Chapter Text
Fox has to supervise the tracker they brought in from off-world. Prime’s redhead, as Wolffe called her. Redhead is a bit much, he thinks, considering that head is more of a shock of pink.
Whatever. Not his business.
She seems… more of a bounty hunter than he expected. Boba had said she doesn’t fight, but she moves like she does. Not a soldier, not an assassin, but still capable of a good scrap.
Someone asks her if she needs some kind of sample to find Ventress, like clothing with a scent or the like.
“I am not a massif,” she snaps. After a moment, she says, “you have blood? Not dry.”
They do not have a blood sample from Asajj Ventress.
She rolls her eyes, as if they are all making this very hard for her on purpose. Fox meets Wolffe’s eyes, and does his best to project natborns. Wolffe grimaces like he gets it.
Fox watches the hope leave from the Jedi, as they ‘realize’ how bad of a plan this was, and then Uzumaki turns and starts moving people.
Koon, Billaba, and Commander Dume to one side. Yoda and Fisto to another. Windu off on his own.
“Type,” Uzumaki tells them.
Fox wonders what the hell she’s doing, but then Koon says, “ah. The lightsabers.”
He draws his own, lights it, and gestures to the blade. “Mine, Master Billaba’s, and Padawan Dume’s are all blue. Masters Yoda and Fisto have green blades, and Master Windu has purple.”
Uzumaki’s eyes narrow. She tilts her head, gestures as if demanding proof, and they all light their sabers to prove it.
She drifts closer. Fox rests a hand on his blaster, though he has an odd feeling that it won’t help much if she does do something. After all, there are multiple Jedi Masters in the room.
“There is… something small,” she says, looking at Koon’s lightsaber, but not touching it. “Like… stars.”
“The kyber crystal,” Koon says, and then hurries to explain at the unimpressed look he gets, “a rock, clear but with color. They help power the saber.”
Uzumaki nods slowly. “The mark?”
Mark? Like for a con? Girl, this is a target.
“Red,” Windu says. “It’s not a natural color. She bled her crystals.”
Uzumaki does not look any more impressed with him than she did with Koon.
“She gave her kyber her pain and anger, until they also hurt,” Windu tries instead.
With a nose-wrinkle of distaste, Uzumaki asks, “the rock thinks?”
Fox is also curious as to this question. The hedging hand-wiggle is almost a disappointment.
“Red stone,” Uzumaki says, “do you have a sample?”
They do. They get it, from wherever it’s hidden away. The Jedi are uncomfortable with it, though only Dume is young enough to really shy away. Uzumaki makes a face, picks up the saber it’s housed in, and closes her eyes.
Considers.
“I can use this,” she says, though she immediately hands it back.
She does a weird motion with her hands. Closes her eyes again. Says something, kagura shingan, that means nothing to Fox.
And then she opens her eyes and says, “more than one. Closest is… that way. Fifty? Kiromētoru, a little more?”
“In miles,” Boba pipes up.
She shoots him a look, as if he should know better. “I do not know.”
Boba frowns and thinks very hard. “Um… I think... the ratio was something like three miles is five of those things. About that?”
So thirty miles? Well. At least Boba’s being helpful, if only to enjoy the dawning horror of the Jedi.
“That direction,” Fox says pleasantly, “is the Senate.”
And suddenly, everyone gets very urgent about things.
Fox doesn’t bother to take charge, because it’s kind of nice to let the Jedi manage the tracker like this. Fox does take charge of Boba, pulling him over to that Dume kid and saying, “hold hands.”
Boba tries to kick Fox instead, which is stupid of him. Kind of endearing, but stupid.
“Caleb isn’t coming,” Billaba informs him. “We have a mission of our own to prepare for.”
“I don’t need a babysitter!” Boba spits.
“You need to be watched,” Fox says, as drily as he can. He gestures to a few of his men. “Keep an eye on him.”
“Are you going with the Jedi?” Porkchop asks; as a medic, he’s definitely going with the field team.
…which has already left.
“Yes,” Fox says, hurrying after them and ignoring the squabbling children behind him. “Come on.”
They pile into a large speeder, following the directions given by Uzumaki. She does not know anything about traffic lanes on Coruscant or the associated laws. She has a direction, and a distance, and that is what she gives them.
Fox appreciates this. She’s very no-nonsense. He wonders if she’s still like this when it’s not a job.
She’s interesting. He’d like to put her in a situation just to see what happens.
Hopefully not murder. Maybe an escape room? Oh, with Vos. He thinks someone could get punched. Preferably the Jedi that keeps popping into his office to steal classified documents.
They make it to the Senate district, and are directed not to the Senate Building, but to the Senate Executive Building. There are significantly more people in that one, most of them important. Fox should care, but the majority of them are at best annoying. Mostly, he’s just happy to have something interesting to do.
Uzumaki points them. They guide her through the various corridors and elevators, for the same reason as they’d been the ones to interpret traffic directions from her more literal vectors.
They end up at the Chancellor’s office. Fascinating.
Fox is the one to knock, and announce them, and lead them all in. He lets the Jedi explain in their usual controlled way, looking from a politely annoyed Chancellor to an impolitely bored Uzumaki.
“I assure you there is no such thing here,” the man says, as stiff as his stupid padded shoulders.
Uzumaki blinks at him, slow and unimpressed, and then walks to his desk and points to a drawer that Fox has never seen open, and says, “here. Two.”
And then she walks away.
Fox is captivated. He can genuinely believe that she has no political motives here. She just did her job. Just getting that bag.
“Asajj Ventress is not here,” she says, even slower than usual, as if they’re having trouble understanding her. “Only like feeling is in desk and that man. Next spot?”
…holy shit, she’s even trying to get them to move on. She just indicated that the Chancellor has possession of Sith artifacts, which is definitely illegal because you need a permit for that, and Fox knows every person on the planet that has such a permit: the Chancellor isn’t one of them.
(It’s just two museums, a complicated inheritance case on the other side of Coruscant, and the Jedi Temple itself. It’s not a hard list to memorize.)
Also, what was that about the Chancellor feeling like the red kyber?
…does that just mean he’s evil, or that he’s a Sith? Fox assumes it just means he’s evil. Most politicians are, and the Chancellor has more than proven his own slimy self to be the same.
“Chancellor,” Master Windu says, sounding very tired, “do you happen to own any undeclared Sith artifacts?”
“That is a horrendous accusation!” the Chancellor exclaims, as if he couldn’t just open the desk and show them. “What need do I have to hide such a thing? A permit would be simple, if I needed it!”
Uzumaki, Fox notes, is making a face. She taps Koon on the arm. “Will this be long?”
“I hope not,” Master Koon says. “It’s mostly an issue of paperwork.”
She rolls her eyes. “You pay for time.”
“I can assure you that it will be included your billed hours,” Master Koon says.
Uzumaki nods. She turns to the wall. She walks up it, and onto the ceiling, and sits down—sits up?—cross-legged, glued to the fresco.
She pulls out a datapad and hits something and, for a few seconds, the loud noises of a sound that Fox knows is associated with holonet thirst traps echoes down to them.
The conversation pauses in confusion and offense until she turns it down.
Not off. Just down.
Fox wants to study this woman like a bug.
Windu rallies first. “Chancellor, if you could just open the drawer so we can see that you aren’t carrying such items—”
“My private records are none of your business,” the Chancellor snaps. “Even if I were a regular citizen, you would need a warrant. I am the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic, my files are not for the eyes of just anyone!”
“…I am the head of your army, second only to yourself as Supreme Commander of the GAR,” Windu says. “I assure you that I am not ‘just anyone.’ We’d like to confirm that our contractor is capable of doing as she says, and also to check on the suspected presence of highly regulated weapons. I could obtain a warrant, and easily, but it would take time that we do not have in this war. Please just let us look in the drawer.”
The Chancellor… has a very polite tantrum. Fox is not as tired as Windu looks, but that’s mostly because Fox isn’t the one arguing with his boss. Fisto and Koon are more on Fox’s level of Done With This Shit, while Uzumaki is still watching things on the ceiling.
She’s biting her lip. And blushing a little.
Fox wants to know what she’s watching. It’s probably more interesting than the Chancellor’s stupid drawer.
‘Need a warrant.’ Pssh. Fox doesn’t need a warrant. The Senate passed a law three weeks ago to let him do just about anything in the name of galactic security concerns, as far as privacy goes. He doesn’t have the time to do it, usually, and his lower-ranking officers do still need warrants, most of the time, but it’s also not something he wants to pull out of his pocket on a whim. He has the highest security clearances in the Galaxy except for the Chancellor himself, anyway, so he doesn’t usually need such a thing. If the Senate realized he could violate their privacy so easily and legally, could arrest them on vague ‘suspicions of treason’ and hold them indefinitely, until the war ended, without trial, they would probably close the loophole.
So he doesn’t use it.
Fox might never have an opportunity this good to screw over his boss again.
Windu is still trying to politely get the Chancellor to just show him the damn illegal collectibles. The Chancellor is still refusing. They are being very annoying.
Uzumaki’s datapad lets out a painfully fake moan, and she snickers. That is significantly less annoying, on account of how funny Fox thinks the Chancellor’s face is right now.
Thorn calls up to her, “are you watching porn?!”
“No,” she answers. “It was a bad joke. That was, ah… punchline? For video.”
Fox is so glad that he’s got his helmet on. Nobody can see how much he wants to laugh at this stupid situation.
He wants to take Uzumaki out for a drink after this. He has a feeling she’d be great for collecting blackmail. Expensive, though. Maybe they could just discuss tactics.
Fox eyes the desk drawer. It’s locked, biometric, but it doesn’t look all that strong. He probably shouldn’t shoot it.
But he is a bio-engineered soldier with a decent amount of muscle, no need for a warrant, and an opportunity to arrest his boss on real violations of the law. If it’s real Sith stuff, then that means it’s somehow, indirectly, connected to actual Sith, and the only Sith anyone knows of right now are Separatists, which is definitely under that beautiful umbrella of security concerns.
When the Chancellor stands and leans over the table to better argue his point, Fox slips a vibroknife out of its holster, steps forward, and easily drives it into the gap of the drawer. Before anyone can stop him, he angles it and pushes hard enough to break the wood that the biometric lock is drilled into. The drawer jolts open, and Fox ignores the sudden yelling to pull it out the rest of the way, dump the contents, and punch through the false bottom that he can feel something rattling about in.
It’s really stupid, in Fox’s opinion, to choose opulent expenses like real hardwood when durasteel would be more effective at protecting the supposed files.
Supposed, because the false bottom he just destroyed was in fact hiding a pair of lightsabers, which tumble to the ground. For a moment, they just lay there.
“Huh,” Fox says, pretending to be chill about this instead of incredibly giddy to have something come of it all, “she even got the number right.”
He should light one to check if it’s red, but that might put him in the bad graces of the Jedi, not just the Chancellor. Instead, he picks one up and holds it out to the Jedi. “If you can’t find the provenance paperwork, you can get Vos to look at it, yes?”
Windu looks ill.
There is a tiny, tinny moan from the ceiling corner.
How is she still watching thirst traps in this scenario? Fox aspires to give so little of a shit. He needs to invite this girl out for drinks. He wants to see what happens when people hit on her. His current hypothesis is violence. She seems the type.
Actually. Wait. She’s turned it off. She’s watching them now, expression inscrutable.
Fox does not get long to wonder about the shiny new toy that is Uzumaki Karin, because the Chancellor does something, ripping the lightsaber from Fox’s hand without touching it, and lights both sabers while in the midst of a backflip.
Huh.
“So… not just a collector’s item, then,” Wolffe says faintly. Fox cannot see his face, on account of the helmet, but he can imagine the expression that comes with that tone.
“I’m leaving,” Uzumaki announces, dropping from the ceiling, silent when she lands on thick, plush carpet.
Fox shouldn’t ask. He does. “Why?”
“I find. Not fight.” She strides towards the door. It locks before she reaches it.
General Windu is probably readying to say something else, but Fox doesn’t hear it, because what he does hear is, “Commanders, Execute Order 66.”
Everything gets a bit hazy, after that. He tries shooting Jedi Traitor Windu, which is very hard to do even when the traitor does not appear to be trying to kill Fox. This is a sign of stupidity, which is to be expected of a traitor.
“What a shame,” the Emperor says, saccharine sweet even as he succeeds at parting Traitor Fisto from several of his head tentacles, “that Asajj Ventress is breaking into these rooms, having turned off the cameras, and will kill all my Jedi visitors. You’ll die saving me, of course, and I don’t expect the assassin will do much to deny such accomplishments just because they’re lies.”
“This whole time?” Traitor Koon asks. He, too, is singed. Fox is proud to see that it is Wolffe’s work.
But the Emperor isn’t paying attention to him. His eyes are fixed on the one person in the room that Fox, his men, and Wolffe are not shooting at.
Uzumaki.
“Of course,” he sighs, “not a Jedi, so you don’t consider killing her, too. I’ll just have to do it myself.”
Uzumaki? Well, alright then. The Emperor knows best, after all.
The woman does not have time to do more than turn before the Emperor is in front of her, stabbing through with one saber while he deflects an attack from Fisto with the other.
“There,” he says, “one fewer loose end.”
She wheezes, falling to her knees as the Emperor engages with the traitors once more.
Fox focuses in on the fight once more, and his necessary target of Jedi Traitor Windu. He shoots, and directs his troopers, and is generally unsuccessful. This is because Windu is, for all his traitorous faults, very good in a fight.
Fox’s focus is even such that, at one point while the Emperor is lecturing the Jedi, and Fox and his men are still shooting, he does not notice something very big.
As in, probably-several-hundred-pounds big.
As in, the Emperor’s prized brass vase with the battle repoussage, which is supposed to be on a pedestal and always needs two people to move safely big.
As in, should not be so easy to lift overhead big.
Fox does not notice this very big thing until it is crashing into the Emperor’s skull from behind, accompanied by an enraged screeching.
The man goes down.
Uzumaki drops the vase, visibly furious, and stomps on the unmoving body a few times while yelling invectives at a man who is now missing half his skull and leaking…something gross onto the fancy, expensive carpet.
Fox should do something. His brain feels fuzzy. Wasn’t he supposed to be shooting at someone? Traitors? Wait, no, Jedi. Was he supposed to shoot Jedi? Why?
“I think he’s already dead,” Windu says, clutching his side and near-wheezing. “…why aren’t you?”
“I am bad at dying,” Uzumaki says.
“I think you mean hard to kill,” Wolffe corrects, sounding about as woozy as Fox feels. At least he’s not shooting his beloved general anymore.
“No,” Uzumaki says. She looks down at her jacket, pulling at the charred hole in the front while making a face. “I like this one. Did like. Fuck.”
Fisto has put away his saber in favor of putting his hands together, almost as if in prayer, except for that he’s got them held to his mouth to accentuate the look of incredibly deep concern. “So this is… normal?”
“No asking,” Uzumaki tells him. She points at the hole in her jacket that had previously also been a hole in her chest, “not for this.”
“You should probably still get medical attention,” General Koon says. He takes a step as if to approach. Uzumaki’s glare stops him. He steps back. “If only to ease our minds?”
She ignores him. Instead, she marches up to Windu and jabs a finger into his own, significantly less charred chest. “I get hazard pay.”
Windu doesn’t hesitate. “I wouldn’t dream otherwise.”
Fox notices movement out the corner of his HUD, and turns to find one of his men poking at the dead body with his rifle.
(It’s a miracle that the only corpse in the room is the Sith.)
“Private?” Fox calls over.
“It’s bubbling, sir!”
Bubbling? Why is a corpse bu—
And then it explodes.
Because of course it does.
--
Karin’s life has always sucked, but the last couple of years have been a particularly stupid brand of sucks.
No Sasuke. No idiot blonde cousin. No Orochimaru-sama or Juugo or visits from Haruno.
No shared language. No familiar continents. No valid diplomas.
No protection from a galaxy that may want her blood as much as her own world.
(Not even Suigetsu, who’s annoying as all hell, but even he’d be a relief at this point.)
She’d started out small. Stuck to an uninhabited area, running away from all people and only stolen what she needed. Tried to keep a low profile. She’d fucked that up pretty early; it was before she’d realized just how far she’d been flung, and that nobody here really ran on water the way she did.
That led to a lot of research, which, again, language barrier. Absolute shitshow, that. She’d found that chakra wasn’t a thing, and resolved to keep as many of those abilities to herself as she could. No blood. No elemental jutsu where people could see, which was fine, really. She’d never bothered to learn much beyond survival basics like water purification and firestarters. Definitely no chains.
She’d kept researching, and stealing, and eventually decided that her tracking abilities could be mistaken for any number of other things in this galaxy, enough that nobody would think she was somehow unique.
Karin hadn’t quite decided what Jedi were, other than somehow magical monks. Still hasn’t. She didn’t enjoy being mistaken for one, when she did seemingly impossible acts, because then people expected her to be nice, and helpful, and lots of other inconvenient things.
She’d feigned ignorance. Sold her tracking skills to jobs that she didn’t think would get her shot. Stayed the hell away from the fighting, because the mess with Madara and Zetsu and Ootsutsuki and all that other hell was enough for a lifetime, thank you very much.
Made just enough of a name for herself to be able to demand the kind of payment that meant nice hotel rooms instead of barely serviceable motels.
It was… fine. It was a living.
Karin had developed a theory by that point, about how chakra worked compared to this nebulous ‘Force’ concept everyone mentioned with the Jedi.
Testing that theory had been the only reason she accepted the invitation to meet with Aurra Sing. She’d known going in that the woman probably wasn’t getting involved in anything Karin wanted part of, but this particular bounty hunter was known to be a Force user, and Karin wanted to test some theories without going full send and taunting a Jedi.
She’d been right, thankfully. Karin could feel Sing’s power, though it shimmered oddly in her senses. Meanwhile, Sing couldn’t feel Karin’s. Couldn’t use her abilities to sense Karin past a basic, E-level henge. Couldn’t hunt her down after, either.
The experiment was a success.
(This was what research was good for: nobody had the resources to study up on how to counter Karin’s abilities. She had a galaxy of information on how to counter the Force, at her fingertips.)
(It was such a shame when Fett died. He’d been a great source of advice on how to negate a Force user’s advantages. Mental tricks that worked to hide from the spiritual power of a Jedi, or a Sith. Suggestions on how to fight them if she had to.)
But the Jedi had come to her using the kid, who’s cute enough, but not exactly a fount of knowledge like his father, and offered a job.
Governments, especially those at war, always had more money to pay her than a random bounty hunter. She could squeeze them. She could afford luxury. She shouldn’t have agreed, for her own safety, but she wanted to have a bit more freedom.
Finding the red lightsabers had been easy. The creepy old man who oozed power had been a bit more of a surprise, but she figured that if he hadn’t already been called on it, then it wasn’t her problem. These people were experts on this Force stuff. Someone must have already noticed.
(Sure, they hadn’t noticed her, but she didn’t have their Force. She had chakra.)
People had gotten weird about it immediately, in a politics way. Something about licenses? And museums? There were some unfamiliar words.
Then there was that spike of killing intent, and she tried to leave, but couldn’t, and the clones got mind-controlled, because of course they did, and the fighting started, and she got. Fucking. Stabbed.
Again.
It was worse than the time with Zetsu. Not quite as bad as the time with Sasuke.
Utterly infuriating, but… the old guy had said something about the cameras being off. Nobody was looking at her. She knew how to hide herself from Force users, had tested it, and even the old guy hadn’t reacted when she came in. Nobody was paying attention to someone they assumed was dead, or about to be.
So Karin shoved back her sleeve, and bit herself, and rolled it right back down to hide the mark and the blood.
Her head cleared once the bulk of the pain was gone. And she was so.
So.
So fucking mad.
She grabbed the nearest heavy object and walloped the old guy over the head.
He went down like the sack of shit he was. She was already practically seeing red, and kicked him a few times for good measure.
He was dead, really dead, which was kind of ridiculous since the only person more powerful that she’d met at all in this universe, at least in terms of raw internal energy, was that weird old toad thing that reminded her of her idiot cousin’s summons.
(People asked how she survived. She told them to fuck off.)
(She wanted some goddamn worker’s comp. Even a contractor could get that in these ridiculous extreme circumstances. She’d start stabbing people herself if she didn’t get something for this bullshit.)
(They agreed. Possibly for their own safety.)
Then the corpse blew up. Her favorite jacket was double-ruined. There were burns.
Which is now. Picking herself up from the explosion—thankfully smaller than anything Deidara had thrown at Sasuke—was now.
Ugh. She hates everything about this.
“Do we still look for Ventress?” she demands.
The Jedi, variously singed, stare at her.
“I think that’s on hold,” the chief of the red clones says helpfully.
“Mission’s over?” Karin asks for clarity.
“For now,” the clone in grey says. “Unless…?”
“For now,” the lightning Jedi sighs.[1] Windu, she thinks. He sounds tired. Too fucking bad.
“We should call for medical support,” the insect one says. “And a secondary investigative team. I don’t think we can report on this unilaterally without being accused of collusion or conflict of interest.”
Half of those words mean nothing to Karin.
The good news is, they don’t have to.
“No doctors for me,” she says. They look ready to argue. “I can care for me. No doctors.”
She’s no Senju Tsunade, not even Haruno, but she is an Uzumaki with training from Orochimaru-sama themself.
“A Jedi to check you for lingering Dark, perhaps,” the octopus? one says. Nautolan or whatever.
Karin eyes him. The others. Huffs. “Fine. Just that.”
And then they spirit her away to the Jedi Temple, which is weird and warm and feels like her cousin in the most annoying ways.
It’s comforting.
Disgusts her.
“This is—”
“Do not,” Karin snaps, yanking her arm away from the person who’d just taken her blood pressure readings. “My care. Not yours.”
“…right,” they say. “Your business.”
They’re humoring her. Whatever.
The frog comes by. Yoda? Yeah, Yoda. She’s not sure how to interpret ‘Master’ into the language of the shinobi-planet—she’s not sure what else to call it, and if the Samurai ever find out and take issue, they can go fuck themselves and call a summit to decide on a new name—but she’s heard pretty much everyone call this guy Grandmaster, which she’s taking to mean that she’d be calling him Yoda-sama in any other situation.
Except she won’t, because that honorific wouldn’t mean much to him, so ‘Master Yoda’ it is.
“Not like us, are you?” he asks. “Not the Force, but other energies, you use.”
Karin nods. Part of her does get distracted by his grammar; it’s easier to parse than most people’s. He’s putting his verbs at the end, where they’re supposed to be. “Something else.”
“Hmph.” He rests both hands atop the little staff, peering at her. “Great power, have you?”
Karin snorts. Hardly. “No. More, other people have.”
She’s little more than a medical battery.
(Someone looks weirdly at her for mimicking the old frog man’s language, but she ignores them.)
“Always a seeker, have you been?”
“Seeker?”
“A hunter,” he clarifies.
Karin… shrugs. “Some.”
“Other work, what have you done?”
She doesn’t know how to answer that. She doesn’t have the words for ‘teen prison warden at a laboratory of gross human violations.’
“Science,” she says instead. It’s what she’d been doing those years after the war with Kaguya. Not like she’s got much else to do.
A bright spot at the edge of her consciousness barrels through the halls outside, and into her room. “I hear you got stabbed!”
“Hello, Boba,” she says. “Yes.”
He glares at her. “You’re fine.”
“I am.” She then looks to the side, at the leather she’d saved up for. “My jacket… is not.”
He rolls his eyes. “You’re alive. That’s more than my dad.”
Is she supposed to care? “I always live.”
Even back when she kind of hadn’t wanted to.
Boba huffs. “Can I go with you? They want to send me to Kamino.”
“No.”
He glares some more. Bully for him.
Karin just wants to be paid and get the hell out of here. They did their stupid scans, now it’s time to leave.
“Your friend was telling us about the work she did before she became a tracker for hire,” someone says. Not the frog. Someone.
“You mean the prison?” Boba asks.
“…no,” Yoda says. “A scientist, she was.”
“Yeah, and a prison warden,” Boba says. That’s the word! It’s a stupid one. “It was a lab and a prison, I think. She drew it once when we couldn’t figure out what she was saying, and then she got annoyed and made us change the subject.”
People look at her. She shrugs. She had in fact done that.
“How old were you?” one of the doctors in the room asks.
“Enough,” Karin says.
There’s a ping of delight from the hall. She looks up, and sees one of the clone soldiers standing there, just peeking in. The one in charge of the red group. Fox.
He took his helmet off. He looks more or less like the rest, just with longer hair and some greys in there.
“Can I help you?” Karin asks archly.
“Are you doing anything after this?” he asks, striding in. Boba makes a face, which Karin gamely ignores. “There’s a bar for clones. Let’s get a drink.”
“No dating for me,” Karin warns. Even if she was over Sasuke—which she is, or so she keeps telling herself—she wouldn’t be interested in anyone, let alone strange men.
“No,” the clone agrees. “But I would love to be friends.”
He’s not lying. She squints at him, as if that could help her figure him out. “Many people do not want to be my friend. I am… mean.”
There is so much more she could say, if she had a better grasp on the language, but she doesn’t, so this is the best she can do.
“Yeah,” Fox says. “That’s why I want to be friends.”
…huh.
--
Rex’s life sucks a bit.
It always sucks, but especially right now, kind of. His general is on a ‘psychiatric hold,’ which means something different for Jedi than it does for clones, but is still not a good thing. In this case, Rex does know why, at least, and has even got a word for it now: psychotic break, augmented by the connection to the Dark Side of the Force.
It’s not his responsibility to manage a mentally unstable Force user in this situation, but he feels like it should be. That’s his general that heard the Chancellor died after revealing himself to be a Sith, and immediately lost his entire shit. Nobody died, thankfully, but Rex has been informed that it’s a ‘this time’ situation.
“You didn’t fail him, vod,” Wolffe assures him, clapping him on the shoulder. “If anything, this was a Kenobi thing.”
“My general did nothing wrong,” Cody snaps. Nobody acknowledges him, like the last few times.
“I know, but it feels like I should have been able to do more,” Rex mumbles. He is not drunk, but he might be a little buzzed. He’s got his head on his arms and everything, playing with the empty shot glass still on the table.
“Even Amidala didn’t, so I don’t know what you think you could have done,” Stone says. He gets a weird look from a few of the others, but if any legion outside of the 501st would know, it’s… well, it’s the 212th, but after that, it’s the Guard.
“Chin up,” Bly offers, “he’ll probably apologize a bunch when you see him again.”
…will he? Rex isn’t so sure.
“Anyway, you—”
There’s a shout on the other side of the room, which isn’t unusual enough to garner attention, except it’s followed by female shouting, which is much less normal. It’s enough to raise hackles, because if a civilian gets in trouble, that’s grounds for 79s to—
“Oh hey, that’s Uzumaki,” Wolffe says casually, which.
What? Some of the others relax, but not Rex.
“The one that discovered the Chancellor was a Sith?” Rex asks. He’s supposed to hate her, on his General’s behalf. “What’s she doing here?”
“Hustling at darts,” Stone says drily.
“She didn’t discover he was a Sith, she just discovered evidence adjacent to it and then he did the rest himself,” Wolffe corrects. “She spent most of it watching porn on the ceiling.”
Either Rex is way too drunk, or this person is too weird to make sense. “What.”
“Thirst traps,” Stone corrects. “Fox asked her about the porn once and she said that if she’d been watching porn, she’d have brought earphones. To be professional.”
Rex is so confused. “And the thirst traps were professional? On the ceiling?”
“More professional than porn,” Wolffe says, “and yeah. On the ceiling. She can like… glue herself to random surfaces using something that isn’t the Force but is… maybe related? She refuses to explain it and General Koon still hasn’t figured it out.”
“And she can walk on water,” Stone adds.
Wolffe nods. “And she can walk on water.”
“I heard she got stabbed,” Cody says. “Why does she not look stabbed? Nobody recovers that fast.”
“She recovered in under a minute,” Wolffe says, “and refuses to explain how. Just says she’s bad at dying and then waits for people to move on.”
Rex is so confused. He doesn’t want to make a fool of himself, but he’s so confused.
“Sorry I’m late.” Oh hey, Gree is here. “General Unduli had to meet up with Billaba for something and I was needed. What are we talking about?”
“Hey Gree,” Wolffe says, “we’re talking about Uzumaki.”
“Prime’s redhead?” Gree asks. “Why?”
Stone gestures at the corner. “Fox brought her along again. He’s watching his men lose to her at darts.”
“So… they’re actually friends?” Rex asks.
“Unfortunately,” Stone sighs. “He’s been getting her help with blackmail, I think. Every time I ask about it, he just says that he wants to see what she does next. He thinks she’s weird enough to be interesting, and she… thinks he’s useful, maybe? I’m not super sure what she gets out of it.”
Gree, Rex notices, has been poking at a datapad since they pointed out Uzumaki. Gree is also smacking Stone.
“Go get her,” Gree says.
“You’re not the boss of me,” Stone scoffs.
“You know her,” Gree insists. “Go, it’s important.”
If Gree thinks it’s important, there are even odds that it actually is. He might just be collecting some kind of data. He might be about to reveal something that could turn the rest of the war around.
“Fine,” Stone capitulates, “but you’re paying for the next round.”
“Sure, whatever,” Gree says.
Gree watches Stone, and Rex watches Gree, and the rest of the room is watching the hoverball match on the holoscreens. It’s not Rex’s team, so he doesn’t care overly much, but even he can’t keep from glancing over to check the scores.
“What’s important?” Wolffe tries.
“You’ll see,” Gree says, like an asshole.
Stone comes back with Fox and Uzumaki. She looks annoyed, which Rex has been told is her default state, but she’s here.
“Hello,” Gree says. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you,” Uzumaki parrots. “What you want?”
Gree turns around the datapad. There’s a still image on the screen, of a person that Rex doesn’t recognize at all.
Uzumaki does, though.
Fox elbows her.
“Where,” Uzumaki asks, slow and careful, “did you find my idiot cousin?”
“Oh, good,” Gree says, satisfied and, by Rex’s estimation, quite smug. “So you do know each other.”
[1] While Plo Koon is the one we as readers associate with lightning as a concept, Karin associates being black or otherwise dark-skinned with being from the Land of Lightning.
CHAKRA VS THE FORCE:
I'm treating them as related but distinct energies Chakra is an energy that is produced by living things. In sapient creatures, it's split into two halves (yin-yang spiritual set) and will have one or more elemental types (fire, water, earth, wind, electricity). In non-sapient creatures, it's just an ambient natural/sage energy that is neither negative nor positive, it just is. Dead things don't produce chakra, beyond that which is radiated by the bacteria and bugs that begin to consume the corpse.
The Force is less of a physical, biological energy and more of a spiritual relationship between all living things. It is present whether there is or isn't life. It's not produced by living things, but is simply ambient around everything. It's a higher level concept, in many ways. More abstract.
The metaphor I'm going to use is that, in terms of sensing, they're like two different parts of the em spectrum. Most people can see just the visible spectrum. Variant F can see in ultraviolet. Variant N can see in infrared. If something is bright and powerful enough, it's going to emit all waves of light, like the sun, and everyone is going to be able to see it, even if some people can see additional parts of that light.
So someone like Anakin or Palpatine shines bright in terms of power, and Karin can sense that! The reason is that Palpatine, having been surrounded by the Force all his life and knowing it as that very philosophical and spiritual object that can be used to manipulate biology but is not produced by it, only shields himself in the Force; in this metaphor, he is using sunscreen that protects against UVA and UVB that's coming from inside of him.
He's not aware of the infrared.
Karin, having been here for years and seeing the war erupt around her, hearing about the Jedi, etc, has researched (including by asking the various higher-level bounty hunter contacts she's made) about how the Force works and how to hide herself from it. She's tested it by walking through recent warzones where relief battalions are with a healer Jedi or such, coming close while shielding in the philosophical/mental/spiritual manners suggested to hide from the Force, but not shielding her chakra at all.
And it works!
This is also why she got away from Aurra, one of our non-Jedi Force users that's kinda just running around. But Karin is a liar and a sneak so she has let NOBODY know about her skills (in particular she wants avoid becoming someone else's experiment AGAIN, so nobody gets to know about her healing blood or her chains) and instead just focused on her insane skills at finding people.
So nobody knows anything about chakra sensors or how to hide from them (especially not the uncontested best sensor in the series), while she's had time and opportunity to figure out how to hide from the Force.