately, they weren't alone.

Implacable, undaunted and, most importantly, operational, Hulk Infantry Droid after Hulk Infantry Droid opened fire on the stunned CIS forces the moment they exited the bunker. Unholy acid-green optics burned with the fury of a thousand stars from each lumbering giant as they blundered their way into the light. Clumsy though they were, there wasn't anything wrong, as B1-887 found out when the ionic rifles spat disabling bolts at the hapless AATs and the arm-mounted E-Webs scythed through the blinded B1s and B2s. Explosions rocked the Separatist force as tanks, and the light spider droids were focused down with mechanical precision as the most significant threats.

Thrown against the wall as the AAT beside him detonated with the blue-tinged flare of a breached reactor, the panicking OOM model tried dragging the heavy laser cannon onto a target, any target.

A supersonic arrow flew true from the jade light right down the AAT's main gun and buried itself in the capacitor bank beside B1-887's head.

"Uh oh."

Physically unable to have facial expressions, the droid's black photoreceptors gleamed with the sparkling energy erupting from the damaged mechanism before the entire assembly exploded in their face.

Leaderless and blinded, the subverted Hulk droids shattered their weaker opponents into smaller and smaller groups until the final cluster of B2s was crushed beneath grasping battle claws. Its task fulfilled satisfactorly; the emerald glow faded to reveal Jade as she ceased floating and returned to walking like her impressed escorts. Radiating pure smugness from every feather, golden ornament and metallic green embellishment, the angelic Warframe pointed at something in the smoke-streaked sky.

"Am I good, or am I good?"

Too professional by far to flip the smug angel off as she deserved, Commander Duum rolled his eyes behind his visor and ignored Jade.

Though no larger than a fingernail at this distance, the burning wreck of a Lucrehulk battleship was as welcome a sight as any for Duum's morale and soul. Somehow, the Open Circle fleet had managed to enter orbit and was currently engaged in beating the scrap out of the clanker blockade.

"Trust a Jeti angel to be full of herself," Duum muttered with more than a little fondness.

"I heard that!"

Y'know this is a fan of my Muse's when she gives me 3.7k words in one sitting.

As for the arrow fuckery, Jade's bow, Evensong, has an effect where enemies hit with it will suffer from 100% reduced damage.

The weapons still work, they just don't do anything. It's pretty bonkers fun.

HarakoniWarhawk · Aug 11, 2024

I'm just over an hour and a half late on my promise, so for that y'all have my apologies. And the writer's block, that sucked.

Music for the chapter is from STARSET (My Demons)

View: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=VrJsdm0WoXU&si=AhqNMGxw2wQv_dhh

"No, no, no, this cannot be happening!"

Spittle flew from General Loathsom's tusked jaws as he wheeled away from the transparisteel panoramic windows and snatched up his holo-communicator.

The bulky form of TJ-55 fizzled into existence above the mauve disk. "General, I have detected..."

"Order all units to my position right this second," the Kerkoiden bellowed. I don't care how long it takes for Magna Tri-Droids to be activated; I want them here before the Republican reinforcements arrive!"

"But, General, the commando..."

"Damn those useless tin soldiers. Bring the army here, or I'll find another droid that can do the job!"

TJ-55 silently floated above Loathsom's palm for several heartbeats before inclining its visored head. Obtuse to body language reading as the tactical droid was, their deliberate delay before replying was evident that something else was afoot.

"By your command."

Paradoxically, cutting the communication worsened the General's mood rather than improving it now that his entire army was on its way. Tossing the comm-disk almost contemptuously, its resulting clattering impact on the floor went unnoticed by the pacing Kerkoiden. Far from the victorious and noxiously smug man who'd strode into the former command centre, the alien officer was the vision of a sophont on the verge of outright panic not even a couple of hours later. Even the battle droids occupying the consoles filled by clones not all that long ago mirrored their commander's unease with errant twitches of their heads towards the windows and each other. What did they know about the battle outside to display their electronic simulacrum of fear so readily? Or, indeed, why did the Separatists bother programming such responses into droids intended to be manufactured in bulk and die just as readily on the battlefield?

Bail didn't know, but he was secretly enthused that his captors were frightened enough to make no attempt to hide it.

Case in point, General Loathsom paced his way past the windows for the third time in as many minutes, worryingly gazing at the smoke-hazed cityscape beyond the transparent barrier and muttering to himself. His clawed hands clenched and folded together at random, tearing apart with audible snorts and then meshing just as swiftly afterwards. Senator Organa would be lying if the corners of his lips weren't twitching in suppressed schadenfreude at the humorous reversal. But all those years in the Senate proved their worth in schooling his genuine emotions whenever the blue-skinned Kerkoiden recalled Bail's presence. Fear lurked in Loathsom's crimson eyes, no matter how hard the alien squinted or shook his tusks at his captive.

And somewhere far overhead in orbit, the Open Circle fleet under Kenobi and Skywalker was wresting control of space from the blockade forces...

Four consoles down from Bail, a red-painted B1 nervously raised a hand. "Uh, General? Commando Squad Seven stopped transmitting."

Immediately, Loathsom about-faced and stomped over to glare at the trembling battle droid, his chest heaving with furious breaths.

"Where?"

A shaking three-digit hand pointed at the display in front of them, which Bail tried and failed to see without making it obvious. Luckily, the verbal reaction more than filled in the blanks.

"That's the skyway connecting the Eastern Exurbs to the spaceport!" Loathsom bellowed, fury and a slight worry colouring his shout. "When did this happen?!"

"F-Five minutes ago, General..."

A heavy paw violently smashed the red-painted battle droid's head into the console with the audible crunch of breaking crystal and durasteel. Alarmed cries erupted from the other B1 models before the matt black commando variants non-too-subtly waved their blasters over their panicking counterparts. Cowed, the subdued battle droids returned to their work, appearing uncomfortably organic in their forced compliance to a shocked Bail.

"Imbeciles! Fools! Useless walking trash containers!"

Loathsom's raging tirade continued apace, high-brow language rapidly devolving into paint-stripping curses that had Bail's eyebrows rising into his hairline. Not because he was unaccustomed to the crude insults; far from it. Instead, it was that the Separatist General's honourable and refined persona had been revealed as a facade for a brutish if not plain uncivilised true personality when put under -enormous, Bail could admit that much- pressure.

An electronic groan drew the Senator's eyes to the battered security droid rising from their violence-inflicted slump, pained noises coming from the machine as it clutched the crumpled end of the angular head. It spasmodically moved its head and snuck glances at the droids on either side of it for long enough to make Bail curiously follow the machine's odd behaviour. Whether damage or some code line misfiring inside the battle droid's electronic brain, the result appeared like a frightened victim looking for support from their kin. The red-painted automaton was in the midst of rubbing its crumbled head when the identical model beside it leaned over once the nearest commando was looking elsewhere. And despite the ambient noise level and General Loathsom's continued vitriolic muttering, their conversation was reasonably audible.

"... call up one of the backups... chassis damage checked, 422-751," the undamaged B1 whispered nasally. "You know that... risk getting you... scrubbed."

The damaged machine disagreed. "I'm scrap if I tell... the commandos," it shook its sparking head. "Can't run... leave, or I'm doubly scrap!"

Both droids paused in abject fear as the spectral frame of a fire-blackened commando ghosted between the consoles. Even when the lethal automaton's optics remained locked on Bail, who flashed a tight grin, the whispering B1s stayed quiet until the commando was gone.

Like a puppet with its strings cut, the damaged battle droid buried its head in its three-digit hands. "Doomed, I tell you... squad five just went offline..."

Carefully schooling his features, Bail politely nodded at a General Loathsom, who stomped past without acknowledging the Human Senator's existence. His gut and Commander Duum's advice told him that two squads of the lethal commandos dropping off the grid weren't mere communications issues. Oh, there was a greater than even chance that Organa was being led along or misreading the situation, but there was a chance. And, sure enough, Bail's suspicions were proven correct as another B1 -this a yellow-painted command model- requested Laothsom's attention.

"General, communication from Commando Squad Five, audio only."

Slow to halt, the blue-skinned alien officer's head snapped around to glare the guilty B1 down. "Well, what are you waiting for? Play it!"

"Roger Roger..."

Amusingly, Bail noticed he was just one among many -if the sole organic- craning their heads and leaning out of their seats to see and listen to the transmission.

"Report!" Loathsom barked.

One, two, three heartbeat's worth of static answered the call until "Where's Mara'ika?"

At any other time, the synchronised goggling of the B1 battle droids would've been hilarious, especially when they chorused as one.

"Hey! That's not a commando droid, that's a..."

A steaming Kerkoiden beat them to the punch with an outraged howl worthy of a krayt dragon in the command centre.

"CLONE!"

"Buir?" Bail whispered.

Luckily, nobody noticed the flash of surprise that crossed the Alderaanian's face before the trooper on the other end of the line continued apace.

"Getting gutshot isn't pleasant, you understand. All that superheated plasma flash boiling the water in your internal organs hurts like nothing else I've experienced." Buir regaled the command centre in a conversational, almost genial tone for such a gruesome topic. "Blood vessels burst, stomach acid corrodes the bottom of your lungs, and the stench of ruptured bowels..." A fel shadow leeched through the com-line, invisible but for the twitching which infected those nearest the speaker. "Having all the bones in your torso crushed to jellied powder by falling debris is a close second I wouldn't recommend, General. Then again, perhaps you might after trying to hand my daughter over to the kriffing Sith!"

General Loathsom laid a trembling hand on his forehead, crimson eyes sluggishly blinking as he reacted far from expected, in Bail's opinion. Appearing under the influence of some manner of inebriation, the heavyset Kerkoiden wheezed through clenched teeth as he steadied himself on a nearby unoccupied console with great heaving breaths. He kept wiping at his nose every few seconds for reasons beyond Bail's to discern before the separatist General overcame whatever fugue had befallen him.

"You... dare speak to me with such an impudent tone, Clone!" Loathsom snarled. "Droid, cut the line." When the distracted B1 proved too slow, the rheumy-eyed Kerkoiden rounded on them with spittle flying. "Now!"

The indefinable pressure that'd settled in the command centre these last few hours reached a crescendo not with a bang but the deceptively quiet ping of an arriving elevator.

Well, that and the unmistakable- if muffled- sharp whine of discharging blasters.

Bail hated how he knew it was pistols by the pitch, even while his head and attention snapped around to witness Commander Duum walk over the smoking commando droids formerly guarding the turbolift. Entirely wisely fearing the prospect of blaster bolts flying in his vicinity, the Alderaanian Senator braced himself and bodily threw himself sideways until the chair he was confined to fell with him. His pained grunt at falling heavily on his shoulder vanished in the cacophony of shooting that erupted overhead, crimson and cyan streaks filling the charged air with ticklish ozone. Less agreeable were the sounds of bolts impacting their targets, Bail's position lying on the floor between two rows of consoles leaving his imagination to fill in the grisly blanks of whom was shot. The repeated and unmistakable thump of bodies hitting the floor provided far too much fuel for those darker thoughts.

Powerless, all he could do was lie on the thin carpet without the ability to escape or aid the miraculous return of the troopers who'd saved his life again and again on Christophsis.

A pair of white plastoid boots entered Bail's sight. "Commander, I've found Senator Organa!" The clone knelt down with a knife and swiftly cut Bail's bonds before offering the free arm. "You'll want to be up for this, Sir."

"Thank you," he uttered, swaying from the swift rise before his aching shoulder demanded a rub. "Tell me, is..."

"Commander, blow out that window, would you?"

The command centre Bail rose into was a sight that was fearsome, worrying, and perplexing. Grimy smoke curled upward from the dozens of wrecked battle droids collapsed in sad piles or over the consoles they'd been operating. No non-organic remained within the chamber, and of the seven present, including himself, four were clones either throwing Bail a swift salute before joining two others in shooting the downed commando models or, in Duum's case, approaching the floor-to-ceiling windows. Of the remainder, a quiet, strident sixth sense guided the Senator's mind and gaze away from the jade light infusing a lonely corner. Bail tasted an echo of the oppressive invisible pressure from before from a mere glimpse out of the corner of his eye and shuddered in the lurking chill hounding his cold bones. He knew two beings resided within the fey glow, yet Duum's affixing an unremarkable rectangular block to the transparisteel pane proved a more immediate draw.

Namely, the breaching charge blew the entire span of transparent alloy into the windy Christophsis skies, causing Bail, the only one without a helmet, to throw a protective arm across his face.

When the Alderaanian lowered it and blinked to clear the dust, a quartet of clones had rappelled across from the nearest skyscraper, the taut cords of synth wire stark against the blue sky outside the shattered window. Of them, Bail only recognised Jax from the diagnostic monocle affixed on the lefthand side of their helmet. As the troopers went about enthusiastically greeting each other with the fervour of those who'd faced death and lived to tell the tale, one soldier stood apart like a rock amidst a storm. Holding a skeletal blaster rifle in one hand, the other touched upon the hilt of a vibrosword strapped to their back? A lifetime spent amongst the veiled daggers of the nobility unobtrusively took note of the unconscious deference the clones paid to their kin with the damaged armour. Perhaps the soldiers didn't even heed how their body language waxed and waned when passing through the outlier's vicinity, yet instinctively deferred to some hidden aspect of their kin they did.

Perplexed, Bail studied the clone with narrowed eyes that carried a pained wince as he took in the half-melted plates of blackened plastoid, seemingly every inch of the trooper's form marred by some manner of injury. His lips curled upon noticing the slagged ruin of the trooper's stomach armour, the flexible abdomen protection cored through so many times the hole was large enough to fit Bail's fist.

It looked almost... fatal.

'Getting gutshot isn't pleasant, you understand.'

Faced with the disquieting implication that Buir might very well have been speaking from personal experience when threatening General Loathsom, the wary Senator was saved by a peaceful gleam of emerald green light.

"Buir!"

One moment, the unnerving glow had contained the implication of two presences. Now, a third teleported -for no other word suited to describe the instant traversal of the entire room- into Buir's waiting embrace with a delighted childlike squeal. Staggeringly intense relief and joy left Bail grinning so hard it ached as he beheld Mara being swung around in a circle by her adoptive father figure, appearing amidst the devastation with no inkling of how she'd arrived or, indeed, a push to discover the lost time. Instead, the Senator from Alderaan rolled his bruised shoulder and carefully picked his way past the happily crying child to where she'd emerged, exchanging soft thanks with the troopers in his path in the process.

For his subconscious had finally granted Bail permission to look upon the Angel.

Standing a head above even the towering General Loathsom, the angelic being's white and jade feathers fluffed and rippled as she used a slim hand to manipulate the Kerkoidan's struggling face. Left, then right, up, and then down, studying how the tusked alien reacted to the forceful touch with a nigh-inaudible hum each time. To say Loathsom's bulging eyes hinted at distaste was the mother of all understatement, yet Bail struggled to feel anything approaching pity for the rough treatment. Powerless, the once-proud corporate office briefly glanced at Bail when he halted at the Angel's side before the alien's face was dragged in the other direction.

In the end, grim and unseemly satisfaction burned hottest within the weary politican's chest.

"How many innocents do you believe he's harmed as a corporate stooge, hmm?"

Melodic, with just a taste of the fey carried to awaiting ears, the Angel glanced down from her towering perch to regard Bail with an eyeless look backlit by a nigh--unnoticeable glimmer of that penetrating jade illumination. It tore through the facade he wore like a cloak and sank into the Senator's abruptly frigid bones, only for a pleasant warmth to drive the chill away.

However it had performed the act, the Angel had judged Bail Organa and found him worthy.

And so he felt pressured to answer truthfully. "Only the General can know. If his treatment of us is any indication, then I fear many have tasted his ire and not lived to tell the tale."

Loathsom's abject lack of reaction to the thoroughly slanderous comment might well have indicated undue pressure from the Angel if not for Bail's observations of the Kerkoiden's methods. He professed an honourable shell which had no more depth than the average Kuati gene pool, serving only to disguise from casual observation the prideful rot festering beneath. Bail allowed a fraction of the disgust he felt to show, enough to draw an enraged snort from the Separatist officer before a white gauntlet wrenched his head around.

"Ah, ah, ah, General, none of that~." The Angel paused while the distant sounds of fighting from outside briefly overwhelmed Mara's delighted babbling. "Your army lies in ruins, your allies flee the field of battle, and all you hold dear shall crumble to dust and ashes in time. Listen," she forced Loathsom to look at the command centre. "Listen and know that for all your deathly aims, life as always found a way to defy your will. She means more to me than anyone can ever comprehend; my entire existence centres around guarding her from pains within and without. Without Mara, I would be..."

His neck muscles bunching like durasteel cables beneath the mottled blue skin, General Loathsom gurgled something virulently caustic, content heedless of the choked incomprehension of his actual words. His smouldering glare and bared tusks served well enough in forcing Bail to glance away with worry coiling in his gut, if only until the Angel laughed.

It was one of the most disturbing sounds the Alderaanian had ever heard; dark joy bundled in a smothering blanket of grief, pain and fey vindication.

"What are you?"

Bail only realised he'd spoken when the Angel flared her head feathers and bathed him in actinic emerald light spilling from the singular optic hidden underneath.

"I, Senator Organa, am a monument to the sins of false gods and an immortal empire cast into the flames of their own arrogance and hubris. I can lend aid," her free hand touched Bail, and he straightened with a gasp as hidden aches and pains vanished into the ether. "And I can condemn the guilty to cross beyond the dividing veil upon which I perpetually reside, never to experience true life or eternal death."

General Loathsom wheezed as the hand around her jaw tightened, only for his protestations to be smothered by the Angel's continued sermon. No other word accurately encompassed the reverent undertone colouring her words as she unexpectedly paused and lowered her hand to rest atop the gravid swell of her belly. Blinking, Bail performed a double-take to confirm that, yes, the Angel's, well, angelic form was burdened by what appeared to be a heavily advanced pregnancy of a kind the Alderaanian had no experience with.

"But you, Bail, can know me as Jade."

Favouring the openly confused Sentator with a faintly amused air, Jade gestured to Mara, presently sitting atop Buir's shoulders and beaming from ear to ear while turning her exposed 'face' toward her captive.

"We're two halves of the same coin; Mara and I. We soothe each other's pain, soul to soul, as only we can. She is my Tenno, and I'm her Warframe, forever sworn to shield Mara from the darkness of the universe and shoulder her burdens."

Lower, so soft-spoken that Bail half-believed that it was a figment of the howling winds and dying battle outside.

"To do what Mara can't to keep those we cherish safe."

A firm hand tapped his shoulder. "We should be going, Sir."

Seized by an impending sense of an emotion impossible to qualify with his heart thundering in his ears, he allowed Commander Duum to lead him away from the Angel and General Loathsom. Being offered a sleepy Mara by Buir proved a welcome distraction, even if it meant carrying the young child in his arms while the battle-scarred trooper broke off to stay behind. Ensconced within a defensive cordon of the surviving troopers, Bail Organa heeded his sixth sense and left the command centre without a look back.

"I'll be glad to see the end of this."

Nobody claimed the prescient remark before the group arrived at ground level and left the skyscraper behind to find a highway filled with celebrating Christophsians. Militia, civilians and even some few children cavorted and cheered amidst the sparking wreckage of Loathsom's entire army. Unable to shade his eyes with Mara in his arms and her head tucked into the crook of his neck, Bail noted the enormous frames of Hulk turret droids scattered throughout the locals alone or in small units, their emerald optics fixated on the nearest clump of separatist wreckage.

Mara stirring in her sleep meant that the tired Senator missed the flash of jade light from the far-above command centre, for he busied himself in stroking the child's back to ensure she slept a little longer. After everything she'd endured at far too young an age, let alone the mystery of her reappearance, it wouldn't be right to break her slumber.

Excited chatter from his clone escorts brought Bail around to openly gape as a far less maternally burdened Jade exited the skyscraper in the company of Buir and three uniquely hued troopers that hadn't been present earlier.

One in fire-scorched armour, caked in so many layers of burnt carbon that it was nigh impossible to discern their form at a distance beyond the charred outline of an armoured trooper.

One bearing chalky-grey armour on their broad shoulders, dozens, if not hundreds of large and small cracks, fracturing the individual plastoid plates and somehow doing so without destroying their integrity.

One whose otherwise battered and chipped armour remained white above the stomach and was dyed a streaky red, disturbingly identical in hue and intensity to that of freshly spilt arterial blood below that point.

Meeting Jade's shrouded eye with the barest trace of concern furrowing his brow, Bail Organa held the questioning gaze until the maternal Warframe raised a hand and extended a delicate finger toward the command centre. She then formed a fist before extending three digits that landed on her black, grey and crimson escorts.

It was relief, he realised while absently waving at Jade as he finally understood that General Loathsom's short-lived rampage on Christophsis was no more. The innocent would be free to rebuild their lives without the spectre of an army hellbent on revenge for past defeats returning to lay waste to all they held dear.

General Loathsom had been tried, judged, and found guilty of his many crimes.

And Bail had no intention of revealing that the latest of Mara's sworn guardians was the being to perform the act. Just because he hadn't the faintest inkling of how it'd occurred didn't mean the Alderaanian politician wasn't fully aware that the touch of the fey surrounding Mara and now Jade reminded him of some of the darker fairy tales back home.

In this case, the blood price for the three troopers was worth paying to finally have peace on Christophsis.

Sorry if this feels a bit disjointed; I welded my existing half-complete chapter nine with the new stuff written over a month later.

Next up, Anakin talks about walls and Jade deals with the Republic Child Protective Services.

A Healing Hand (Warframe x Star Wars SI)

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