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Chapter Text

White Knight of the Guard

Summary:  Every clone, for good or for ill, has a Jedi attached to their unit—with a very notable exception in the group which (unknowingly) needs that protection the most: The Coruscant Guard.  The Force decides that this won’t do and nudges Its Favored Child into position to fix this.

In other words, Jedi Knight Feemor unwittingly inherited the tendency of both of his once-Masters to adopt every pathetic lifeform that comes his way.  It just so happens that this time the lifeforms are many, identical, human-shaped, and don’t quite know that they’ve been forcibly (but politely!) adopted just yet.

Episode One:
The Force Provides A Knight

For the most part, Jedi Knight Feemor was content to follow the Will of the Force as It directed him to.  Ever since he had been a youngling, he had been happy to let Its currents drag him hither and tither as It desired, connecting him with all his most important people and places.  It was what had connected him to his first Master, Plo Koon, shoring the not-yet-Counselor's wavering faith in a Force that seemed to rarely care for those under Its banner.  It was what had connected him to his second Master, Qui-Gon Jinn, who had needed a boost in his confidence so he could one day train one of the greatest Masters the Order would ever know.  It was what had brought him to the many, many sentients that needed his help on the Outer Rim, destroying slave rings left and right with pinpoint precision until his name was as feared and hated by the Hutts as Nico Diath or Jon Antilles themselves.

On the other hand.

The Force also allowed Master Plo to be so grievously wounded in a mental attack that he and Feemor had to dissolve their Master-Padawan bond so neither lost themselves, further forcing Feemor to finish his Padawanship with a very different Master.  It allowed Master Jinn to fumble his second attempt at teaching so badly that he outright denied ever having trained a Padawan in the first place, renouncing Feemor in the process.  It had led to the deaths of multiple beings Feemor was trying to be a source of safety and comfort to, hundreds of lives that had long left to live, lost in the saving of their enslaved brethren.

This, of course, being a long and convoluted way to say that while Feemor trusted in the Force more than anything, he still found himself feeling overtly wary when nudged in a particular direction.  The Force often forgot or ignored that the universe involved more than those It favored, and that was something Feemor had to take into account while following Its Will.

The Clone Wars brought a whole new level to this complicated relationship.

Having been neck-deep in dismantling a particularly fussy Hutt-owned slavery ring, it was almost six months into the Clone Wars that Feemor was finally able to contact the Jedi Council.  Although, why the Force insisted he had to do so at what was just before dawn for the section of space he was in and near midnight in Coruscant time, he wasn’t quite sure.

“Masters,” he greeted with a low, sweeping bow as the holocall connected, peering through his bangs to see who would greet him.  He was pleasantly surprised to see not only the expected holograms of Master Mace Windu and Master Yoda, but also those of his dear Master Plo and his Padawan-brother Obi-Wan Kenobi.

“Knight Feemor,” answered Mace with a nod in return.  Feemor liked to imagine his once-crechemate’s expression softened upon seeing him even though such small details were hard to decipher through long-range calls such as this.  “We are glad to see you well.”

Feemor felt his mouth kick up without his input and nodded at each Master in turn.  “And it is a relief to myself, as well, Master Mace, Grand-Master Yoda, Master Obi-Wan.  Koh-to-yah, Master Plo.  I am sorry not to have contacted you sooner, but it took some time to settle things out here, even with Antilles’s help.”

“Koh-to-yah, my dear Padawan,” greeted Master Plo in return, fondly clicking his mandibles.  “I can assume, from your words, that tales of Master Antilles’s death were greatly exaggerated?”

“As always,” Feemor wryly agreed; being one of the few Jedi frequenting the Outer Rim who still had semi-regular contact with the Jedi Order, he was often the one to correct those rumors.  He tucked his hands into the sleeves of his robes and peered curiously around at the four before him.  “I wish we had more time for pleasantries, but the Force has been rather…insistent that I speak to you at this time in particular.  Are any of you aware of why that would be?”

There was a general air of surprise from the four Masters, for all they outwardly gave little sign of it.  Master Yoda’s ears flexed exactly once, and Obi-Wan reached up to stroke his beard without making eye contact.  Master Plo hmm’d in a way that would have been sub-vocal without his antiox mask’s vocoder.  Mace was the only one to remain stoic, but it was entirely possible his eye twitched between flickers of the holo.

“Discussing the particulars of certain regiment’s assignments, we were,” Master Yoda eventually offered.  He clicked his claws slowly on his grimer stick, one at a time, in a beat only he knew.  “The strangeness of how perfect they seem to be, to be precise.  Perfectly suited for myself and my mission, Lieutenant Thire was, when to Rugosa we went.”

“Commander Ponds always seems to know when to pull my attention off of the smaller picture into the larger one,” Mace agreed, words slow and precise.  Feemor was surprised to see him openly grimace immediately afterward.  “He also has the uncanny ability to sense when I am attempting to work through a Shatterpoint-induced migraine, as well as how to either coax me through it or distract me from it.”

“My dear Wolffe is a blessing I do not deserve,” said Master Plo, smile crinkling the skin around his goggles as his mandibles once more gave a few fond clicks.  “He has an attention to detail I often lack and his blunt words are so very refreshing.”  The smile slowly dropped and the clicking slowed to something more mournful.  “He has given much of himself and his men since this dreadful war began, and I cannot help but admire his resolve to continue despite that.”

There was a brief breath, Obi-Wan visibly hesitating as all four of the others on the call turned to him.  “I have often said that Commander Cody is a good man, and a good soldier; I am lucky to have him at my side,” is what he eventually volunteered.  With how much the Stewjoni Jedi tried to downplay his attachments to others (Feemor felt a brief flare of frustration at their once-Master Jinn, which he carefully cataloged, worked through, and then released into the Force over the span of a breath), it was practically a glowing endorsement.

“It is very good to hear that you have such trust and love for your men,” Feemor offered (he had to once more work through the frustration that bubbled at Obi-Wan’s near-panicked look at the word ‘love’), quirking a brow, “but I’m not quite sure I understand how this ties into why I needed to call.  Unless you have a spare Commander lying around for me?”

It was meant as a joke, but Feemor was nearly bowled over by the Force’s reaction, the sense of yesyesYESyesYOURSyesyesyesYESYESyesYOURCOMMANDERyesyesYES making him physically sway.  He shook his head once, twice, thrice before he was able to focus back on the Council members.  Mace was rubbing at his temples with the familiar, pinched look of a cracked Shatterpoint, Master Plo had lifted one hand in an aborted attempt to reach out, and Obi-Wan looked a bit dazed in the way those gifted with the Unifying Force did after a minor vision.  Master Yoda’s ears perked forward and up in excitement, a familiar, mischievous grin on his face.

“Spoken, the Force has, hmmm?” said the Grand-Master, more than a little sly.  “A Commander, for you, there is.  Find them, we must.”

“I will speak to Wolffe immediately,” Master Plo offered, having lowered his hand and now smiling again behind his mask.  Feemor found himself matching it without really meaning to, a little punch-drunk and riding off the joy in the Force that swelled only slightly less intently than It had before.  “One of his batch-brothers, Commander Colt, is a trainer on Kamino and will likely be able to gather a list of those not yet assigned to a Jedi with all due haste.”

“Don’t bother,” Mace said on a grunt, still rubbing at his temples, as the sound of a door clattering open and an accented ‘Sir!’ echoed from his end.  He had a wry sort of ‘see?’ look on his face, obviously referencing his earlier statement about his Commander’s ability to know when he was reeling from a Shatterpoint, and after quickly schooling his expression called over his shoulder, “Commander Ponds, as always, you are precisely on time.  Please join us.”

There was a pause before a new holo formed in the call.  It was the first time Feemor was seeing one of the cloned soldiers outside of blurry pictures off of scant news articles he was able to find on the Outer Rim, and the first thought he had was surprise at how tall the Trooper was, practically towering over his Padawan-brother and coming up to Feemor’s own shoulders—a rare feet for any human-or-near, given his own species’s natural height (there was a giggle from the Force of …little short for a stormrooper… that was such pure nonsense that he could only ignore it; it wasn’t the first time the Force sent him an echo of a non-sequitur and it certainly wouldn’t be the last).  His second thought was that he really should have looked into whom the troops were cloned from, because seeing a younger, taller, bald and unscarred Jango Fett looking at him was very unnerving, considering.  Well.

Fett had often taken contracts from the Hutts, who did not take kindly to Feemor and his ilk’s tendency to break their supply lines.  He tried not to think too hard about that.

“Generals,” greeted the man who was not Fett, saluting quickly once he realized who all was on the call.

“At ease, Commander,” Obi-Wan said, openly amused, “and thank you for joining us.”

“You’re…welcome, Sirs.”  It was obvious the Trooper didn’t quite know what to say, considering his inclusion was not planned, but he obediently dropped his salute and shifted into parade-rest.  “What can I do for you?”

“Introductions first, I believe,” Master Plo interjected with a little bow.  “I do not think we have met.  I am Jedi General Plo Koon of the 104^th Battalion, he/him, and the being before you is Jedi Knight Feemor, who has no preferred pronouns but often goes by he/him for convenience’s sake.”

“Commander Ponds, designation CC-6454, of the 91^st Reconnaissance Corps, Sirs,” the clone introduced, once more going to salute only to stop mid-motion and lower his arm again.  “Uh, he/him, I guess?”

“A pleasure to meet you, Commander,” said Feemor, trying hard to ignore the ice on his spine at the introduction.  A designation number made sense with the sheer amount of clones there were, given there were only so many names in the galaxy, but it reminded him too much of slaves he had freed who were told they did not deserve a name due to their station in life to make him anything but uncomfortable.  “Apologies if we have taken you from your duties.”

Ponds looked genuinely startled at his words.  “Kih’par—I mean, no problem at all, General Feemor.  Serving the Jedi and the Republic is my duty.  What can I help you with?”

Feemor couldn’t help but make a face at the military title.  “If you could…please not call me ‘General’.  Just Feemor is fine, or, if you must insist on formalities, Knight Feemor or Jedi Feemor are acceptable.”  His grimace turned into a wry smile.  “I do not take titles I have not rightfully earned.”

There was a little cough from Obi-Wan that sounded suspiciously like “Master Feemor,” but the Knight graciously ignored him.  He had not finished the final requirement to take that step and wasn’t planning to do so any time soon, no matter what his Padawan-brother attempted to conjole him into.

“As you say, Gen…ah, Knight Feemor,” said Ponds, looking a little sheepish at his immediate mistake.  Feemor just smiled and nodded in appreciation of the effort.

“Called you for a reason, we did,” Master Yoda cut in, tapping his gnarled cane pointedly on the ground.  He was notably leaning heavier on it than he had before the Commander’s introduction to the call, but none of the Jedi dared to comment on that.  “Tell us, you will, of your fellow Commanders, hmmm?”

Ponds visibly startled and then—curiously—his expression, previously somewhat open, closed off.  “Sir.  Permission to speak freely?”

“Granted, as always, Ponds,” Mace said, his eyes slightly narrowed.  Immediately, Ponds leaned forward, form visibly tense even though he was covered neck-to-toe in armor.

“Did one of my brothers do something wrong?” he asked bluntly.  All four Jedi startled at the question, but Ponds either didn’t notice or ignored them, continuing to speak before they could answer.  “If they did, Sirs, I respectfully request that we be allowed to correct this behavior on our end before a formal complaint is filed.  Some of them are still freshly off Kamino and don’t understand how natborns interact yet, so any error they commit is likely an accident rather than a sign of disrespect…”

“None of your brothers have done anything wrong,” Obi-Wan interrupted, looking a little overwhelmed.  “If they had, we would have brought it up to them or their direct superior officer, not gone behind their back to—to tattle on them, if you excuse the word.”

The relief was immediate, betrayed by the slight slump to Ponds’s shoulders and loosening lines of his face.  It almost immediately returned, however.  “Apologies for the assumption, then, Sirs, but if not that, why do you ask?  …so I can most efficiently give you the information you need.”

The Jedi exchanged brief looks, but did not comment on the tacked-on reasoning.  None of them seemed to know where to start, so with a silent sigh and a small smile, Feemor took over the conversation.

“Commander Ponds, I do not know how familiar with the Force you are,” he began, smile widening slightly at the involuntary twitch on the soldier’s face that suggested not very much at all, “but I am particularly gifted in an aspect of It called the Cosmic Force.  This gives me a…unique insight that my fellow Jedi do not have, by allowing me to receive more direct messages than the vaguer feelings and premonitions most others in the Order experience.”

“Oh…kay?” said Ponds, slowly, visibly turning that information over in his mind.  “And it’s telling you that…I need to tell you about the other Clone Commanders?”

Feemor nodded, a bit sheepish in the face of the Commander’s not-quite-hidden incredulousness.  “Specifically, It is telling me to find…well.”  He pulled his hands out of his sleeves and rubbed at the back of his neck, grateful that none on the call could see his blush through their holos.  “To be blunt, It has made been made very clear that I must meet one of them in particular.  We simply need to find out which one.”

There was a beat of silence as Ponds digested that.  “Permission to speak freely?”

“Still granted, Ponds,” Mace said, now slightly amused at whatever he was sensing from his Commander.

“Why can’t it just tell you who you need?” asked Ponds, with the particular brand of skeptical exhaustion that only those who worked closely with Force-gifted individuals could achieve.  “If the Force speaks directly to you, why do you need me involved at all?”

“In mysterious ways, works the Force,” Master Yoda offered, ears wriggling in amusement.  “Attempt to speak to us, It does, but easily understood, It is not.  Gifted in interpreting Its messages, Knight Feemor is, but understand only so much can he.  At times, a nudge is needed.  Your words, this nudge will be.”

“The only bit that is clear is that our Commanders are right where they need to be,” said Master Plo serenely.  He almost immediately ruined the image of untouchable Jedi Master when he chuckled and smiled, openly creasing his face.  “Which I personally find a relief.  I am not sure I would be able to give up my Wolffe so easily, no matter what the Force may Will.”

Ponds looked sharply at Mace, who stared back silently with a raised eyebrow and an agreeing duck of his head.  Feemor was amused to hear the Force humming contently at both Master Plo’s possessive words and Mace’s obvious agreement that he, too, would not give up his Commander without a fight.  He was just as amused to see Ponds look flustered, but pleased, before he schooled his face and cleared his throat.

“So how should I do this?” he asked, turning back to Feemor.  He was notably more relaxed than he had been since before Master Yoda’s ill-received opening statement.  “Should I just start listing names and designations, or…?”

Feemor hummed quietly, reaching to the Force to see what It had to say.  He received a quiet anticipation in return, still with the background hum of yoursyoursfindhimYOURcommanderFINDHIMfindYOURS, and tried to reach deeper for a better answer.  An exaggerated cough from Obi-Wan interrupted him before he could get a response—which was almost certainly for the best.  Sometimes Feemor reached too far and lost himself for minutes to hours at a time when riding the Eddies of the Force, and this was not the time nor the place for that.

“I suppose it would be as good a place to start as any,” he said, blinking a few times as he came back to himself.  He was a little flattered to see Ponds looking concerned at his brief break from the ‘Here and Now’, which both Master Jinn and Master Yoda repeatedly reminded him to stay in.

“Alright,” said the soldier, slowly.  “We’ll start with those from my Commander batch, I suppose.”  He cleared his throat, as if to prepare himself in some way, before settling more firmly into his parade rest.  “CC-1134, Marshal Commander Bacara, is the highest-ranked in our training batch.”

The Force swelled a firm negative, making Feemor frown.  “I believe he is already where he is meant to be.”

Ponds blinked at the immediate dismissal, but nodded.  “CC-1004, Commander Gree?”

A much firmer negative, nearly a shout this time, and Feemor winced.  “No, no.  He’s with his Jedi already.”

Another blink, this time with Ponds narrowing his eyes.  “CC-7016, Commander Monnk.”

The Force’s almost terrified screech made Feemor full-on stumble, and he quickly waved his hand at the concerned jolts from his holocall companions.  “I’m fine, I’m fine, the Force is just…very, very insistent that Commander Monnk is not to be removed from…whomever he’s with.”  He took a moment to taste the sensations still cooling in his mind, parsing the individual parts to the screech now that it was dying down, and spoke again.  “Actually, Masters, it may be best to ensure that Commander Monnk keeps an eye on whomever he is assigned to even when not on the front.  It seems…”  He paused, careful, and only after receiving a confirming hum did he continue.  “It seems that in some relatively near future, it may be a matter of life and death.”

The assembled Jedi looked grave at the warning, Obi-Wan in particular pale even through the washed-out blue of the holo.  “I can get a message to Master Fisto at once,” he offered, already pulling a spare commlink from his belt.  The Force purred, the last echoes of Its warning shout finally dying away, and Feemor let out a silent breath of relief at the sensation.

“While we appreciate the Force’s warnings, if Its reactions continue to be this strong, perhaps we should stop for now,” said Mace, eyes tight in concern.

The Force did not like that suggestion.

By the time Feemor came to, having collapsed to the ground on his hands and knees, head aching and his nose stuffed with blood, Master Plo was rapidly talking to someone about redirecting his ship, a voice that could have been mistaken for Ponds’s if not for its lower register and the slight extra roll to its ‘r’s suggesting another battalion closer to the Rim would be able to get there quicker.

“’M fine,” Feemor gasped, trembling a bit, but already using a technique Master Fay had taught him to siphon off the residual pain.  He carefully climbed back to his feet and raised his gaze to meet those around him, now including another clone, this one in military greys with grisly scars down the side of his face and through an eye that was shadowed from the hologram.  Likely a high-grade cybernetic, then; holo technology always had trouble with those.  “’S fine, jus’…”

Feemor took a few deep breaths and reached into a pocket on his belt that was full of tissues and bacta specifically for instances like this, wiping away the blood dripping under his nose.  “The Force is clear,” he said, relieved to find his voice steady again, “that I must find identify my Commander now.”

“In danger, he is?” asked Master Yoda gravely.  The Force whispered as if overcompensating for the strength of Its previous reaction, but that whisper may as well have been a gunshot for how strongly Feemor believed and understood its message.

His smile, if it could have been called that, was the sort of thing that usually only slavers were gifted.  “Always, Grand-Master.  He finds trouble like a vulptex finds mole mice, and currently, he’s trapped in a pen of them.  But the ones he’s hunting this time are hiding venomous fangs, and should I not be there, he and everyone he has sworn to protect will be destroyed.”

There was a sharp inhale, and Feemor found his gaze snapping to the new clone, who was staring back at him with wide eye(s).  The Force swelled in anticipation, apparently finished feeling bad about nearly knocking him out, saying, shouting, screaming, YOURSfindhimYOURCOMMANDERyoursyoursNEEDHIMyoursFINDHIMyoursYOURSYOURS—n O W

As if through a tunnel, Feemor could hear the scarred soldier demand to know, “The hell d’you need with Fox?”

But the world had already shattered, and Feemor couldn’t quite manage to catch himself this time.  He was unconscious before he hit the ground.

Chapter Text

Episode Two:
The Force Introduces a Fox

Marshal Commander CC-1010, “Fox,” had been blissfully enjoying a rare opportunity to sleep when his commlink went off.  He was determined to ignore it—Thorn was on duty and could more than easily take care of anything that went wrong for a few karking hours—except that when it stopped ringing the first time, it went off again.

And again.

And again.

By the fourth consecutive call, Fox had had enough.  He threw aside the scratchy blanket he always swore he would one day replace but hadn’t even after six months on Coruscant, stomped the two steps it took to get to the other side of his broom closet of a room, snatched up his entire vambrace instead of just removing the attached commlink, and without bothering to see who was calling snapped a caustic, “What the hettyc haran do you want?!”

The miniature image of one of his Commander-class vod’ika, Ponds, blinked into existence, and immediately Fox felt his righteous anger drop into a more protective one.  Ponds, whose emotional state normally floated between decently upbeat and steadily calm, looked like he was a second away from a nervous breakdown.

“Ori’vod, thank the Ka’ra,” he blurted, the hand that had been running over his scalp (and, judging by its visible discoloration even over holo, he had been doing so repeatedly for quite a while) dropping and his posture straightening in an instant.  “Where are you, what are you doing?”

“I was sleeping,” said Fox, a little sour still, but putting that aside as best he could.  He swiftly detached his commlink from its spot on his bracer before he made his way to sit back down on his slab of a bed, resting his back against the cold wall and idly tapping his free hand on his knee.  “What’s wrong, Ponds?  Me’vaar ti gar?”

Ponds relaxed further at the elder’s words and sighed out a breath.  “I would be fine if the Force wasn’t complete banthashit.”

Having never actually experienced any Force phenomenon, Fox could only tilt his head, expression wry.  “Your Jedi is giving you issues, then.”

“Not my Jedi,” said Ponds, a little vaguely, and scrubbed at his face in exhaustion.

“...you going to elaborate, vod’ika?” prompted Fox after a moment of Ponds staring blankly at something off holo.  The other Commander jolted back into himself with a series of blinks and Fox’s Older Brother Instincts (well honed with well over a million little siblings to care for, the number only climbing as the war continued) rang a warning.  Even ignoring the panic that began the conversation, he felt down to his bones that something was wrong.

The narrowing of an already narrow expression made Ponds grimace in return.  “I don’t know how well I understand what just happened, but there was a…concerned party who said you were in danger.”

Fox couldn’t help but yip a laugh that was overly reminiscent of his namesake and bore just a few too many teeth in a fatalist grin.  “Ponds, I’m on Coruscant.  It’s a den of draagax pretending to be mole mice; the only way I wouldn’t be in danger would be if I was stationed in the Jedi Temple, and Ka’ra know I’m not heading there any time soon.”

Something about his words made Ponds’s expression shift from discomfort and worry into outright alarm.  In an instant, Fox’s grin dropped, replaced with a furrowed brow and sharp, concerned frown.

“Draagax are those venomous rats from Relkass, aren’t they?” asked Ponds nonsensically instead of explaining why he was suddenly upset.

“Why the kark does that matter?” retorted Fox, for a brief, wild moment wondering if the rumored craziness of the Jedi was contagious.  Upon realizing Ponds was genuinely waiting on an answer, he slowly nodded.  “Yes, they are.  Gree told me about them once during a kick on normally docile creatures that could become deadly.  They’re giant rodents that secrete a strongly hemotoxic venom from their fangs and, after exposed to some kind of weed, will eat anything that has a pulse.”

Ponds hissed in a breath, visibly pale even with the flickering blue of the holocall.  The Older Brother Instincts rang even louder.

“He was right,” the younger Commander said with a hard blink.  He looked disoriented and more panicked by the second.  “Osi’kyr, he was right!”

“Who was right?” Fox demanded to know, feeling his temper flare.  It wasn’t necessarily at his vod’ika in particular, but more so with whoever/whatever had his little brother so upset and, more than that, his own inability to help.  Being one of the Grand Army of the Republic’s four Marshal Commanders meant that Fox was kept up-to-date on every battalion’s movements and so he knew that Ponds was at least a day’s travel away from Coruscant if one used the speediest ship on the market and ignored all universal traffic laws, which was not conductive to the physical touch that his vod’ika responded best to in stressful situations.  If there was ever a time that Fox hated his posting (more than he usually disliked it, at least), this was one of them.

Ponds shook his head a few times, wide-eyed, before he answered.  “General Windu asked me to join in a call between himself and a few other Jedi, mostly other Council members, but also someone who’s normally stationed in the Outer Rim.  Jedi Knight Feemor, he’s called.”

Something about that name made a deep part of Fox wake up and take notice.  He—couldn’t have said exactly what that was, or precisely in what way.  Just a strange ping, a sort of rightness that he hadn’t felt since he had chosen his name when he overheard a trainer mutter ‘sly as a fox, that one’ in a way that was meant to be demeaning at the time.  He’d had to look up the phrase, the meaning of a word that had been mostly lost as the base species had died out and only offshoots like vulptex were left, but after an afternoon learning about the cunning creatures he knew it was his name.  Just the mention of this person called Jedi Knight Feemor was enough to give him that same sense of content, possessive surety without any palpable reason why.

The logical part of Fox’s brain didn’t like that.  The instinctual part very much did.  He, as a whole, decided to reserve judgement.

“Apparently,” continued Ponds, oblivious to Fox’s brief internal vertigo, “he speaks to the Force in a clearer way than other Jedi, and it wanted him to find someone in particular but couldn’t be karked to say exactly who outright.  The only thing they knew was that it was a Commander Class clone, so they called me in to…list them, is what we ended up doing.”

“This is all very interesting,” Fox said when the other paused for breath, aware his tone very much said he wasn’t actually interested but instead tired and jittery and still a little angry over Ponds’s own upset, “but some of us are in the middle of a sleep cycle.  Let’s just get to the point: who do I have to kill and how hard will it be to hide the evidence?”

Chapter Text

First - Wake Up Call

Over the years, there were a lot of ways Echo had come to expect to wake up.  On Kamino, as a cadet, it would have been with some other members of Domino Squad starting a shouting match; after their graduation, probably still by shouting, but with a more playful and easy edge; in the 501^st and as an ARC, by either his brothers roughhousing, an alarm due to an unexpected siege, Fives looking for comfort (or just being a brat), or by Commander Tano unexpectedly dropping in asking for advice.

On Skako Minor, he only woke up to immense pain when the Techno Union decided he needed another “upgrade” or to rip through his mind for answers he never wanted to give.

Most recently, however, Echo had gotten used to waking up to a very different sort of way.  He now expected to wake up to Hunter apologetically holding out a datapad with new mission specs in one hand and a cup of perfectly made caf in the other; to Tech enthusiastically babbling about whatever new information he couldn’t wait until the others woke up properly to share; to Wrecker tumbling out of his bunk with a ship-shaking crash and either whining or laughing about it depending on the reason for his fall; to Omega crawling into his bed because she had experienced a nightmare and she swore he was the best at chasing them away; to Crosshair staring from the corner of their bunkroom and rubbing at the thin scar on his temple, marveling over the fact that his mind was once more his own and he still had a place with them despite everything (as if it were ever in doubt); to his own cries as he came out of memories of exploding ships that tore him from his brother and his legion, of experiments that twisted his mind and body until he felt like not even a ghost of himself, of being forced to counter stratagems that he had helped create and kill thousands of brothers against his will—and breaking out of them surrounded by the warmth of his family as they helped him ride out the terror until he finally felt like a functioning near-human again.

This time, Echo woke up to none of those.  Instead, he found himself opening his eyes to a white ceiling and straps holding him to a cold metal bed and none of his team nearby, and the panic sensors in his brain all fired at once.

“No, no, nonono NO!” he shouted, struggling against the straps.  His eyes darted around, wild, and there was no sign of any of his brothers nearby in this cold sterile room, and he felt his panic climb impossibly higher.  None of the Batch would have left him alone like this in an unfamiliar medical bay.  They definitely wouldn’t have let anyone strap him down.  There was only one reason why Echo would be tied down, alone, in what was clearly some sort of lab.

He’d been captured.

“HUNTER!!!” he screamed, voice cracking from the force.  If anyone could hear him, if anyone could save him—but if Hunter was also captured—  “CROSSHAIR!!  TECH!!  WRECKER!!!”  Another thought struck him, and his brain flipped on a dime from panic to rage, bringing his voice impossibly louder once again.  “OMEGA!!!  If ANY of you karking DEMAGOLKASE hurt her I swear to the KA’RA—!!!!!”

The sliding door flew open and three blue and white figures darted into the room, and Echo’s voice choked itself out.  Because while it wasn’t anyone from the Bad Batch, he definitely recognized them, which should have been impossible.

He knew for a fact that they were all dead.

“Echo, you’re awake!” exclaimed Fives, already halfway to his bedside.  He halted when Echo flinched back at the movement, still wide-eyed and feeling like Wrecker just accidentally smacked him upside the head while trying to reach for something behind him (again).  Fives’s relieved grin quickly dropped into a worried frown.  “…Echo?”

“You’re dead,” Echo breathed out, unable to help himself.  Fives jerked back, eyes going wide, but Echo just turned to first Jesse, who was hovering just behind Fives and notably missing the ARC kama and shoulder pads he had the last time Echo had seen him, and then Kix, who had his head shaved to show off his tattoos and was making his way over with a medscanner in hand.  “You’re all dead!  What…what is—!?”

“Easy, Echo,” Kix soothed as he clicked at his scanner.  Echo flinched violently at the blue light as it ran over his body and saw Fives startle as if in response, taking another hesitant step closer to his bed.  “I have some questions you need to answer, then we’ll answer yours.  What’s your designation?”

Echo, confused and lost and wondering if he had finally snapped, said nothing.

“Echo?” asked Fives, very, very carefully.  Echo jerked his head up, registering that at some point during his minor dissociation his long-time squadmate had crept up to stand at the side of his bed and was now looking at him with open concern and unease.  “Kix asked you a question, Brother.”

There was no harm in answering that, Echo supposed, and rattled off, “EC-99/1409, formerly ARC-1409, CT-21-0408.”

“What the hell’s an ‘EC’ designation?” Jesse asked from somewhere by the door, just quietly enough that Echo almost didn’t hear him.  Before he could even debate responding, Kix cut back in with a quiet hum.

“Do you know where you are, Echo?” the medic asked, deceptively casual.

Still staring at Fives, Echo blinked slowly.  “Dead, I guess.”

The concern and fear in Fives’s gaze spiked and he reached out to touch Echo just behind his wrist, ignoring the way his arm spasmed at the unexpected contact.  “Why do you think you’re dead?” he asked, still speaking overly carefully.

“Because you died more than a year ago, Fives,” answered Echo, trying to keep the pain that still stabbed at him every day over it out of his voice and failing miserably.  He swallowed roughly and flexed his hand, the warmth of Fives’s fingers on his skin burning like a brand.  “So if you’re here, I have to’ve died, too.”

Kix was too much of a professional to verbally react, the skin around his eyes silently tightening as he stared at the readouts on his medscanner, but Jesse sucked in a breath so harshly it was a little impressive he didn’t choke.  Fives, himself, closed his eyes as if in pain, then opened them again and leaned in to knock his forehead against Echo’s in an ever-so-gentle mirshmure’cya.

“You’re not dead, Brother,” he said, voice wavering ever-so-slightly.  “And neither am I.  We’re on the Resolute in one of the private medbays.  You…”  Fives’s eyes, the only bit of his face that Echo could see in this position, closed for a too-long blink before they opened and he pulled back enough to show his grimace.  “You had a seizure in your bunk at about 0100 this morning.  It lasted almost a full five minutes, that we know of.  We thought…Kix said…”

“Stop stressing my patient,” Kix grumbled, not quite unkindly.  He finally stopped looking at his scanner and instead turned to Echo, meeting his patient’s disbelieving gaze with his own tired one.  “There’s no sign of a concussion or other head trauma, no alcohol or drugs in your system, your sodium and glucose levels are within range, and you don’t even have a slight fever.  Have you ever had a seizure before that you know of?”

“No,” Echo automatically answered, his mind racing.  He was on the Resolute?  Fives and Jesse and Kix were actually there?  What—  “What year is it?”

Kix frowned and held up a staying hand when Fives went to reply.  “What year do you think it is?”

Echo knew what the answer in his mind was.  But his gaze bounced from Kix’s shaved head to Fives’s not-quite-pristine ARC shoulder pads to Jesse’s lack of them and suddenly, he knew.  “…3632 ATC.”

Kix’s shoulders, which had gone tense at the question, relaxed and he bobbed his head.  “Your scans all came back clean.  I’m a little worried about your disorientation and the sudden bouts of violence, but—”

“‘Bouts of Violence?’” echoed Echo, cutting the medic off.  Well, that explained the straps, at least, considering one wasn’t supposed to restrain someone in the throws of a seizure (or so Tech had rambled after Hunter was overstimulated to the point of one during a particularly harrowing mission).

“You nearly took out Hardcase earlier when we were transporting you to medical,” Jesse offered as he finally came close enough to peer around Fives with a smirk.  “It was pretty impressive, even if it was weird as hell to see you flip a guy almost twice your bulk without being able to talk or even stand without help.”

Echo felt his face flush.  Well, at least Wrecker would be happy to hear about his attempts to teach self-defense against a larger opponent paying off so spectacularly.  Crosshair, too, probably; he still delighted in any story that “put the regs in their place,” even if he had made an effort to put aside his prejudices for at least Echo’s sake and had grudgingly come to admit some were acceptable as they met more and more clones who escaped from the Empire’s durasteel grip.

And his thoughts abruptly spiraled again.  If this was real, and not a hallucination or dream…if he really was more than three years back in time…then…was the rest of Clone Force 99, as well?  Fives, Kix, and Jesse—and his brain stuttered at remembering they were alive before he roughly compartmentalized all the feelings that involved for a later freakout with an unfortunately practiced hand—all showed no signs of remembering what happened in the future.  Logic said the chances of him, of all people, being the only one brought back was unlikely, but logic also said time travel was impossible, so who was to say?

…little Gods, he hoped the rest of the Bad Batch were back in time, too.  They had crawled under his armor and become kin in a way that only Fives had ever managed to fit before, and Echo wasn’t sure he could handle losing his family again.

“—Echo!” came Fives’s voice as the hand still on his wrist squeezed, making Echo jolt out of his thoughts and blink open eyes he hadn’t realized he had closed.  He immediately hissed out a breath and jerked his head back into the hard pillow under him upon seeing Kix’s medical scanner taking up most of his vision.

“Get that karking thing out of my face,” he snapped, squeezing his eyes shut again to better regulate his breathing.  A year and a half away from the Techno Union and he still panicked at unexpected medical scans; Tech had been putting off repairing the (thankfully cosmetic-level) damage to their bunks on the Havoc Marauder from the last time he woke up to someone waving one of those things at him.

There was a brief hesitation before armor clanked as Kix presumably moved away, but Echo just continued to focus on steadying his breaths, matching them to the buzz of the lights for lack of anything better.  Omega normally walked him through the count, her small hand holding his to her chest to match its rise and fall, muttering soft stories of the latest topic she had bullied Tech into helping her research or whatever misadventure she and Wrecker had last fallen into to distract him.

He had only been awake for maybe fifteen minutes at most, and already the lack of the rest of his team was like a blaster bolt through his chest.  He had to get to a computer with a network connection as soon as possible.  But, in order to do that, he had to get cleared from medical first.

“…sorry,” he muttered with that in mind, opening his eyes again and turning to look at Kix with what he hoped was an apologetic expression.

“It’s fine,” said Kix despite his frown and furrowed brows.  “It’s not unusual to be disoriented after a seizure, in particular after one as intense as yours.  The dissociation is worrying, though.  I’d like to keep you for a few more hours for observation, make sure it’s not indicative of some trauma my scans can’t pick up.”  His frown turned into a full scowl and he dropped his voice to mutter acidly, “What I wouldn’t give for a brain mapper right now.”

Echo shivered involuntarily, the memory of the Techno Union forcing him into one of those infernal machines over and over without reprieve until his brain felt like it was oozing out of his ears as they worked out his neural implants as formidable as ever.  He shoved the trauma into a box to be looked at exactly never and went to rub at his forehead with his hand, only to realize Fives was still holding his wrist in a death-grip and he was still strapped down.

“Can someone let me out of these?” he asked, trying to hide his nervousness with a small amount of irritation.  “I don’t think I’m going to be taking out anyone any time soon.”

Kix narrowed his eyes, but nodded, switching his medscanner for a datapad and tapping the screen a few times.  The bands around his limbs retracted and Echo jackknifed into a sitting position, only to immediately regret it when all the blood rushed to his head and made his vision blur and his body sway.

“Careful!” yelped Fives, reaching around to steady him.  Echo muttered an automatic thanks and went to touch his forehead with his scomp, hopeful the cool metal would provide at least a little relief—

Warm fingers met his skin.

“What,” breathed Echo, yanking his arm down and staring, wide-eyed, down at his scomp.  Except it wasn’t a scomp anymore.  It was a hand.

It was his hand.

Echo’s breath picked up and, roughly jerking his arm from Fives’s grip and ignoring the worried and wounded noise his brother made, he yanked away the thin cover over his body to look at his legs.

They were his legs.

He was whole again.

He felt himself shutting down, his hand—no, his hands, he had two hands again—reaching down to bunch the blacks he was wearing and yank them up without his consent.  Two soft brown flesh-and-blood calves met his vision, matching the shade of his hand—his hands—in a way he had never expected to see again.  He had gotten used to his body being more metal than flesh, and his flesh being a sickly olive instead of the mocha of baseline clones as blood and electricity pumped through him in near-equal measure.  Seeing actual legs and two hands and the familiar shade that wasn’t familiar on himself anymore was…he didn’t even have words.

Shaky, still feeling fogged, Echo reached out with a hand that shouldn’t have existed to touch legs that shouldn’t have been organic, and sure enough.  He felt the contact, the soft give of muscle and minuscule fat under soft brown skin potmarked with a couple of near-invisible scars and fine hairs, and he honestly thought he was going to start to cry.

Once again, the thought drifted past:

He was whole  again.

It was a step too much for his overworked mind, and he felt his eyes roll back into his head as he slipped into unconsciousness, out before his back hit the bed.

-break-

After his little fainting spell, Kix ended up keeping Echo in his little private section of the medbay for a complete cycle instead of the few hours he had originally been contemplating.  Echo probably would have put up more of a fight about it if he wasn’t still reeling from everything that had happened, from his time travel to the possible loss of his new family and re-gaining of his old team to having his normal, functioning body again.  As it was, Fives had probably been more freaked out than he let on when Echo spent about ten minutes just running his regained right hand through his short but soft and slightly curled hair, marveling at them both.  After the stress his body had gone through on Skako Minor, what remained of his body had stopped growing hair entirely and he had resigned himself to it being just another thing the Techno Union had taken from him.  It was strangely almost as exciting as having regained his limbs.

Echo could picture Tech’s long-suffering expression, Crosshair’s secretly amused sneer, and Wrecker’s pouting over how they no longer matched if they could hear his thoughts.  Hunter and Omega would have just been happy for him feeling more comfortable in his body, Hunter throwing on that soft half-smirk and Omega giving him a hug and a world-brightening beam.

He missed his family so karking much.  He had to get to a computer with holonet access as soon as possible so he could check their encrypted channels for chatter.  If they were back in time, that was the easiest way to get in contact, and if they weren’t…

Well.  If they weren’t, Echo wasn’t quite sure what he would do.  Maybe take a page out of Omega’s book and forcibly insert himself into their team anyway; he may physically be a reg again, but in his mind and heart he was a Bad Batcher no matter what anyone else would have said.

Now if only Fives would leave him alone for a few minutes so he could slip away and find a discrete computer terminal.

“I’m fine, Fives,” Echo repeated for what felt like the hundredth time, struggling not to let his mildly exasperated expression morph into a full-on scowl.  He shifted his shoulders to re-settle his ARC pauldrons for the seventh time since he’d kitted up an hour ago.  His once-familiar Mark II armor felt heavy, and not just because he’d gotten used to Tech’s custom durasteel/plastoid polymer and the slimmer Katarn-class armor build.  The armor he was currently clad in was given to and personalized for a man he wasn’t anymore, and that made it more uncomfortable than any awkward add-ons or now-foreign building materials ever could.

“Bantha-shit,” Fives scoffed, openly hovering so close his own pauldrons regularly bumped into Echo’s, further throwing off his sense of balance.  “You were just let out of the medbay two hours ago, and Kix said to take it easy until we figure out what caused that seizure in the first place.  Last thing we need is for something to crop up and make you faceplant in the middle of battle, Echo.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” muttered Echo under his breath, smirking a little at the memory.  Crosshair still kept an extra close eye on him when they ran into bounty hunters just in case one of them did their research and had a droidpopper handy.  Clearing his throat, he raised his voice to say, “No, seriously, Fives, I feel fine.  There’s no reason to hover over me like a high-hound.”

Fives blinked.  “A what?”

…right.  High-hounds were native to Aduba-3, a planet in the Outer Rim that Fives would likely never visit, lucky bastard.  Hunter had sworn off their ever returning after that mission had gone south, to the rest of the team’s relief.  “Highly aggressive scavenger birds.  Not the point.”

“Yeah,” Fives agreed, worried scowl returning, “the point being, until we get a mission, you should take it easy!”

Echo rolled his eyes and opened his mouth to respond, but was interrupted by both of their vambraces’ comm lights blinking with an incoming call.  The two exchanged surprised glances before ducking to the side of the hallway and opening the missive.

Rex’s familiar form flickered into miniature above their vambraces.  “Echo, Fives,” he greeted, only to pause, presumably at the reverberation of his own voice.  Echo immediately nudged Fives, who sheepishly turned off the volume of his comlink.

“Captain,” they both greeted.  It was Echo who continued, “Need something, sir?”

Rex tilted his helmet enough to be picked up by the grainy feed of their comms.  “I need you both in the hanger in about fifteen minutes.  Commander Cody and General Kenobi are on their way with a team of friendlies and have requested you both be at the rendezvous.”

“Us, sir?” asked Echo, a little taken aback.  While they didn’t have a bad relationship with either of the commanding officers—he and Fives were actually on very good terms with Cody, as one of their unofficial mentors alongside Rex himself, and they had yet to officially spend time with Kenobi outside of a battle setting at this point so hadn’t had a chance to give a bad impression—it was still strange to be specifically requested.

“Unless I have another couple of shiny ARC Troopers on my ship,” Rex said wryly.

“Demoted back to a shiny?” Fives demanded to know, scowl mostly playful.  Rex chuckled and shrugged.

“You’ll always be a shiny to me, Trooper, no matter how many promotions you get.”

“‘Experience outranks everything,’” Echo automatically quoted.

There was a pause that for some reason felt heavy as Fives gave Echo a weird look and Rex stared.  “Where’d you hear that one, Echo?” asked the Captain, slowly.  Echo opened his mouth to answer, a little bemused, before he forced himself to stop.

Right, time travel.  Rex hadn’t told Echo that one until after the Battle of Sullust.  Or was it the Senate Hostage Crisis?  Even after multiple sessions with a couple of different Mind Healers, his memory from before the Techno Union was still spotty in places.

Whenever it was, he had definitely not been a newly minted ARC at the time, so Echo knew he couldn’t tell the truth.  “Commander Tano, I think, sir,” he settled on saying, shrugging both to offset his pause as well as to once more resettle his pauldrons.  There was another brief silence before Rex hummed, the noise crackling through the transmission’s spotty connection.

“See you two in twelve minutes,” he said instead of whatever he was thinking.  The comm cut without further warning, holo flickering out.

Echo and Fives glanced at each other, Fives raising his eyebrows and Echo struggling to keep his expression neutral.  He got the feeling he’d kriffed something up, even if he didn’t know what quite yet.

“Guess we’ve got honor guard duty,” Fives offered on a shrug.

“Guess so,” agreed Echo, smiling faintly at his brother’s nearly hidden droop at the unexciting assignment.  He pulled his helmet off where it hung from his waist and took a moment to just look at it.  The blue lines and crest were stark against the white plastoid, and the thin black visor seemed to stare into him, a remnant of his past—but when he turned it, he felt his smile firm at the black patterns he had carefully painted on it before kitting up, ignoring Fives’s questions as he did so.  The Aurebesh 99 placed right in the middle of lines that traced where his cybernetic headpiece would have rested settled something in him, and after thumbing at it gently he settled the bucket into place.

His HUD blinked on, and Echo clicked his back teeth to clear all the automatic readouts before turning to look at Fives, who had also pulled on his helmet and was already looking back.  “Let’s go greet the General,” he said, reaching out to tap his vambrace on Fives’s rerebrace in a familiar gesture he hadn’t been able to share in far too long.

“Hopefully they’ll have something exciting for us to do,” Fives said, smile obvious even through his vocoder as he easily returned the tap.  Then his voice went stern.  “But not too exciting until you’re cleared by Kix!”

Echo scoffed, shaking his head, but didn’t disagree.  His mind was already fixed on the hanger, more specifically the terminal that sat gathering dust in the corner, often neglected in favor of the one nearer the outgoing comm stations.  If he could just reach it while he was down there, it would be easy to jump onto the holonet and find his way to the encrypted Clone Force 99 channel, and then.  Well.

Echo was going to end up with his family, one way or another.

‘I’ll see you guys soon.’

Chapter Text

Kandosii Kar’ta be Vode
(Indomitable Heart of Brotherhood)

First

Reconditioning was the single worst threat a clone could face on Kamino.  Don’t do anything the longnecks won’t like, the older cadets would whisper to the younger late at night when the rest of the facility was asleep, warning as they had once been warned, eyes haunted with ghosts of lost brothers, don’t be too slow, or too stupid, or too different…if they decide you’re not doing well, you’ll be lucky to remember your own number.

Inevitably, some of the warned would not believe the tales.  Just a myth, they would scoff to their batchmates, full of false bravado and the invincibility of children, they’re just trying to scare us, don’t worry—until the day that one of a generation inevitably did get taken, only to return with empty stares and no personality, nothing more than blank slates who knew how to follow orders and nothing else.  Then, it was made clear that Reconditioning was not a myth, but something to genuinely fear, and another batch would share the cautionary whispers with their younger brothers in a vain hope to stop it from happening again.

There was an exception to this, of course, even if it was an exception that none knew about.  The best kept secret of the Kaminoans for years, the first and most and yet somehow also least successful of their attempts.

Until it was no longer a secret, but a truth, and one that they would dearly regret

(Hell hath no fury like a big brother scorned.)

The eldest of the clones were those of the Commander Batch.  The strongest and best of their brothers, they were simply bred differently, and they knew it.  Stronger, smarter, all around well-rounded in a way the younger ones were not, they were a class all their own.  Just another fact of life as a clone on Kamino that had never been something to question before.

Then something happened.  Specifically, one of the commanders-to-be got thrown around a little too hard in training with one of the more violent of the Cuy’val Dar, and something was—knocked loose, so to speak.  Whereas before he had been a diligent if quietly snarky Command Class clone, with the smack of his skull against the bench in the corner of the room, the sharp edge carving off part of his face on the way down, all of a sudden CC-2224 “Cody” was no longer just Cody.

There was something more to him when he woke up in the medbay, two of his batchmates hovering nearby, waiting for him to wake.

“…sv’teen?  …ate?” he slurred out as best he could through the numbness of his face and the floating of his thoughts.  Both of his brothers were on him in an instant, radiating concern, even if for one it was hidden behind a slight snarl of protective anger and the other behind forced professionalism.

“Idiot,” snapped ’17, the curl of his lip familiar even though there was something…wrong.  He just couldn’t quite put his finger on what that was just yet.  “The kark’d y’think you were doin’, Cody?!”

He slowly blinked.  Why was ’17 calling him “Glory” in such a strange accent?  “Ne’kote,” he protested weakly, “a’ven.”

“He’s delirious,” muttered Nate, his worry only visible in the tightness around his eyes and the clench of his fists.  “He isn’t even speaking clearly.  Can we get Trauma down here to get a look?”

“No,” said ’17, the rumble of a growl slightly mangling his words.  “Longnecks’ll notice.  We’re lucky we got in here without bein’ stopped.”

He blinked again.  “Ne’baar’ur,” he said, working hard to enunciate.  “Me’bana?”  There was no immediate answer, and he still wasn’t quite sure what was wrong despite being sure something was.  He tried again.  “…me’vaar…ti gar?”

There was a pause as both of his vode stared, clearly startled.

“…he’s speakin’ Mando’a?” hissed ’17, looking strangely pale and panicked.

“What the actual kark,” Nate agreed, faint.  He quickly leaned closer and said in an undertone, words and tone stern, “I know you’re high as a shriek-hawk right now, brother, but you need to cut that out real fast.  If one of the trainers hears you…”

Suddenly, he realized that he had been the only one speaking Mando’a, his batchmates instead using Basic despite their rarely having bothered to do so when alone before.  Or, hadn’t they always spoken Basic?  …his head ached and he couldn’t stop his moan if he tried.

“B’kovid …hurts,” he managed to say, belatedly switching to Basic to appease them.  Immediately he felt a hand in his hair, petting slightly too roughly, and another was curled around his shoulder as if to brace or protect him.

“I know, I know,” hushed Nate, reaching around in a not-quite-hug while ’17 continued to mess with his hair.  “I’m sorry, brother.  Go back to sleep; we’ve got the watch.  You’ll feel better when you wake up.”

He felt himself slipping a bit, body unintentionally relaxing.  If Nate promised to have the watch, he knew damn well that his brother would keep him safe.  His mission-oriented vod was the last one who would break a promise.  “Vor’e…ner vode.”

His eyes slipped closed.  ’17 spoke one last time before he fully drifted off, voice hushed and strained in concern, “Okay, but where the kark did he learn Mando’a??”

He wanted to answer, “With Buir, just like you.”  He wanted to remind, “He taught us all, with our ori’vod’ika.”  He wanted to ask, “Don’t you remember?”

But he was too far gone, and instead, he drifted into a sleep riddled with memories and nightmares in equal measure.

(Could it really be a nightmare if it was simply the truth?)

It had been a fairly normal day, all things considered.  The dozen of his batch were together for the first time in what felt like forever, even Boba, despite his being so much tinier than they were due to the lack of tampering to his genetics.  They were celebrating the fact that Stec had finally chosen his name, a bastardized twist on su’tebec that he was particularly proud of to the point no one had the heart to tell him it made no sense even in the original Mando’a, relaxing and for once acting like the children they should have been.  Even Tavo and Sull had loosened up, their normal serious expressions lightened; Sull had gone so far as to crack a joke about how he and Stec would have to take turns explaining their names when they finally ran into Mandalorians other than the Cuy’val Dar.

They were just getting ready to put their ori’vod’ika down for a nap when everything came crashing down.

Without warning, their buir tore into the room, looking more than a bit wild around the eyes as he snatched little Boba from Mar’ek’s arms.  He was already moving around the apartment, grabbing the to-go bag he kept stashed in the closet and rapidly telling the others to get moving, now, don’t even bother grabbing anything, it was time, they had to go.

But it was already too late.  A purplish smoke filled the room, pumping in from vents and under the door, and his brothers dropped around him one by one.  Soon it was only he, Muzzle, and their buir left standing, he and Muzzle due to their specializations giving them limited resistance to most poisons and their buir simply because he had more mass and thus took longer to absorb it, but even they were starting to slip.

It was as he was falling to the ground that the Kaminoans, clad in strangely shaped masks to filter the contaminated air from their flat faces, entered the room.  He kept his wits about him long enough to register Buir shouting that they were breaking his contract, he had every right to leave, and so help them if they didn’t let his aliit go—!

“We are altering the contract, Ser Fett,” said one of the Kaminoans.  In his drug-hazed mind, it seemed like they were larger and more twisted than ever, long hands reaching like claws to grab at each of his helpless brothers.  “It has become clear that you are too attached to the products, and they to you.  We will remedy this with a new technique that comes highly recommended by our benefactor…he calls it ‘Reconditioning’…”

The last sight he had was of his buir’s horrified face.  The last feeling he had was one of dread, knowing everything was going wrong.

The last thought he had was the hope that his brothers would be safe.

(He fell asleep, and he was not himself when he woke up.)

(He would not be himself again for a long, long time.)

When he next woke up, his mind was both clearer and more muddled.  He remembered, as he hadn’t upon first awakening in the medbay with his brothers standing vigil, that he was CC-2224 “Cody” of the first Command Batch.  But he also remembered another name he had taken, and another set of numbers that he had forgotten.

That the Kaminoans had made him forget.

He was Cody, but now and again, he was also Alpha-Ø4 “Aven.”  Eldest survivor of the Alpha Batches, the one hundred original clones who were meant to be the base of Jango Fett’s new aliit as well as his top ori’ramikade when he reclaimed Mandalore.  An ori’vod to eighty others who also survived their first five years on Kamino, now a few years later reduced to merely a couple dozen.  One of the earliest clones to undergo Reconditioning.

One of the only clones, if not the only clone to remember afterward.

And, he determined, feeling a fierce flare of protective fury as he thought of the now million-plus siblings he had to care for, he was going to be the one to stop it.

Neither Cody nor Aven had ever backed down from protecting their vod’ike.  This was no different.

(Just try to get in his way.)

Chapter Text

When it finally happened, Cody wasn’t quite sure if he was more surprised that it hadn’t happened sooner or that he hadn’t anticipated it happening at all.  “It,” of course, being one of his batchmates figuring out something was more wrong than he let on and actually confronting him about it.

Fox, whatever his name at the time, always had been a mix of too observant and too tenacious for his own good.

“Any particular reason you’ve dragged me into a maintenance closet?” asked Cody idly, quirking a brow and loosely crossing his arms over his chest.  “I assume it’s not to play E’tad Ca’nara Lo Mar’eyce…”

“That,” snarled Fox, pointing a finger dangerously close to Cody’s nose, “is why we’re in the closet.”

Cody raised his other brow to join the first, eyes darting between the accusatory digit he was seriously tempted to bite and Fox’s narrowed gaze.  “No offense, vod, but I’m pretty firmly not into that.  Although I do hear some of the younger batches—”

Fox snarled again, jabbing his finger closer before yanking it back when Cody parted his teeth in warning.  “Shut up, I didn’t mean whatever the kark your twisted mind just brought up, and you know it!  I was talking about the Mando’a!”

“It’s not exactly a rare language around here,” Cody quite reasonably pointed out.  Half of the Cuy’val Dar had the nasty habit of slipping into it mid-lecture without noticing until whatever unlucky clone who drew the short straw pointed it out (and often got laps—or worse, depending on the trainer—for daring to interrupt).

“It is to us,” said Fox, lip curled.  He folded his arms behind his back and leaned forward, a familiar stance that made Aven’s chest ache, remembering hundreds of times he had seen it paired with his vod’ika’s fiery gaze before everything went wrong.  “Ever since you jumped between me and Priest, you’ve been acting strange, Cody.  Speaking Mando’a, talking back to the trainers, watching our batchmates like…like we’re going to disappear if you stop.”  A shiver visibly wracked down Fox’s spine at the last point, his stern glare fading into something gruffly worried.  “I want to know what’s wrong.  Moreso, I want to know how to fix it.”

Oh.  Cody blinked slowly, his eyebrows falling to furrow as he really looked at his vod’ika, one of the youngest of the Alpha Batches but also one of their fiercest protectors, which was likely why he was framed to be an elder member of the Commander Class when they were wiped.  “You think it was your fault.”

Fox drew back like a rawl prepared to strike, expression thunderous and an argument on his tongue—only to deflate almost immediately afterward with a scowl.  “You say that like it’s not.”

“Because it isn’t,” Cody immediately confirmed, frowning.  Deciding this was going to take a while, he sat on a sturdy-looking box of supplies, gesturing to another in invitation for Fox to do the same across from him before he continued.  “I’m the one who decided to call Priest out on his utreekov’la striil-osik, Fox.  Ibac’ner, ne’gar—that’s on me, not you.”

Having settled on the offered box, his brother’s golden eyes flashed stubbornly.  “If I had just done the damn spar, you wouldn’t have had to say anything!” the younger argued.  Cody scoffed, only barely refraining from an eye roll, and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees and clasp his hands loosely between them, a position that he as Aven had often taken when having similarly serious conversations with his vod’ike.

“I’m not blind, Fox, despite Priest’s best attempts afterward.”  The wince from Fox suggested that was an ill-timed remark even from a cynic, but Cody barreled on anyway, unwilling to concede the point by stopping to apologize.  “You’d already hurt your shoulder pretty badly.  I’m still surprised it wasn’t dislocated, to be honest, and if you went right back into the ring with such an obvious weak point, you know as well as I do that Priest would have taken advantage of it and karked it up beyond repair.  The laandur hut’uun would do anything to put us out of commission, and what sort of ori’vod would I be if I let that happen?”

For some reason, this made Fox pause more than anything else he had said, whole body stilling.  “…what did you just call yourself?”

It took a moment for Cody to run back his sentence and mentally curse.  Even if they could no longer speak it themselves, his vode knew enough Mando’a to have an idea of what he’d just said.  Still, he wasn’t one to lie to his brothers outright, so Cody merely sighed and reluctantly said, “I called myself ‘ori’vod,’ ner vod’ika.”

“I know that word,” muttered Fox, eyes narrowed.  “Brother…bigger, older?  Elder brother?”  He jerked his head up and glared.  “And that other word is little brother, right?!  I was decanted first, you brat!”

Cody was silent at the accusation, staring at Fox neutrally until his brother seemed to realize that his silence wasn’t an agreement.  His glare swiftly dropped into a wide-eyed look of dawning realization.  “…Cody?” he began, suddenly unsure and nearly sotto-voice.  The scarred clone hummed softly, encouraging his vod’ika to go on, and Fox visibly steeled himself before he finally asked again, “What happened?”

And Cody sighed, a long, wary sigh as he unclasped his hands, looking down at a particular scar that curled along his left knuckle as an ever-present reminder of times when they were not Fox and Cody but two others who were both so similar yet equally different.  “Tell me, vod’ika,” he said, slowly, feeling every one of his eight-going-on-twenty years, “does the name ‘Fordo’ mean anything to you?”

Fox jolted involuntarily, eyes going wide, and opened his mouth.  Then he left it open, unable to say anything as his eyes glazed over, which prompted a bitter smile from Cody.  “I sort of thought as much,” he said wryly before he settled in to wait for the Reconditioning to either hold or break.  If it held, based on what he’d observed in his kih’vode since his reawakening, Fox wouldn’t even be able to think of himself in relation to his old name and would return to himself having entirely forgotten the last few minutes of conversation.  If it broke…

Well, if it broke, then Cody would finally allow himself a little bit of hope.

The minutes ticked by at a swamp-snail’s pace, Cody idly tapping his fingers and humming the bars to Vode An as Fox rebooted.  He was just debating pushing his brother’s mouth closed when said brother sucked in a deep, shuddering breath, jaw clicking shut with a harsh clack of teeth-on-teeth.  He audibly grit them and reached up to rub at his temples, a groan falling through his clenched jaw.

“Vod?” asked Cody carefully, leaning forward a bit to take in Fox’s pinched expression.  “Me’vaar ti gar?  Are you okay?”

“Ne’johaa!  Kadalase,” Fox hissed painfully, making Cody’s heart leap into his throat and his breath hitch.  There was no way it was that easy.  Right?

Taking a steadying breath, Cody forced himself to relax his body, words quiet and carefully enunciated as he decided to test the waters.  “’Lek.  N’epar nu pirur, ner vod’ika.  Ke’hiibir ca’nara.”

Fox bobbed his head, saying nothing but clearly understanding the words, and an unfamiliar but blindingly warm feeling rose in Cody’s chest.  He felt like he was going to vibrate out of his skin in the time it took his brother to recover enough to finally, finally open his eyes, sucking in another breath and blinking rapidly before he finally looked to Cody.

The younger immediately froze again, but this time, it wasn’t the same sort of brain-rebooting freeze.  Instead it was due to disbelief, his gaze flickering between the years-old notch removed from Cody’s left ear and the new scar curving around his eye on the same side before he near-whispered, “Aven?”

“Fordo!  Ke’gedeteyar haar Ka’ra,” blurted Cody before he could stop himself, finally rising and reaching over to grasp desperately at his little brother.  Fox, once and again his fierce brother Fordo, reached up and met him halfway with equal desperation, the two tangling their arms in a vehement hug and knocking their heads just slightly-too-hard in a mirshmure’cya that due to their enthusiasm bordered on a full kov’nyn.  They stayed like that, eyes closed and tangled in a brotherly embrace, for a long, perfect moment of relieved unity.

Of course Fox, being who he was, couldn’t let the peaceful moment last too long.  Without warning, he shoved at Cody roughly to get them farther apart, simultaneously gripping the elder Alpha’s shoulders so he couldn’t go too far and staring with burning eyes while Cody’s own opened with clear resignation at the rough handling.

“What the actual kark is going on!?” Fox immediately demanded, shaking Cody’s shoulders for good measure.  He looked a little wild as he stared down his ori’vod.  “One minute, we’re celebrating Stec’s di’kutla name choice, and the next we’re just a bunch of suped-up regs and Buir and Bob’ika are acting like we didn’t even exist!!!”

“You couldn’t just let me enjoy the moment,” Cody said, deadpan and unimpressed.  “A few clicks, Fordo, that’s all I wanted.  Just a chance to enjoy the return of my copikla vod’ika—”

Fox glared fiercely at his elder brother, hands curling tighter as he bared his teeth in a warning half-snarl.  “I’ll show you copikla, you kriffing—!”

Cody laughed, cutting Fox off, and reached up to drag the younger into another (far gentler) mirshmure’cya.  “Ka’ra, I missed you, Fordo.”

“I’ve been right here,” grumbled Fox.  He pressed back into the contact despite his harsh words, a faint smirk pulling apart his earlier frustration, and dropped his hands to gently grip Cody’s forearms instead.  “Utreekov’la ori’vod.”

Cody just grinned, the unfamiliar expression pulling oddly at the puckered skin of his new scar, and felt his loneliness abate in a way it hadn’t since he’d woken up with years of memories his brothers no longer had.  One did remember, now, and while his goal of getting them all to return hadn’t changed, just the one was enough to settle him for the moment.

Their other brothers would join them in time.  The roaring flame of hope in his chest would allow him to believe nothing less.

“There’s two of them now!?” snarled Wolffe, throwing his hands in the air in pure frustration when Fox greeted him and their other batchmates with a casual call of ‘Su cuy’gar, vode,’ upon his and Cody’s return to the room later that day.

“No idea what you’re talking about, vod,” Cody said, perfectly bland.  At his side, Fox smirked, golden eyes glinting with old mischief.

“I didn’t even realize,” he said as an aside, unholy glee audible even in his near-whispered tone.  “Mr. Needs-No-Name has the most majyc’la name out of all of us, now?”

Cody nodded, smirking as well if in a considerably more restrained way, and didn’t bother to drop his volume when he responded.  “I don’t know why you’re so surprised.  He’s always been very an-ra-naas.”

Fox snorted in amused agreement.  Wolffe, still fuming, snapped, “I know y’heard me!  Anyone goin’ to let us in on the joke?!”

Cody looked at Fox.

Fox looked at Cody.

In perfect unison, both brothers turned to Wolffe and very emphatically said, “No.”

Wolffe was 100% done and told them so, loudly and creatively, while Fox and Cody slyly high-fived behind their backs.  The resulting rant they had to endure was more than worth it.

Chapter Text

Hunter generally considered himself a pretty level-headed soldier.  He had to be, with brothers like his—he dared anyone without a sense of stability to try and deal with Crosshair in an obstinate snit, or Wrecker preparing to tantrum, or Tech when on a self-destructive learning binge.  But being level-headed didn’t mean being infallible or unsurprisable.

The point being, Hunter felt completely justified when he panicked upon waking up in an unfamiliar forest clearing of some sort and in a body that wasn’t his own.

“What the karking hell is this?!” he barked, alarmed.  And, no, that wasn’t a turn of phrase; he literally barked instead of speaking Basic even though he completely understood what he was saying, somehow.

“Well, this is…different,” mused another voice, this one a soft little growl.  Hunter whipped around, tripping over his feet (he had four feet now and no hands.  Again, what the actual karking hell) to face the speaker and found himself looking at a canine of some sort, slightly smaller than himself with shaggy brown fur a few shades lighter than his own and dark markings around its large brown eyes.  The canine blinked at him, head tilting curiously, and the next words were a woof-like noise instead.  “Ah.  Hunter, I presume?”

It took a moment for the pieces to connect.  “…Tech!?”

His now-canine brother tilted his head the other way and gave a growling hum of agreement.  “It would seem so, yes.  This is quite peculiar.”

“‘Peculiar’, he says,” a much raspier growl cut in.  Both Hunter and Tech turned their heads to spy another canine sitting nearby with short silver fur, the same size as Hunter but significantly thinner, with a long ropy tail curled around its back legs and golden-brown eyes narrowed in open irritation.  “That’s quite the understatement.”

“Crosshair,” Hunter cautiously deduced.  He looked around for a moment and tried to focus on his hearing, a little unnerved to realize both it and his eyesight weren’t working quite as well as he was used to.  Was this how baseline clones experienced the world?  How did they even function like this!?  At least his sense of smell seemed the same as ever…small comforts, he supposed.  “Where’s Wrecker?”

“If we are here, it does stand to reason he should be as well,” Tech mused, cautiously taking a few, unsteady steps.  His new tail was sticking straight out like a balancing pole and for some reason this made Hunter concerned, not that he could say quite why.  An instinctive knowledge of their new body language, maybe.  “Do you suppose we should go find him?”

“No need,” said Crosshair dryly, inclining his head to their left.  There was a series of loud barks that didn’t seem to have words so much as a long scream attached as if in response, the presumed source heading their way before veering to the side, correcting itself after a few moments, and then heading their way again based on the wavering volume.

Hunter huffed a sigh.  Yes, that sounded like Wrecker, alright; unexpectedly get separated from the rest of the squad, panic (“I don’t panic!” he could practically hear his biggest little brother whine) and run around until they regrouped, swear never to get distracted by such-and-such in the future, and then next mission do it all over again.

“Let’s meet him halfway,” he said/commanded, forcing himself to walk forward.  It wasn’t quite as awkward as Tech’s stiff movements had made it out to be when he didn’t think too much on it—which was probably why Tech was having problems, actually.  He literally could not stop himself from overthinking without a distraction of some sort to focus on instead.  “After we’re together, we can figure out where we are…and what we are.”

Tech’s new floppy ears perked up and his short tail relaxed enough to wag.  “I suspect a canine species of close relation to a charhound for Crosshair, based on his body type alone,” he offered.  “Although he does seem to be lacking their natural flame abilities.”

“Tragic,” Crosshair drawled, cautiously standing.  He took a few slinking steps forward before also seeming to gain confidence and coming level with Hunter and Tech.  The Sergeant silently began to lead them into the trees, leaving the small clearing they had awoken in behind and following presumably-Wrecker’s continued barks as they veered away again.

Oblivious as ever to the sarcasm, Tech tilted his head back and forth a few times.  “Well, I wouldn’t say ‘tragic’, per se.  Charhound pups are notorious for accidentally setting their owners’ homes ablaze while learning their own limitations.  Really, if you did have their abilities, I would expect the forest we are in to already be on fire.”

“And us?” asked Hunter, more to keep Tech speaking than any real interest.  As he had suspected, as soon as their smallest brother was distracted, Tech was no longer walking so stiffly and his tail had lowered into a position that matched Crosshair’s, which soothed what Hunter was more and more sure were new instincts that came with their current forms.

“That is far more unclear,” Tech said, openly irritated at his own admittance.  “I would almost say Loth-wolves, but those are not only extinct, but they were also purported to be quite large.  While I am unsure of what planet we are on, assuming these trees are of similar size to those on Endor as they appear to be, we are closer to the size of an adult strill.”

Hunter chuckled, startling himself when it came out as a series of gentle huffs.  He quickly recovered and slanted a look at Crosshair.  “Well, as long as we don’t stink like strill, I guess I can live with that.”

“Hopefully not for long,” grumbled Crosshair, shifting slightly to nudge Tech’s front shoulder with his own.  “Do you have any idea what could cause this, at least?”

After stumbling at the forceful not-quite-shove, Tech loosed a huffing sort of growl.  “What makes you think I would have any idea?” he asked, irritated.  Crosshair’s mouth opened slightly as if he were panting, and for some reason, Hunter knew it was the canine version of a smirk.

“You have an answer for everything else, Technobabble.  Why would this be any different?”

Tech was openly torn between preening at the not-quite-praise and grumping at the childhood tease that was the base of his chosen Name.  He was spared from having to answer by the sudden stop of the barks they had been following.

Immediately, Hunter stopped as well, automatically lifting his front leg to give a signal for the other two to do the same only to uselessly drop it when he remembered he didn’t have hands anymore.  Crosshair and Tech got the idea anyway, both halting on either side of him and joining him in scanning the surrounding trees.

After a carefully counted sixty seconds, the barking didn’t return, so despite the threat of possible hostiles Hunter cautiously called, “Wrecker?”  When within thirty more seconds there was still no answer, he tried again, “Wrecker!!”

Silence.

“That’s not good,” Tech helpfully muttered.  Crosshair huffed a soft agreement and Hunter closed his eyes and breathed in deeply through his nose, trying to focus.  To his relief, he realized Crosshair and Tech both smelled the same, if a bit earthier than normal—durasteel and blaster residue and petrichor-like protectiveness from Crosshair, metal-oil and soldering fumes and the metallic tang of anxiety from Tech—so it stood to reason that the same was true of Wrecker.

Sure enough, he only had to turn his head slightly to catch the mingling scent of demolition smoke and musk and tart brashness that defined their largest brother.  However, to his slight alarm, he also caught another unfamiliar scent.  He had no idea who would be armor shine and old flimsi and the peppery sharpness of honor.

“He’s got someone with him,” said Hunter, opening his eyes and feeling his lips curl with a snarl that rumbled through his chest.  Tech and Crosshair both wordlessly growled as if in response, but he put that aside for now, simply jerking his head in the direction of their targets.  “This way!”

He took off at a run, his brothers just behind him, and while it objectively didn’t take long to reach Wrecker and the stranger it still felt like a lifetime had passed when they finally burst into a new clearing and startled its occupants.

With a growling roar of a sound, the larger of the two canines in the clearing leapt to its feet and bodily blocked the smaller from their sightlines.  Sitting at almost twice the size of Hunter with brown fur so short it was nearly non-existent, between his size, the snaking white scar tissue along the left side of his face, and the severely torn accompanying ear, he would have been an intimidating sight if they didn’t have the context to deduce that this was Wrecker.

“Stand down, Wrecker!” Hunter quickly barked, ears pushed forward and tail raised and teeth bared warningly.  “It’s us!”

There was a pause before Wrecker visibly calmed, the intimidating snarl dropping into a panting grin-like expression as his single good ear perked forward happily.  “Sarge!  Tech, Cross!” he greeted, the woofs of his words just as loud and enthusiastic as his normal voice.  “You’re here!  And you’re some of these cay-things, too!”

“Canine, Wrecker,” corrected Tech, panting slightly from the short sprint.  “Or at least, I presume that’s what we are, now.”

“Don’t bother,” Crosshair said on a sneer, rolling his eyes as if they couldn’t all see how much he had relaxed upon finding their largest and loudest batchmate unharmed.  “It’s not like he’ll remember it.”

“Hey!” complained Wrecker, the word a literal whine in their new bodies.

Hunter caught cautious movement from behind Wrecker’s bulk and narrowed in on it.  “Who’s your friend, Wreck?” he asked leadingly.  Wrecker immediately forgot his upset and once more panted a grin, tail wagging behind him.

“Oh, yeah!”  He side-stepped surprisingly quickly for his large size and bounded around to push forward the one who had been behind him with a powerful paw, uncaring of the wide brown eyes and lowered ears of his companion.  It was, predictably, another canine, fur the same brown shade as Hunter and Wrecker but at a length similar to Tech and Crosshair, unremarkable other than a silver mark on its chest in the strangely defined shape of a humanoid’s handprint.  “Guys, this’s Echo!  He just told me he woke up here, too!”

“Uh,” said Echo, still wide-eyed as he looked between them.  “Hi?”

There was a pause as Hunter exchanged looks with both Crosshair and Tech.  “Hunter,” he introduced himself, eyes narrowed just slightly.  “It looks like you already met Wrecker,” Wrecker wagged his tail again with a wordless bark, “and these two are Tech,” Tech bobbed his head briefly, openly analyzing Echo even though it was likely making the other uncomfortable, “and Crosshair,” Crosshair lifted the edge of his lips in a sneer, but also ever-so-slightly inclined his head.  “Not to presume, but, ‘Echo’…you a clone, too?”

Echo’s ears perked forward slightly and he lifted his right paw as if to salute before quickly dropping it again.  “Yes, sir!  ARC-1409, previously CT-21-0408, Corporal Echo of the 501^st.  And…you’re Clone Force 99, right?”  Presumably seeing their startled expressions, Echo dropped his ears back and ducked his head, giving the impression that he was slightly sheepish.  “I’ve run a few missions after you guys have gone through.  You, uh, tend to leave an impression on the locals.”

“Great, a Reg,” muttered Crosshair despairingly.  Hunter kicked out with his back leg and ignored his brother’s high-pitched yelp of surprise, keeping his expression calm even as Echo visibly startled.  There was a time and a place to complain about the rank and file, and this was not it.

“Nice to meet you,” Hunter said, mostly sincere; it was rare that a Reg didn’t react to them with malice, and rarer still to have an almost respectful acknowledgement from one.  He took a moment to scent the air again, making sure there were no nearby surprises, and upon confirming they were the only creatures he could sense in the immediate area he sat down and gestured with a front paw.  “You know how you got here, Echo?”

“No idea,” the presumably-baseline clone admitted, ears drooping further as he, too, cautiously sat down.  “The last thing I remember, I was being frozen in carbonite—”

“You were what?!” yelped Wrecker.  He whirled around and shoved his nose close to forcibly sniff at Echo in various places, earning a series of surprised yelps, and his next words were a concerned whimper.  “Who got the drop on ya!?  Don’t worry,” he straightened and puffed up proudly, baring his new sharp teeth in a savage expression and growling out, “we’ll take care of ‘em!!!”

Echo huffed, his fur sticking up awkwardly in the places Wrecker had dragged his nose, and shook his body to re-settle it.  “Thanks, I guess, but I’m fine.  It was part of my mission.”

“Carbon freezing can have a multitude of side-effects, including exhaustion, weakness, dizziness, temporary or permanent blindness, memory loss, seizures, and the most extreme reactions can even result in death,” Tech helpfully offered.  Even he looked a little blindsided despite normally being able to rattle off facts without letting his feelings get in the way.  “Who in their right mind would have their troops do so on purpose?”

“General Skywalker,” said Echo, deadpan.

There was a pause as everyone took that in.  “I’d heard he had some crazy plans, but that’s…” began Hunter, only to trail off.  Echo woofed a sardonic laugh.

“You have no idea.”  He paused a moment, once more shaking out his fur, and then sighed.  “Anyway, I was frozen in carbonite so we could infiltrate the Separatist prison on Lola Sayu, and next thing I knew I woke up here.  To be honest, until Wrecker stumbled on me, I thought I was just experiencing some sort of carbon freezing hallucination.  I…still could be, I suppose.”

“Unlikely,” said Tech, huffing briefly.  “While it is possible that you created mental constructs of us based upon past rumors you may have heard or imagined, and then further twisted those constructs so we appeared as we do now instead of whatever nebulous ideas of our appearance you had before, carbon freezing-induced hallucinations are reported to be far more often based upon the familiar than otherwise.  If you truly were hallucinating, it would likely involve those more directly involved in your life—perhaps your General, or fellow clones within your legion, or even past trainers or Kaminoans you were exposed to particularly often during your cadet training—rather than a squad of defective clones you had never actually met before.”

“Also, I probably wouldn’t be an animal,” Echo offered dryly, but not unkindly, ears perked forward and tail wagging slowly to give off the impression of gentle amusement.

Tech blinked and tilted his head thoughtfully.  “That as well, I suppose.”

Chapter Text

“Names?” asked Wrecker, incredulous.  “We’ve got names!  The hell d’we need new ones for??”

Crosshair scowled and crossed his arms over his chest in silent agreement.  Tech, anxiety obvious in how he didn’t bother to look up from his datapad and his leg bounced somehow faster than it already was, scoffed.  “Although there are only so many name choices in the universe,” he said, voice slightly tight but still matter-of-fact as ever, “the chances of two groups of four clones with similar mutations having the same names are practically infinitesimal, even if we take into account the…generational gap.  If we plan to keep the fact that we are from the future a secret, even cursorily so, we have little choice.”  He paused a moment and slanted an unreadable sideways glance at their eldest member.  “Of course, Echo is far enough removed from his younger self that he could likely keep his without complications.”

Echo, who had already been tense, became impossibly tenser as the rest of the batch also looked towards him.  None of them said what they were thinking: For their elder brother who had lost virtually everything except for his name not too many years before—most of his body, autonomy over his mind, the last member of his original batch, and far too much more—none of them would begrudge him if he decided to not change it.

After a too-long second, Echo slowly and deliberately relaxed.  “Might as well join the fun,” he said with a shrug and a wry little smile.  “Just don’t get too crazy with it.  I still have flashbacks to when Fives tried to convince me that I was going to be named ‘Spoilsport’ whether I agreed to it or not.”

Wrecker threw his head back with a booming laugh, his previous irritated confusion forgotten, and the rest of the Batch cracked smiles/smirks to mask their collective relief.  They wouldn’t have begrudged him if he decided to not change his name as well, true, but they would have definitely been disappointed.

“Anyone have any suggestions?” asked Hunter after a moment, trying to bring the conversation back around.  The levity quickly faded and they all exchanged uneasy looks, not quite knowing where to begin.

“The simplest answer would probably be just to use our ranks, as they were last recorded,” Tech cautiously offered. Given how he immediately ducked to look down at his datapad again, he obviously wasn’t particularly attached to the idea.

“Yes, that would be simple enough,” Crosshair agreed with a sly smirk, gaze cutting to Hunter.  “Isn’t that right, Sergeant?”

“Absolutely not,” Echo deadpanned at the same time Hunter hastily said, “Thanks, Tech, but maybe not.”

“I don’t want to be called ‘Trooper’ all the time,” Wrecker huffed as the only one without some sort of official rank beyond that, voice just short of a whine, before he seemed to realize why Crosshair was so amused.  He quickly pointed at their youngest with a thunderous scowl.  “Hey, wait!  You just want an excuse for us to all call you ‘Commander’!!!”

Crosshair shrugged, somehow making the serpentine motion look smug, but more helpfully offered, “Synonyms of our current names would work, if no one else likes that idea.”

“What, you want to be called ‘Reticule’ or ‘Sight’ for the rest of your life?” asked Echo, quirking a hairless brow.  Immediately, Crosshair scowled, shifting his toothpick quickly from one side to the other.

“Well you come up with something, then, Spoilsport,” he said snidely.  Echo scowled back, but said nothing, obviously also at a loss.

There was a pause as the team thought.

“Maybe we’re overthinking this,” said Hunter, drawing everyone’s attention.  He was slowly tapping his fingers on his cuisse, gaze slightly unfocused, but soon recovered enough to smile a little ferally.  “How do you boys feel about riling up some Mandalorians?”

“Sir,” greeted the leader of the team, standing a bit in front of the four troops he commanded with his helmet tucked carefully under one arm.  “Clone Force 99, reporting for duty.”

Cody blinked slowly, eyebrows raised.  “‘Clone Force 99’, huh?” he repeated, trying hard to place the name.  He quickly had to give up.  Specialized Commando Squads were still a relatively new concept, and while he and the other Marshal Commanders were supposed to keep up with their deployments, so many were being rolled out to field test the viability of such teams long-term that it was hard to keep track of them all.  He took a quick look at the faintly painted pips on the heavily tattooed leader’s spaulder before responding.  “I don’t believe we requested any Commando Squads, Sergeant…?”

The leader smirked and ducked his head forward so his non-regulation hair fell slightly in his face, casting strange shadows on top of his already-ominous half-skull tattoo.  “Ruusaar, sir,” he introduced.  Cody couldn’t quite stop himself from sucking in a breath at the distinctly Mando’a name, although he managed to stifle any other reaction.  “We were assigned to the Third Systems Army by General Ti a bit last-minute.  She said something about the ‘Will of the Force’?”

One of the troops behind Ruusaar coughed once, but when Cody glanced over, he couldn’t tell which one.  They were all fully kitted up in the same dark and strange sleek armor as the Sergeant, even if each were heavily modified—only partially due to the varying body types that belied the fact that they were clones.  Or at least, Cody assumed they were clones.  He would have remembered hearing about nat-borns being integrated into Commando Squads.

“Of course it was,” he eventually said, looking back to the Sergeant and trying hard not to sigh.  “Might as well introduce your squad, then, Sergeant.”

“Yessir,” agreed Ruusaar.  He stepped aside slightly to gesture at the group, and they all took off their helmets, revealing four very different faces than Cody had expected.  While their basic features looked familiar enough to identify them as clones, there were definitely more differences from regular clones than Cody was used to seeing, even with his brothers starting to explore individuality now that they were officially released into the Jedi’s care.  It was almost unnervingly uncanny.

“Clone Force 99 is made up of clones that have what the Kaminiise call ‘desirable mutations’,” Ruusaar said easily, obviously to explain their difference in appearance.  Cody barely managed to stifle his initial tensing at the casual Mando’a and he had a sinking feeling in his gut that this wasn’t going to be the last time he heard the language.  It was hard to gauge exact ages given how far from standard these clones were, but Ruusaar (appearing overall baseline other than the too-straight hair and slighter frame) was about the right age to have learned the language from the trainers before Prime put a stop to the practice, bringing out harsh punishments that made even the eldest Commanders balk when he heard any clone dare to utter it.  “Some being more obvious than others, of course.  Take my second in command, Eya.”

One of the clones stepped forward, face carefully neutral.  Cody would like to say the first things he noticed about him were his too-pale skin and lack of hair, since they were the most kind descriptors, but instead all he could focus on were the small metal nodes implanted into the sides of his skull, the large headphone-like cybernetic implant that covered where his ears should have been and wrapped around the back of his head, and the unarmored and distinctly mechanical right forearm/hand he snapped a picture-perfect salute with.

Whether he was oblivious to or outright ignoring Cody’s stare, Ruusaar continued to speak, voice ever-so-slightly amused.  “You want a slicer, you’ll find no one better than him.  He’s even got a special knack for slipping into Separatist files.  It’d be hard, if not impossible, to find a code he can’t crack.”

“Pleasure, sir,” said Eya crisply.

“Pleasure’s mine, Corporal,” Cody responded evenly, having gotten a glance at his pips after the initial surprise.  Like Ruusaar’s, they were nearly impossible to see, and he was beginning to think that was on purpose.  “And at ease.  No reason to stand on formality at this point.”

Eya obediently ordered his salute, slipping into parade-rest.  “As you say, sir.”  At Cody’s wry look, his stern expression melted into a smirk that seemed to take years off his slightly gaunt face.  “Sorry, sir.  I’ve always been a bit of a stickler for rules and ranks, even if the Batch has done their best to break me of it.”

“On the other hand, you’ll have to work hard to get any respect from Ramser,” Ruusaar offered, jerking his head at another of the squad.  Stepping forward with a resting scowl and chewing on a toothpick, the second tallest of the troopers was also far and away the thinnest, looking a few missed meals away from being outright skeletal.  More distracting, however, was the large burn scar that stretched along the right side of his head, barely missing the thin crosshair tattoo that stretched around that eye.  Both of those eyes, on closer inspection, were also far more golden than any other clone’s, nearly resembling a shriekhawk’s right down to how they narrowed like he was debating the best method of attack as soon as Cody made eye contact.  “But if you need someone to infiltrate a stronghold without setting off the alarms, or a target taken out from ten clicks, he’s one you want on your side.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, vod,” Ramser drawled, cadence slow and nearly serpentine.  His scowl kicked up slightly at the corners almost immediately after the Mando’a word, eyes tracking something on Cody’s face, before he flicked his toothpick to the other side of his mouth without saying anything further.

Ruusaar completely ignored the byplay, continuing his introductions.  “Then you’ve got Chek.”  Grinning, the largest of the clones took a step forward, a head taller and twice as broad as a standard clone, and Cody would put money on most of that being pure muscle.  His expression was friendly, if a bit wild, but between his girth and the thick spiderweb of shrapnel scars stretching all along the left side of his face that both took out that ear and clouded his eye, he very clearly wasn’t someone to upset if you wanted to avoid being a smear on the floor.  “He’s not much for sneaking around, as you might’ve guessed.  More of a break-through sort of guy.”

“Nice t’meet ya, Commander!” greeted Chek in a booming voice, grin wide.  The scarring on his face twisted half of the expression into a near-snarl, but his eyes were crinkled in mirth.  “Lookin’ forward to our first mission!”

“You, as well, Trooper,” Cody returned, ducking his head.  He glanced at the final member of the squad, who had yet to lift his head from the datapad he pulled out as soon as the Commander had told them to order their attention.  “And who’s the quiet one?”

Strangely, Eya chuckled at the descriptor, stepping back to gently nudge an elbow at the final member’s cuirass.  “You must be pretty out of it if someone called you the quiet one,” he teased as Ramser snickered and Chek boomed a laugh of agreement.

“Normally, you can’t get Tay to shut up,” Ruusaar confirmed, smirking again.  “He’s our technology specialist, as well as a walking encyclopedia on near anything in the universe.  You’d be hard-pressed to find a topic he doesn’t know at least something about.”

“There’s no point in exaggeration,” sniffed Tay, finally raising his gaze.  He looked notably younger than the other members, despite the fact that his dark brown hair was receding worse than most clones’ already-unfortunate hairlines, and the yellow-tinted goggles magnifying his eyes to be twice their actual size didn’t help with the assumption of youth.  Still, he showed none of the awkwardness of a brother of his apparent age, and had no problem frowning in irritation at Ruusaar.  “I am sure there are plenty of subjects that I am unaware of even existing.  In our known galaxy alone, there are billions of planets, and on them trillions of sentients comprised of tens of thousands of species, and that’s just the ones who we are able to communicate with…”

There was a collective ‘see?’ expression from the other members of the Commando Squad as Tay continued to ramble on.  Cody had the distinct feeling that it would continue indefinitely if no one cut in, so he carefully coughed, making Tay cut himself off.  The youngest-looking clone didn’t look sheepish over his ramble, per se, but he did school his features into careful attentiveness as everyone turned back to Cody.

“As unexpected as this is,” the Commander said once he had their attention, settling back on his heels thoughtfully, “General Ti was right to send you to us.  We are about to head to Christophis to attempt to stop the Seps from taking control of another Outer Rim hyperlane, and the backup would be appreciated.”  A challenging half-smirk spread across his face and he tilted his head teasingly.  “Assuming you Commando-types live up to the hype, of course.”

Chek barked a laugh, reaching out and grabbing Ramser’s shoulder to shake it roughly.  “‘Live up to the hype,’ he says!” the big clone crowed, obviously delighted.  “Y’hear that, vod!?  The commander doesn’t think we’re up for it!!”

“Obviously I did, di’kut,” snapped Ramser, reaching up to slap the hand off his shoulder.  His irritation seemed more directed toward Cody for doubting their skills than his squadmate for his roughhousing, based on the sharp-eyed and almost disappointed glare he shot the Commander’s way.  “Typical n’urmankalar Reg.”

“Steady, Ramser,” Ruusaar said, emphasizing the presumed-sniper’s name peculiarly, as if it meant something else, and twice tapped a vambrace on the aurebrush 99 on Ramser’s shoulder.  He continued once Ramser slanted him a disgruntled glance, the Sergeant quirking his brow and putting on a smirk of his own.  “We’ll just have to prove to the Commander that we’re ori’ramikade for a reason.”

Cody’s Mando’a was a little hazy after so many years of being unable to use it aloud, but he knew what that word meant.  “Best of the best, huh?” he asked, amused at the casual arrogance.  “Guess we’ll have to put that to the test.  Think you boys are up for the challenge?”

The soldiers exchanged looks, seeming to speak without speaking, before as one they turned and gave a sharp salute.  “Yes, sir!” they all shouted, everywhere from rote (Tay) to excited (Chek) to defiant (Ramser) to amused (Eya) to determined (Ruusaar), and Cody couldn't help but smile.

He hadn’t requested this Commando Squad, but if they were half as good as they seemed to think they were, he certainly wasn’t going to complain about being stuck with this ‘Clone Force 99.’

Chapter Text

For the most part, Boba Fett considered himself pretty impossible to surprise at this stage in his life.  He had done and seen too much for much otherwise.  Usually, he was at most briefly taken aback when the unexpected happened, and was able to move on swiftly enough.

But this was a new one, even for him.

“What?” was all Boba could ask, blank, as he stared.  The once-Majordomo of Mos Espa cleared his throat and tapped his fingers with the familiar awkward smile he often wore when delivering what he knew was news his relatively new boss was unlikely to want to hear.

“Ah, well,” he blustered, waving one hand before going back to tapping his fingers, “it seems a surprise to myself, as well, your grace!  Who would have guessed—that is, who would have thought that such a ship was even still in service?  And the audacity of one who would use to it claim such a status!”  The twi’lek laughed in a high, false tone, more of a titter than an actual sound of amusement.  “Truly, times must have changed out in the wider galaxy!  I wonder if the, ehem, New Republic,” (before adding this man to his payroll, Boba had no idea there was a way to sound so disbelieving without slipping into outright offensiveness) “has slipped to allow such things!”

Fennec, perched casually on the arm of Boba’s throne, scoffed and racketed her rifle under the guise of checking she had sufficiently cleaned the barrel.  The twi’lek immediately shut his mouth with a startled little “eep”.  “Get on with it,” she said with a roll of her eyes, only the tenseness of her shoulders giving away her own unease and disbelief.

The ex-Majordomo quickly cleared his throat again.  “Yes, yes, of course!”  He took a moment to take a breath before, in a much more professional way, he repeated his earlier statement:  “A Republic-era Venorator-class ship self-identifying as ‘The Negotiator’—of all ships!—is requesting clearance to land using Clone War-era clearance codes, your eminence.  They say they…well, they say they are evoking a non-aggression treaty previously garnered with our once-Lord Jabba the Hutt?”

Boba let out a long breath of disbelief and turned to look at Fennec, who tilted her head to side-eye him back.  They had a brief silent conversation.  “I want Drash, a few of her men, and a squad of Gamorreans on standby in the hanger,” he said after having made his decision, already rising from his throne and grabbing his helmet as he did so.  Fennec hopped down to join him on the dias and checked the charge packs, knives, and other battle items on her belt as he continued.  “Krrsantan, the other Mods, and the rest of the guard will wait here in case we need the support.  Tell the rest of the staff to bunker down.”

The once-Majordomo made a little noise of disbelief.  “My lord,” he quickly said, voice higher than usual as he made a broad gesture of disbelief, “you think—you think this is an attack?”

Boba gave a grim little smile and slid on his helmet.  The modulation of his vocodor didn’t quite hide his black humor as he said, “Someone is using a famous Clone War-era gunship and codes as some sort of twisted intimidation tactic, referencing a treaty to a Republic that no longer exists with a sentient who very publicly perished near half a decade ago.  Whatever they are here for, I am certain it’s nothing good.”

The twi’lek gulped very audibly, but as always, rallied surprisingly quickly for such a cowardly being and swept an overdramatized bow.  “I will let the affected parties know posthaste!”  He paused, still deep in a bow, and lifted his head enough to peek up at Boba nervously.  “If I may, your highness, what should the communications department tell the ship?”

Boba’s smile spread into something closer to a smirk and he tilted his helmet, aware of Fennec settling comfortably at his shoulder.  “Tell them the Daimyo of Tattooine welcomes them to our planet, and looks forward to meeting the leader of their little operation to discuss the terms of their occupation.”  He grabbed his rifle and held it comfortably in his arms, very pointedly caressing the durasteel closest to the trigger and chuckling at the way the twi’lek shivered slightly at the sight.  “We will be waiting.”

Chapter Text

Of all the things Fox expected when he woke up this morning, approximately six years in the future, being killed by Darth Vader in a snit only to wake up in the past on Kamino with five little brothers he never expected to see again was not even close to on the list.  Considering that list mostly contained seeing hundreds of Vode die either in person or on reports, being tortured to near-insanity once again by the Emperor for shits and giggles, and/or screaming in the back of his head as he was forced to watch himself gun down innocents, it was probably a good alternative, but.  Well.

He also now had to deal with the pitying he had avoided for all three years his vod’ike had been able to think for themselves, so he supposed things could also be better.

“Did anyone work out what other orders were on the chips, other than the one we won’t be saying?” asked Thire out of nowhere, still wrapped around Fox like the most vocal security blanket in existence.  The eldest Commander would never admit how reassuring the heat and weight of his kih’vod’s hug was, in particular after nearly a year with no physical contact outside of harsh beatings or clinical medical exams.

“A few,” Wolffe indulgently, if gruffly, answered.  He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back, thunking his head against the wall behind the cot he had commandeered for his story telling time.  “Some are useless, like one that says if the Chancellor is declared unfit than the Chief of Defense takes over—which would be sound, actually, except due to his emergency orders that was also Palpatine—and some are just weird, like one which is apparently just destroying any communication devices?  Kriff if I know what use that would be, but whatever.

“And then you have the worse ones,” continued Wolffe, eyes narrowing at the wall.  “Obviously the one that was activated, which declares all Jedi as traitors who need to be executed on sight.”  All of Fox’s vod’ike shivered unconsciously and he ached to reach out to gather them into a cuddle pile like he would have if they were the ages they appeared to be, but Fox knew that it wouldn’t be appreciated right then.  Instead, he reached up to run a hand soothingly through Thire’s hair, silently proud to see Neyo doing the same for the still-shaken Bly across the way.  Now if Cody and Wolffe would just get over being stubborn lone strills and accept some support as well, he could maybe breathe easy again for a while.  “But there’s also one about taking out large crowds of civilians with lethal force in the pursuit of one criminal.  Trooper Jek from the Guard was one of the few the Rebellion managed to de-chip and he suspected that one had been used on them a few times, but obviously we can’t confirm that.”

It had definitely been used, Fox thought but didn’t say, remembering days he woke up with blood on his armor and no memory of how it got there only to find a late night report of mass killings in the lower levels on the Coruscant news.  He felt Thire shiver in his arms and knew his kih’vod had the same thought.

“A few others that I won’t get into—more about lethal force when it shouldn’t be needed, a couple for torture, even one to force us to eat our blasters—but we didn’t get to all of them.”  Wolffe hesitated, clearly wondering if he should finish his thought, but upon realizing everyone was staring at him he loosed a tired sigh that seemingly aged him by a decade (which, for a Vod, was more like two decades on a natborn human-or-near) and continued.  “After about five years from the Order, there were so few Vode left in the Empire that it was decided that any manpower spent decoding the chips would be better spent slicing into their systems instead.  A few hundred lives weighed against the trillions under that bastard’s rule…can’t say I blame them, as much as it eats to say.”

“A few hundred?” echoed Bly, faint, as he finally untangled himself from Neyo to rub at his already-red face but still touching shoulders in silent support.  As Wolffe shrugged helplessly in the way one who had already grieved could, Fox found he was grimly resigned to the number.  Bly, like the other three in the room who had died with Order Sixty-Six, could have no way of knowing how careless the Empire was with Vode lives; Fox assumed that it got worse as the years passed and those who still lived became too old to be of use any longer.  He still felt bitter at the thought of so many lives pointlessly lost, so many of his cyare vod’ike killed or worse, but if he wanted to keep moving and not crumble to pieces then he had to focus on the future.

“None of their deaths have happened yet,” the eldest Commander reminded in that vein, effortlessly drawing the eyes of his vod’ike.  He solemnly met each of their gazes to emphasize his words.  “All of our vode are alive and as safe as they can be here on Kamino.  From the tubies to the cadets to the other Commanders, they’re all here and alive.  We need to focus on that and how to keep them that way, not on losses that are now moot.”

“Ponds is alive!” Neyo suddenly blurted, nearly throwing Bly to the floor with the force of his uncharacteristic shout.  The surprised squeak the elder Vod let loose would have probably earned him some brotherly ribbing if anyone bothered to care past the revelation.

“Thorn is alive,” breathed Thire, equally enthralled, as he swung his near-black gaze to meet Fox’s amber.  The elder quirked his lips in agreement.

“Everyone is alive,” Fox pointedly repeated.  He swept his eyes over the room, eventually settling on the gobsmacked Wolffe, who had lived the longest and thus lost the most out of all of them, before he added a slightly more sobering, “Whether any of them remember as we do, however, is a different question entirely.”

As the room quieted again, Fox decided he was getting tired of these weighty silences.  This was, what, the fifth one in the hour or so since they had woken up in this time?  They weren’t going to get anything of import done at this rate.

“We need a way to signal we remember to anyone else who does,” Cody, thankfully the most level-headed of Fox’s vod’ike, said.  He had always been the closest to baseline out of the Commander-class Vode, and without the distinctive sickle-shaped scar on his face, he would easily blend into a crowd to the point where not even his closest brothers would be able to find him unless they had a way to see the notch of skin missing from his left ear due to a sparring match gone just a bit too far.  “Have we already had our ARC training at this point?”

“That would only help with others who have ARC training in the future,” Neyo was quick to point out, having recovered from his outburst and settled back into his default near-deadpan.  The youngest of the Commander class tried so hard to be stoic, but he could never fool the other Commanders, who all knew how hot his temper could run and how much he secretly reveled being dragged into their crazier schemes.  “Even if the answer to that question wasn’t a ‘yes’.”

“We don’t even know how old we are right now, how would you know if we had ARC training?” asked Bly, smirking slightly and reaching out to poke the younger’s shoulder.  Neyo’s lip curled and he opened his mouth to snark back, already reaching up to shove in retaliation—

“Not the time, Vode,” Fox said to interrupt what he knew would quickly become an argument-cum-wrestling match and probably end in outright bloodshed.  Bly and Neyo both had the decency to look slightly abashed at the implied reprimand, Bly rubbing sheepishly at his scar and Neyo looking away with arms crossed and a slight bit of red on his cheekbones.

Chapter Text

Echo was no stranger to waking up in a panic.  Even before the night terrors brought about by his time with the Techno Union, he had been prone to nightmares of varying sorts, sending him rocketing into consciousness with adrenalin running high enough he had no hope of falling back asleep.  It was part of why he had spent so much time as a cadet memorizing the regs; learning and reciting set rules, a clear series of steps to follow in a familiar cadence of order, helped calm him down when his heart was hammering and his hands were shaking and all he wanted to do was pace around until he could no longer walk.

With that being said, this was a different sort of panic he awoke with, one that was impossibly harder to deal with.  Mostly because he shouldn’t have been awake.

He should have been dead.

Gasping and rocketing into a sitting position, Echo narrowly avoided hitting his head against the metal ceiling of—wherever the kriff he was.  A metal tube of a coffin?  No, a retractable bunk, he realized after looking around the dimly lit area, like the ones…

Like the ones used on Kamino.

In a daze, Echo hit the button that would slide out his slab.  The room was similarly dim, with barely enough light to see by, but there was no doubting that he was in the cadet barracks that he and the rest of Domino Squad had been assigned to on Kamino.  The room where he’d lived for most of his life alongside many of his brothers, including the four in particular whom he hadn’t quite connected with until the very end of their training.

The room where Ninety-Nine had died defending the Republic, as he was so proud to be able to do.

Numbly staring at the spot where he had once held the prematurely aged clone as he passed, Echo wondered what in all Sith-hells was going on.  Last he remembered, he and the rest of the Bad Batch had been trying to hold their own as the Empire brought its full might upon their heads, sick of their constant meddling after months of sabotage.  Wrecker had been down, but alive, and Echo had gone to try and provide cover so Hunter could pull their largest brother to safety—

He had been struck on the semi-exposed portion of his cerebral implant, he remembered, absently reaching up to touch where it once covered what little had remained of his ears after the Techno Union was through with him.  The headphone-like dampener/armor that covered it had been designed to withstand standard blaster fire, but whatever had struck him was some sort of stronger shot and damaged something in the delicate circuitry.  Feedback had screamed through his brain to the point he was driven to his knees for a moment, scrambling to jam at the buttons that would manually reroute his neural connections so he could actually function—but before he could, he had felt his head jerk with the force of another strike in approximately the same spot, and he knew no more.

So.  Echo was fairly sure that had been a kill shot and he should have been dead.  Instead, he was here, awake and aware and…significantly more Human than he had been in a while.  The blank stare he had been directing to the floor was moved to the hand that should have been a scomp link, but was instead once more flesh and blood as he lowered it from his ear.  He flexed his fingers and could feel the muscles moving, see the ripple of flesh and the subtle pulse of veins, and still there was a dream-like sense to it.

Maybe that was it.  Maybe he was dreaming.  Keeping an eye on his now-flesh hand, he raised the other to pinch at the sensitive skin below his ear—and immediately flinched at the resulting spike of pain.  Okay, so it wasn’t a dream.

Echo blinked.

It wasn’t a dream.  He was alive, and whole, and what the kark was going on???

Before he could fully devolve into a panic, the pod next to his slid open and one of his brothers rolled into a sitting position.

“You good there, Brother?” asked the clone in a sleepy voice, final word breaking on a yawn, and suddenly Echo was internally screaming for an entirely different reason.

“…Fives?” he asked in return, and startled at the sound of it.  His voice had been permanently wrecked after his rescue from Skako Minor, leaving it gruffer and more prone to breaking than before, so to hear the slightly higher and softer pitch he used to possess (now possessed again?) was a shock of its own.

Blinking away a haze of sleep, the clone next to him quirked a brow.  “Yeah…?”  Echo worked his mouth for a moment, at a loss.  His closest brother, the second part of the Domino Twins as others in the 501^st had jokingly dubbed them for always being attached at the hip, was right there, younger and unmarked by his tattoo or goatee or too many years of war and most importantly alive, looking increasingly bewildered and concerned the longer Echo didn’t speak.  “Are you okay, Echo?”

“No,” Echo automatically replied.  At Fives’s startled look, he quickly shook his head and gave a hoarse sort of laugh.  “I mean, uh.  Yeah, I’m fine.  Just…just a nightmare.”

Fives was obviously unconvinced.  After glancing around the room to check for unwanted spectators, he heaved himself from his bunk to half-jump over to Echo’s, smirking and purposely taking an extra moment to settle himself into a comfortable slouch when Echo shook out of his funk enough to level him with a disapproving look.  “Yeah, yeah, I know, regs say we gotta stay in our bunks after curfew, but you look like you can use the company.”  Fives’s smirk drifted into something more worried when Echo didn’t immediately respond and, with only a slight hesitation, he gently knocked their shoulders together.  “Seriously, you wanna talk?  I, uh, can listen, if you need it.”

If this had happened to Echo at any other chapter of his life, he wouldn’t have hesitated.  Fives had been his closest brother since they had been assigned to the same cadet squad, his best friend for almost as long, and his other half since they’d scraped their way through Rishi and solidified their semi-codependency during ARC training.  The idea of not sharing everything with him would have been inconceivable.

But Echo had lived what sometimes felt like a lifetime without Fives, for all it was technically two and a half years and he only actively remembered one and a half of them.  He had spent a long time learning to function independently (even if Tech probably would have argued he simply spread his dependency more evenly among the Bad Batch instead of focusing on a single brother) and so he hesitated.  Could he put this all on Fives?  Burden him in such a way with everything that had happened—would happen—to both of them, to the other clones, to the Republic and the galaxy as a whole?

“Thanks, but I think I’m okay now,” he eventually said with a small smile and knocked shoulders back.  Fives looked dubious and concerned enough that Echo’s smile widened and became that bit more real.  At this point of time he’d landed in, they’d bickered more than they would in the future (in particular during and after squad evaluations), but no one could argue that despite the occasional tension they always had each other’s back.  “I’ll let you know if that changes, alright?”

“…alright, I guess,” Fives sighed dramatically, rolling his eyes in the same motion.  He smiled back afterward, though, and soon after pushed at Echo’s shoulder more firmly.  “Now lay down and go back to sleep!  It’s at least three hours to muster and Bric’s been even more of a laserbrain than usual this week, so we’re going to need the energy to put up with him.”

Echo chuckled, wistful at the reminder of a time when his biggest concern was whether their trainers were in a good mood or not, but obediently followed the shove and allowed himself to lay down.  He hesitated, however, before he was fully horizontal, and Fives cocked his head in a wordless question when he noticed.  “…can you…I mean, do you mind…?”

He drifted off, embarrassed at the request he was second guessing even as he spoke, but Fives caught on pretty quickly.  With a huff of a laugh, the other clone dropped onto his side and wrapped him in a hug, smirking when Echo nearly collapsed into the embrace.  “I won’t tell the others if you don’t.”

“Thanks, Fives,” mumbled Echo into his chest, hugging back.  If he was clinging more tightly than usual, Fives didn’t say anything, just hummed as he hit the button to retract the bunk.

There were a million things to do, Echo knew.  So many events were going to occur over the course of the next few years, and for all Echo preferred to follow than lead when possible, if he was the only one to travel to this time (and he wouldn’t get his hopes up otherwise) then he was going to have to do what he could to make the galaxy a better place.  Everything from the farce of a war they were trapped in to the chips in their heads to the Jedi’s upcoming genocide to the Chancellor-turned-Emperor at the head of it all, they were all issues he had to rectify.

That was a concern for the future, however.  For now, it was early morning on Kamino at some point in the first few months of the war at the latest, and Fives was alive and already drifting to sleep in his arms.  He could take the time to relax and settle into his new/old life.

But after.

Well.

Echo was an elite clone soldier, a tactician, a survivor, an overall ornery son of a bitch—and more than that, he was now the eldest of about three million brothers who all needed his protection.

And when it came to protecting his brothers?  Echo wouldn’t let anyone stand in his way.

The next few cycles were…an adjustment, to say the least.  Since his joining of the Bad Batch, Echo, for all he craved structure in his routine, had gotten used to having that structure constantly destroyed.  Falling back in time to what he learned was about three months into the Clone Wars, and thus a month before Domino Squad passed their final assessment, had come with a guaranteed daily routine that he had once reveled in but now just found grating.  Wake up, go to muster, eat at the mess, get his ass handed to him by either Bric or El-Les depending on the day (and that was an unexpected wake-up call: realizing that he’d traded the return of his missing limbs for a lack of muscle memory and definition, for all he was quickly gaining it back using remembered exercises from his rehabilitation after being rescued from Skako Minor and, once he was comfortable with that, the simpler routines from ARC training), eat again, do afternoon flash learning modules and time at the range, one more visit to the mess, an hour to unwind before lights-out, and then after precisely eight hours of sleep/rest do it all over again.

It had only been one standard week, and already Echo was about ready to scream.  His squad mates weren’t helping, either.  While he had remembered they had some friction, he’d somehow forgotten just how distant they all were, in particular during group sims.  The first time Fives snapped at him over a perceived mistake he was so taken aback it took a few seconds for him to recover enough to give a dry quip in reply.  Fives had at least looked suitably sheepish and muttered a quick apology after he overcame his initial surprise at Echo’s calm.  The others, however…

Well.  Echo was trying to be patient, but it was difficult.  Hevy, still CT-782, was constantly trying to pick fights both verbal and physical with everyone, squadmate or otherwise; Droidbait, who had freshly decided to turn the once-insult into his Name, often retreated into himself and was quiet to the point of near-constant silence; Cutup, back to CT-4040, was smarmy and just as likely to pick fights as 782, sometimes with them but most often with Bric or other squads; and Fives, while still his closest brother, was far more of a dick than he would one day be and usually was the one doing the fighting, especially if he thought someone other than himself was insulting Echo.  Dealing with them was like wrangling a bunch of cadets!

At the end of his fifth cycle in the past, Echo sighed to himself as he wandered alone just before curfew.  That was literally what he was doing.  At least they mostly left him alone since he no longer fought back when teased or outright antagonized, either ignoring the comments or replying with a jab that shut them up pretty quickly.  Fives got a kick out of it, and to his surprise 4040 was much more relaxed and friendlier to him far sooner than last time around after he realized that Echo was willing to verbally spar instead of retreating into silence or just decking him for an ill-timed joke like he once would have.

Still, the tenseness of the squad left him unbalanced and desperately wishing for the easy camaraderie of Clone Force 99.  They, too, sniped at and teased each other and occasionally picked fights, but even from the beginning it had been with an air of brotherly affection rather than outright hostility.  The bittersweet remembrance of fellowship was probably why Echo’s feet took him to the Batch’s barracks’ entrance.

He blinked to himself upon arriving, staring at the unassuming door that led into their safe space on Kamino, and for a brief moment entertained the idea of slicing the lock and making his way in.  But what would he do once inside?  Just stare at a semi-familiar space and reminisce, if no one was there?  And what if someone was there, either part or all of the Batch?  What would he even say???

“‘Hi, I’m Echo,’” he muttered to the closed door.  “‘You don’t know me yet, and I know I look like a Reg, but I’m actually a Bad Batcher, too.  Want to hang out and complain about the other Troopers with me?  Maybe plan some light treason against the Chancellor while we’re at it?’”  He huffed a sardonic laugh at himself, shaking his head.  “Yeah, that would go over well.”

“It seemed like a fairly standard introduction, actually, if one disregards the talk of treason,” a familiar Core-adjacent accent mused at his side.  Echo, thankfully, did not scream at the unexpected sound, although he did suck in a breath and whirl on his heel to turn and look slightly up at where he expected a face to be—

Only to blink and look down instead.  As he had expected, the familiar voice belonged to one of the Batchers, specifically Tech…but while he had expected the orange-tinted goggles and lighter brown hair and thinner- and paler-than-baseline face, what he hadn’t expected was the fact that his polymath little brother was so small!  Echo had always known he was the eldest of their squad, of course, but he hadn’t met them until they were 10, the equivalent of about 20 or 21 on a natborn for all that some of them were physically slightly older or younger due to their mutations.  Tech had always been on the lower end of that spectrum, but this…this was…!

“You’re a cadet,” blurted Echo, only to immediately wince.  Tech, at 7 chronologically but seeming physically closer to a natborn preteen (maybe 13 if one was being generous), looked spectacularly unimpressed.

“As are you,” he returned, reaching up to adjust his goggles.  The magnification of the lenses made his eyes appear larger, and coupled with the baby fat still clinging to his face, it just made him seem even more impossibly young.  “Echo, did you say your name was?”

Echo felt his cheeks heat and cleared his throat.  “Yeah, uh, yes.  That’s me.  I’m Echo.”  He waggled his hand in a half-wave, dropping it almost immediately after.  “Hello.”

Tech tilted his head to the side with a small, thoughtful hum.  “What are you doing here, Echo?  This hallway is far enough removed from the general barracks that it is unlikely you stumbled upon it by accident.”

“Right,” agreed Echo, still trying to reboot.  All his protective instincts were positively screaming at him to bundle this tiny version of his brother up and protect him from every wrong in the world by any means necessary, which was more than a bit disorienting.  “Uh.  I was just…wandering around, I guess.  Getting rid of some extra energy before curfew hits.”

“Again, this hallway is very far removed from the general barracks,” said Tech matter-of-factly.  “Why did you come here in particular?”  When Echo didn’t answer right away, not sure how to better phrase ‘because I miss you and the rest of the Batch (even if we haven’t actually met from your perspective) like I once missed my limbs (which haven’t been lost yet),’ the younger clone loosed another brief hum.  “I see.”

Echo grimaced.  He hated it when Tech said ‘I see’ in that tone, mostly because whatever he saw was often correct and usually something that he wasn’t supposed to know; luckily, he was saved from having to continue the conversation by the slight flickering of the lights in the hallway, signaling the rapid approach of curfew.

“Sorry, but I should go,” he said, quickly seizing the excuse to escape.  He gave another awkward half-wave and began walking backwards.  “Nice to meet you, Tech.”

There was a minute pause before Tech nodded, goggles eerily reflecting the hallway lights and blocking his eyes from sight.  “Good-bye, Echo,” he replied, thoughtful.

It wasn’t until he was back in his bunk that Echo realized Tech had not left his spot in front of the Batch’s barracks until after the elder clone was far gone, and it wasn’t until halfway through the night cycle that Echo awoke, cursing himself as he abruptly remembered that Tech hadn’t actually introduced himself.

Sorting out that mess later was sure to be so much fun…

The next morning, as he had every morning since waking up in this time, Echo took a moment to look around the mess and see if he could spot the other members of the Bad Batch.  Part of the problem, he had realized upon seeing Tech the night before, was that he’d been looking for their grown selves—Wrecker in particular, since he was a head taller and twice as broad as the average clone, but also Crosshair who was only a few inches shorter and stood out with his silver hair and Tech who was only a bit smaller than that (Hunter and Echo endured the short jokes with good humor, being the only ones who were baseline height).  But the rest of Clone Force 99 weren’t full grown clones anymore, instead in the middle bit of the awkward and painful growth cycle every clone went through where they gained almost a foot in height over the span of a year, most likely more in their cases given their mutations.

So with that now in mind, Echo took a bit more care with his visual sweep of the cafeteria, paying special attention to spots where clones were scarce.  Sure enough, not too far from what would become their usual spot, four figures noticeably different from baseline clones were sat by themselves.

And, karking hell, they were all so tiny!  Hunter and Crosshair both had their backs to where Echo stood, Crosshair notably thin even at this age with a short crop of hair that still had some black threaded through the otherwise-silver locks and Hunter’s only different from baseline because his was straight rather than most clones’ tight curls, but Wrecker and Tech were facing him.  Tech, as Echo had noticed the night before, was smaller than most cadets his age and his light brown hair was cropped into the standard cadet cut instead of the longer slicked-back style he would eventually adopt, and Wrecker…he was nearly minuscule compared to his future height.  Sure, he was still taller and broader than his brothers at the table, but instead of his normal hulking form it moreso looked like a shiny had decided to hang out with a bunch of cadets, if one ignored his youthful face and blue fatigues.  Echo was a little upset to note that he already had his shrapnel facial scars and they seemed to be a few months old at most, which was also probably why he was also the only one of the Batch with a completely shaved head instead of the cadet haircut.

“Wha’cha lookin’ at, Echo?” asked 4040—Cutup—casually, having noticed his distraction.  He followed Echo’s line of sight and went a bit wide-eyed.  “Whoa, which trainer brought their lil’uns t’hang out wit us?”

Droidbait perked up at the mention of children and quickly figured out where they were looking only to immediately deflate upon seeing whom they were talking about.  “They’re not nat-borns, they’re clones,” he corrected, nudging 4040 with his elbow.

After elbowing Droidbait back with significantly more force, 4040 did a visible double take, ignoring the quieter’s cursing as he fought to keep his tray of rations from being knocked out of his hands.  “Don’ look like any clones I’ve ever seen, mate!”

“They’re experimental clones,” Echo offered, tone soft and maybe a bit fonder than it should have been; Hunter’s head moved and soon after Tech and Wrecker completely unsubtly looked in their direction.  Both Droidbait and 4040 were quick to look away, but Echo smiled and waved, his smile widening when Wrecker at first looked surprised but soon shared a giant grin and waved enthusiastically back.  Tech just gave a contemplative tilt of his head before presumably going back to whatever conversation the table was having.  “Nala Se’s pet project, a group of clones with ‘desirable mutations.’  Rumor is they’re going to be one of those elite Commando squads when their training’s done in a couple years.”

“Nala Se’s?!” repeated Fives, openly incredulous and disgusted and none too little pitying as he came up on Echo’s other side.  Wrecker stopped waving and made a face in Crosshair’s general direction, his grin quickly turning into a petulant scowl as he responded to whatever the surly sniper-to-be had said just quietly enough that Echo couldn’t hear him.  “Ugh!  No thank you.  It’s bad enough dealing with her every couple weeks for our ‘maintenance checks;’ I can’t imagine being stuck under her microscope as often as they gotta be.”

“Poor bastards,” 782—Hevy—agreed with a grimace, the final member of their squad to finish getting his rations.  The squad stared at the Batch for a few seconds longer before 782 cleared his throat and plastered on a tone of gruff authority.  “Come on, we better get some seats.  Bric was talkin’ about making us run the Citadel sim first thing.”

Echo flinched violently, tearing his gaze away from what would one day be Clone Force 99 to instead turn a grimace toward the other Dominoes.  “Right,” he muttered, voice hoarse, and ducked his head.  “The…Citadel sim.”

Fives darted a sharp, concerned look at him, the other members of their squad also giving him expressions of varying amounts of worry and confusion.  Echo tried very hard not to let on that he noticed and focused on not allowing his hands to shake.  He’d…not quite forgotten that the Citadel Challenge would be their final test, but vaguely remembering something as an aside was very different from actively being reminded of it.

For a moment, Echo thought he could hear the crash of repeated blaster fire, the thundering boom of Generals Skywalker and Piell’s speeder exploding, his own voice shouting about how this was their only chance, Fives’s desperate scream of Echo, look out—!!!

A hand on his arm drew Echo out of his own mind and he jerked to look at the source of the touch.  It was Cutup, who sported a rare expression of concern rather than his normal teasing smirk.  “You okay, brother?” he asked, words carefully enunciated and tone low as the others loosely surrounded them in a protective shield against potential Kaminoan or Trainer onlookers.

Echo closed his eyes and roughly shook his head.  “Fine,” he said, curt.  He immediately grimaced and cleared his throat at the rough sound of his own voice, more near to what he sounded like after Skako Minor (after the Citadel, came the traitorous taunt of his mind) than the higher and softer tones he had in this time, and was relieved it was back to his new/old normal when he next spoke.  “I mean, I’m fine.  Sorry, Cutup.  I just got a bit caught up thinking about our final exam.”

Cutup didn’t seem too interested in his excuses.  As soon as his name left Echo’s mouth, he went wide-eyed and abruptly let go of the time traveler’s arm, only waiting until Echo trailed off before he asked, “…wha’d’ya just call me?”

It took a too-long moment before Echo realized what was wrong.  Immediately, all trace of his flashback-induced mental fog fled and he silently cursed himself for getting lost in his head again.  That was twice in as many cycles that he’d messed up like that!  “Ah, I meant—sorry, CT-4040, I, uh…I don’t know…where that came from?”

Instead of calling him out on the obvious lie, the other cadet just looked a bit thoughtful.  “Cutup,” he said reflectively, drawing out the two syllables as he did so.  He repeated it a few more times with varying inflections and tones before, abruptly, he gave a wide smirk and clapped Echo on the shoulder.  “Ha!  I like it!  Whaddaya think, boys?”

“Sure describes you,” Hev—damn it, Echo, stop, don’t make the same mistake a third time!—782 said, tone dry.  He glanced backward from where he was standing nearly shoulder-to-shoulder with Fives and Droidbait, still acting as a living wall against prying eyes.  “You guys done yet?  We’re going to start drawing attention soon.”

4040 gave an exaggerated roll of his eyes and scoffed.  “Pft, you’re jus’ jealous you ain’t gotta name picked yet!”  His expression quickly shifted back into a pleased smirk.  “Decided this’s gonna be my name, by the way.  Cutup!  Really rolls offa th’tongue!”

Seeming to realize by the newly-(re)dubbed Cutup’s flippancy that things were under control, the three other Dominoes relaxed their guard to turn back to the others.  “It suits you,” offered Droidbait on a smile.  Fives nodded in agreement, but said nothing at first, instead shooting Echo a look that promised he was going to be pressing for answers on what had gotten into his unofficial twin when they were in the barracks later and safely away from prying Kaminoan and Cuy’val Dar eyes.

When Echo ducked his head to acknowledge the silent message, Fives turned a grin onto the newly-dubbed Cutup.  “Congrats, brother,” he said, clapping the other’s shoulder and giving it a little shake.  His grin shifted into a mischievous smirk and he slanted a sideways glance at 782.  “Now we just need to get Mr. Clones-Don’t-Need-Names to figure out his, and we’ll be a full set!”

782 scowled and fully turned away from the room to go from protective to angry, his ever-so-slightly larger build from being on the heavy gunner track making him loom a bit.  “Don’t start that!” he snapped, a little louder than necessary.  “It’s no one’s business if I don’t have a name but mine!”  His scowl twisted into something meaner, and he leaned forward until his face was a bit too close to Fives’s for comfort, the old training scars cutting along the underside of his jaw shadowing just enough to make them menacing.  “Not that you’re one to talk, Four-Fives.  Dropping off half a shorthand doesn’t make much of a name, does it?”

A long time spent alongside Fives meant that Echo could tell just by the twitch at the edges of his unofficial twin’s smirk that things were about to escalate very quickly.  “Not in the canteen,” he cut in, sharp with the edge of authority he had learned during ARC training.  His squadmates, both the two involved in the coming argument and the two not, all instinctively startled into straighter stances and turned attentive eyes toward him; it would probably surprise them later that he didn’t immediately fold under the intense gazes, but years of working with first the unruly 501^st and then the impossibly more unruly Clone Force 99 meant that he was used to being silently dared to back down during the rare times he used his authority as a ranking officer and was able to shove aside his discomfort relatively easily.

“There’s too big of a chance for negative attention here.  Save the infighting for the dorms, or during spars later today,” continued Echo, still with that stern authority in his tone, if slightly less bite.  He paused a moment and let his expression slip into a wry and self-deprecating smile.  “We’ve chanced getting the longnecks’ attention too much already today with my little moment.  It’s probably best we don’t make it worse.”

The rest of his squad exchanged looks, Fives and 782 still looking slightly hostile (782 more noticeably than Fives), but they all reluctantly nodded in the end.  They moved toward their normal table, trays still in hand and miraculously unspilled, with Echo trailing slightly behind the others and glancing around surreptitiously to make sure they truly had gone unnoticed.  He breathed a silent sigh of relief when he realized there were no Kaminoans around and the few trainers scattered about were too busy observing their own charges to notice a handful of clones having a purely verbal spat.

There was one group watching them, however, he soon noticed.  Hunter had finally turned away from his batchmates to look over his shoulder, his startlingly young and untattooed face serious and his brown eyes piercing as they met Echo’s own on the tail end of his final sweep of the room.  They held gazes for a brief, charged moment—and then Hunter nodded, just once.

Echo could do little more than nod back.

Chapter Text

Hunter trusted EC-9903’s intuition.  Really, he did—his polymath little brother may not have been the best with people (they were working on that), but he was a genius in so many senses of the word that it was almost inadequate to call him one.

With that being said, this theory he’d just shared with them on their way into the mess was pushing it.

“There’s no way,” 9904 hissed, his already normally surly expression even more sour as they settled at the very edge of one of the cafeteria’s empty tables.  He savagely stabbed into his green ration, bright gold eyes narrowed on EC-9903.  “A Reg, using the Force?!”

“Ninety-Nine says not t’call ‘em that,” Wrecker dutifully mumbled through a mouthful of saltfish, already eyeing up the rest of their plates to see if he could swipe anything when they weren’t paying attention.  9904 flapped a hand dismissively at him.

“It’s the only conclusion that makes sense,” EC-9903 announced just as matter-of-factually as he had told them of the encounter the night before.  Fussing with his tray to try and precisely align it to the table’s edges, he began listing off the same points they’d heard already.  “He knew where our barracks was, he knew we call ourselves the Bad Batch, he knew our favorite pastime is complaining about the regular troopers—”

“So he’s a stalker,” 9904 dismissed, still staring down EC-9903 even as he brandished his utensil threateningly at Wrecker’s hand when it inched toward the half-serving of red rations he was carefully saving for dessert.  “Wouldn’t be the first time a Reg did some recon before an ambush.”

EC-9903 huffed quietly and frowned in a rare display of irritation at them not understanding something he said (normally, he just let them assume he was wrong so he could gloat about it later).  “If you’d let me finish,” (9904 rolled his eyes,) “you’d know that he also called me by the moniker that EC-9900 insists upon using.”

They all stilled at that, even Wrecker pausing in his eternal attempts to steal their food.  Hunter, who had been silent up until this point so the others could get the bickering out of their system before training, sucked in a breath; although in their private quarters Ninety-Nine had always used the nicknames he’d given them before they could even speak, everywhere else, he used whatever address each of them preferred (which, for Wrecker and more recently Hunter, also happened to be their nicknames-turned-chosen names).  There was no way anyone outside of their group could know them.

EC-9903 nodded decisively at their reactions, expression smoothing back into his normal neutral as he took advantage of their silence to take a few bites of his meal before he continued.  “There’s also further circumstantial evidence to support that he is at least clairvoyant, if not outright Force-sensitive.”

“Yeah, you said he thought you were taller, right?” asked Wrecker, unexpectedly giving his two credits as his face twisted up in thought.  “But that don’t make sense.  If he was watchin’ us, he’d already know you’re a pipsqueak.”

“My height is perfectly within acceptable parameters for my stage of development,” EC-9903 stressed, voice cracking at the emphasis.  Hunter elected not to remind the genius that he was shorter than even Regs that had been decanted a full standard year after them.

“Settle, please,” Hunter cut in before they could escalate, doing his best to use the ‘strict and assertive’ tone the CC trainers were trying to teach him since he was going to be the leader of their squad one day.  He must have done alright, because with only minimal grumbling, all three turned their attention to him.  “Look, EC-9903, maybe you’re right, but until we get the chance to talk to this ‘Echo’ we can’t assume anything.  It’d probably be dangerous if we did.”

“How’d it be dangerous?” asked Wrecker, gnawing on the edge of his utensil and probably unaware he was denting it with the force of his bite.

Before Hunter could begin to list the myriad of reasons why it was dangerous for both them and the mysterious possibly-Force-sensitive clone, he heard something that caught his attention.

“—Echo?” came from near the end of the mess line, shortly followed up with a surprised, “Whoa, which trainer brought their lil’uns t’hang out wit us?!”

Strange variation of the clone accent aside, it wasn’t an unfamiliar question from those who came from older Gens, although the fact that this one said the name of the very person they were speaking about was obviously a red flag.

While another clone corrected the first one, Hunter tilted his head to indicate the direction the conversation was coming from, wryly asking EC-9903, “Is that him?”

EC-9903 had some amount of tact and only turned enough to be able to look where Hunter gestured, but Wrecker, as always, had absolutely none.  Their biggest brother perked up, dropped his abused utensil, and eagerly swung his head around.  After a pause, a beaming grin took up his face and he waved, rocking back and forth on the bench with his enthusiasm.

“Yes, that’s him,” EC-9903 confirmed, turning back and completely ignoring how the whole table swayed due to his seatmate.  “I would presume those with him are his squad or batchmates, as they all appear to be from within the same generation.”

“Would you stop acting like a damn monkey-lizard before you break the table!?” snapped 9904, lifting his tray so his drink didn’t spill. Wrecker immediately scowled/pouted even as he obediently lowered his arm.

“You’re just mad you can’t see him ‘cause you wanted to face the doors,” he grumbled, petulantly folding his arms over his chest.  9904 made a near-growling noise of frustration, but tellingly didn’t argue.

Hunter, who had only been half paying attention to his batchmates because he was trying to listen in on Echo and his squad and/or batch, shared, “He knows Nala Se is in charge of our batch and seems confident we’re all going to be a Commando squad in a few years.”

“Obviously he can’t see the future, then,” 9904 muttered bitterly, sightless glare set on his small grouping of red rations.  “We already know I’ll be sent on solo sniper missions only.”

“Or Cody will come through and convince the new General that we work better as a unit,” EC-9903 said in a flat show of uncharacteristic optimism, then tilted his head to look over the younger clone and Hunter’s shoulders.  “…I believe Echo is having a panic attack.”

Hunter had to fight not to turn as he tuned back in.  “It seems we’re not the only ones he’s picked up a name for,” the eldest of the group reported a bit incredulously.  The newly-dubbed Cutup began bragging about his new name and how much it resonated with him, leaving Hunter to hum thoughtfully as he glanced back to EC-9903.  “He can see the future, huh?”

The unimpressed look he got in reply answered enough, as well as Echo rallying to masterfully wrangle the others, and Hunter finally gave into his curiosity.  He turned so he could look over his shoulder at the no-longer-commotion, and he got his first look at Echo.

There was something about the way the not-regular-clone held himself that was different, some sort of confidence and ease, contrasting his too wide, slightly leaning stance that made it seem as if he was compensating for weight and/or a lack of balance that wasn’t there, but otherwise he seemed to be completely normal clone—until they locked gazes, and Hunter saw a brief surprise in Echo’s eyes that quickly settled into fondness, complete with what seemed to be a subconscious half-smile.

Hunter nodded in acknowledgement and noted that Echo didn’t hesitate to nod back before giving a visual sweep over their batch, still with that peculiar fondness.  That, more than anything, sealed it for Hunter.

Whatever the reason for his behavior, clairvoyance or otherwise, Echo clearly felt a connection to them.  It would be a disservice not to investigate it and see if they had to add another member to their motley group.

Chapter Text

There was a strangely charged moment when their new General, Jedi Knight Aayla Secura, was first introduced to her new Clone Commander, Marshal Commander “Bly” CC-5052.  None of the troops of the newly-assigned 327th Star Corps quite knew why they felt that way, but universally, they all sensed a peculiar electric feeling in the air when General Secura’s brilliant blue eyes met the visor hiding Bly’s molten brown.  Even the Kaminoan who was introducing them seemed to notice, given the extra sway to their motions when they excused themselves to "allow the General to meet her units."

General Secura did not acknowledge the Kaminoan’s polite-adjacent farewell other than a barely-visible sideways tilt of her head, one lekku slipping over her shoulder at the motion and curling ever-so-slightly at its edge.  Commander Bly, too, remained still, holding his salute with the rigidity expected of such a high ranking clone.

It was only when the doors closed behind the Kaminoan, leaving the landing bay where they were meeting empty aside from the Jedi and the clones, that either of them moved.   Whereas before General Secura had a very neutral, bordering on stern, expression, it very quickly melted into a mischievous smile that bore her sharp white teeth starkly against her sapphire skin.

“Aren’t you a little short for a ‘trooper?” she asked in a drawling Outer Rim-like accent despite having earlier expressed the lilting, rolling accent the battalion would later learn most twi’leks shared.  More than one of the clones were taken aback, not just by the accent or the mischief she excluded, but by her words.

Short…for a clone trooper?  There were some minor abnormalities among the million-plus clones, of course, but for the most part, they were all the same height.  Beyond that, Commander Bly was the very definition of a baseline clone, ignoring the thin scar slicing through his left eyebrow from some long-ago training accident.  ‘What is the General talking about?’ more than one trooper asked in the subtle hand and body signals they had developed as their own language, hidden from trainers and Kaminoans alike.

But apparently something about what General Secura said struck a chord in Commander Bly.  All at once, without any visible signal, the normally calm and by-the-books commander dropped his salute, shifted into a very casual stance with his arms folded loosely over his chestplate, leaned forward into General Secura’s space, and using a proper Core-world accent responded with, “I was about to ask the same of you, little brother.”

More than one shocked breath rippled along the ranks.  Because, what???  Did Commander Bly, one of the most straight-laced of the commander-class clones, not only order his salute without being told, but also directly challenge a superior (because however roundabout or confusing it was, there was no way that his response was anything but a challenge) in an accent he had never used before and call a nat-born and very obviously female-presenting superior officer ‘little brother’????

“What the actual kark,” one of the battalion’s Captains whispered below a baseline human-or-near’s hearing range, somehow managing to inject quite a bit of feeling into it.  General Secura’s lekku twitched—and, kriff, didn’t they help with hearing or something?  Or was that montrals?  More than one trooper wished they had paid more attention during their Inner-Species Relations modules—and her smirking smile turned into a wide grin.

“I am glad to know it’s you who will have my back,” she said, full of genuine fondness, leaving the Outer Rim-adjacent accent in favor of her twileki one.

“Always,” agreed Commander Bly, leaning back again and tilting his head in such a way that denoted an armored clone’s affection, dropping back into the Concord Dawn/Outer Rim mixed accent all clones shared.

Almost none of the troopers in the landing bay that day would ever fully understand what had happened, but many years later, they would all agree that it was the start of a legendary partnership.