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Chapter Text

I'm just going to start here with the worldbuilding that has no plot.

I've been thinking about the Jedi, and because they're a sort-of quasi-religious or possibly wholly religious group, I can't help but look at them through the lens of what happens with religions. More specifically, religious schisms.

We know in Star Wars media (I hesitate to say canon because there's too much to really lay down the law about canon) there are the Corellian Jedi, the Altisian Jedi and the wanderers out in the Outer Rim like Jon Antilles and Fay.

Using Christianity as a model because I know the most about its schisms, these things tend to get ridiculously broken up, however. If you look at the Coruscant Jedi as being the Catholics, I would be willing to look at the Corellians as potentially like the Church of England. That is, the Upper C of E/Episcopalians are almost-but-not-quite Catholic in a lot of ways. The Altisians could then be seen as some sort of European Protestant branch.

But there are far more groups than that in the overarching religion we call Christianity, running from the Coptic Church - one of the oldest still extant groups - to the modern United Church - which at one point a Toronto church had a genuine argument about whether or not an atheist should be their pastor. Please don't ask me about it, I don't know.

The point I am making is that I can easily imagine dozens of little Jedi temples/groups/colonies all over the galaxy, each taking a slightly different view of what the Force is, what the duty of a Jedi is, how to word the Code and how to be a good Jedi.

The background for the specific group I am thinking of is inspired by a book that was co-written by Mercedes Lackey, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Andre Norton. That book is Tiger Burning Bright. In it, those who want to enter the priest class have to first have a real life outside the temple. Get a job, have a family, etc. and only once they've gone through forty or fifty years of living in the outside world are they allowed to give up the outside world. That is, how can you advise someone on matters of temptation, good and evil if you don't understand what it's like to be strapped for cash or to have a romantic relationship or to go through all those things that you don't have to deal with once you are safely settled in your monastery or nunnery or what-have-you? There is more in the book than just stuff about the religion of the fantasy universe, obviously, but if you want to check that out, there's a reason I've put in the link.

I found myself imagining a Jedi who wound up making a terrible mistake because they didn't really understand what it's like to be poor. Not just 'we of the Jedi have given up worldly things' but to not have any idea where your next meal was coming from or to have anywhere to retreat to. After all, a Jedi might have a hard time on a mission, but they all know they go home to Coruscant at the end of the mission and there is a bed and guaranteed meals and beautiful surroundings and clean clothes etc. etc. Even those of us who have parents to fall back on still live with the understanding that a fall-back like that won't be there forever. At some point they thought something was totally fair, but because they didn't really understand how it feels to be desperate in that way, or something else that only comes from not living a monastic life - couldn't even really imagine it - the decisions they made were unfair and led to some sort of horrific social collapse and they only understood after the failure what they had done wrong. Further, no one at the temple seemed to understand how it had gone wrong because they had all become so distanced from real world experiences.

So, with a determination to make sure that the Jedi in this schism can really understand the people they're trying to help, these Jedi are raised to have training, then go out into the wider galaxy and have a not-Jedi job for at least ten years (relative species age depending, of course), then come back and finish the training if they want to, then become full Jedi. They are also allowed families and there is a nearby village that acts as a spaceport, support for the Jedi and place where the Jedi children go to school with regular kids and stuff like that. Their temple is smaller, but there's much less soul-searching that goes on when a knight discovers something else they want to do because there's a lot more acceptance of outside stuff, and also because the decision to be a Jedi has been made with both eyes open to all the possibilities. By contrast, they are much less skilled at core Jedi skillsets like lightsabre work because of this spread focus. It means for the most part, a Coruscant Jedi could probably wipe the floor with most of the Jedi in this temple and talk rings around them, but they'd made this compromise because of the philosophy of well-roundedness and empathy for normal folks of the galaxy.

And now you can have my ficlet. For the record, all OC clone names and numbers are off the top of my head, as are any planet or system names. I scoff at canon. Effectively, if it's not Waxer or Cody, pretend it's not a canon clone because I am not going to cross-check every number and name ever to be sure I didn't accidentally use someone from canon.

Oh, yeah, I imagined they rehabilitated Maul because they picked him up, and then collected Feral and Savage while they were at it because I wanted them to.

"Sir!"

Obi-Wan and Cody both sharply turned around at the call from Moxie, who was monitoring comm transmissions in the region. "What is it?" the Commander asked, crossing the deck to join the sergeant at the terminal.

"I just picked up a distress call, Commander. Just on the other side of the border, coming from the . . . Gharentid system." He flicked a switch.

This is CT-72-0917. We are under attack. Jedi Master Pelis Kana, the clone's voice cracked in what sounded like grief and he seemed to choke a moment. We have a Jedi down and too many droids coming in. We won't be able to hold out. A voice came through in the background, shouting to Mikal - probably the clone - to help get the children out. I'm putting the broadcast on repeat! were the last words before a sharp click sounded and the message started to loop around.

Cody's head came up and he stared at Obi-Wan. "General?" he asked.

It wasn't even a question, the Force told him that. Obi-Wan turned to Wings at the helm. "Set a course," he said. "Commander, get everyone ready. We'll need to be doubly alert if we're going into Separatist territory."

They weren't far off at all, but every second doubtless meant further casualties, though no one was quite sure why any clone patrol or Jedi would have been in a Separatist region.

"Are you sure sir?" Cody dutifully asked, though he wanted to go and save the clone whose voice had been distinctly on the youthful side. They had been sending cadets out sooner as the war went on, and this one sounded terribly young.

"I am quite as certain as as I can be. The Force is very insistent," replied Obi-Wan.

The entire bridge seemed to heave a sigh at once as the General's Force osik was not to be questioned. He'd saved far too many of their brothers following whatever woo-woo sense his powers gave him for them to question it.

Upon entering the system, it was clear that whoever had arranged this had just dropped off whatever battalions of clankers they'd planned to and then just left. There didn't seem to be a single Separatist anything within scanner range other than the dropships on the planet's surface. When the Republic troops landed, it wasn't far from a large stone structure, near to a town. The sound of the attacking clankers filled the air and orders were given within moments to split up and surround the attacking droids. "Whoever is here clearly isn't a full battalion," Cody commented as they moved into place.

"There isn't," said a voice from above. "It's just me, and the other Jedi."

Startled, they glanced up. In a tree was a cadet - not a full trooper but one who was just about eight maybe - looking around sixteen standard if he were a natborn human. There were several children of varying species and ages in the tree with him.

"Sitrep, cadet," Cody snapped out.

The boy dropped out of the tree, landing lightly. Like a Jedi. "CT-72-0917, Commander," he said. "Jedi apprentice - former apprentice to Healer Pelis Kana. At 1300 yesterday the Separatists dropped into orbit and took exception to our temple. We've been trying to get the initiates out the back. Commander, could you arrange for someone to get them to your transport? I can lead some of your men to the back route, but we've been dodging patrols and I'm worried about the ones that headed into the woods hoping to get away that way."

"Of course." He snapped a few orders, sending some troopers towards them. The children shrank back in the trees. The cadet sighed. "It's okay, vod'ike," he said. "Check them with the Force."

Little eyes in the trees widened and then there was a scramble of little ones down the trees to the assigned troopers. "They're nice!" exclaimed a little Rodian. "Like you, Mikal!"

"Go on," said the cadet. "I have to go back for the others, and to help Maul."

"Maul?" inquired Obi-Wan.

"Our recovered darksider, Coruscanti," Mikal said with a wry twist to the lips. "You know, one of those unrecoverable bad people. He's holding the line, along with his brother Savage, but he's been there too long and he's the best we've got. He can't keep it up forever."

The boy was correct, there wasn't time to chatter. They swept into the fight around what was clearly a Jedi temple. It looked like it was inspired by the one on Coruscant, but was on a significantly smaller scale. It was tiny by comparison with a main door that was being held by two zabraks, one with black and purple markings and one yellow and brown. Cody found himself tracking both the ebb and flow of the fight around the temple as well as the reports coming in from those he'd dispatched to help escapes out the back. As they made headway against the gathered droids, exclamations from the troopers echoed in his ears.

Kark! The cadet really is a kriffing Jedi! came over the comms.

That didn't become completely clear until they got close to the doors. The zabraks at the doors looked exhausted, the sabrework still fast, but not fast enough. Just as the yellow one staggered, the cadet was there, a dark blue sabre in hand, blocking blasterfire. "Mikal, get back inside!" snapped the dark one.

"I lost my master, I'm not going to lose you and Savage too. Feral would never forgive me," the cadet said as he spun the blade around in his hands, reflecting shots. It was clear he wasn't as skilled as the zabraks, nor as any of the Jedi Cody had seen before, but he was still moving in ways no ordinary clone could manage, knowing where the shots would come from as only a Jedi could.

Seeing a cadet in danger like that, but also clearly being a Jedi was enough to energise the clones fighting and they batted their way through the lines of droids.

With the fight over Mikal vanished into the temple and Cody and Obi-Wan found themselves caught up in assisting this Jedi temple so many light years from Coruscant in evacuating along with the village that was at the base of the temple's grounds. Troopers went with Jedi to find those who had fled into the surrounding forests, coming back with groups of children and teenagers as well as some who had clearly fled because they couldn't help to defend the place. They also helped move the bodies of the fallen, Jedi and villager alike, onto pyres. The one relief was that they had managed to keep the children out of the path of the droids.

Cody caught up to his general as Obi-Wan was talking to the leader of the temple. "We follow the path laid by Master Opanath," she was saying. "We believe that the Jedi of Coruscant have become too distant from the concerns and lives of ordinary people and so we try to ensure that we learn those and understand them." She gave him a wry smile. "As you can see, our collective skill with a sabre suffers, but we feel that empathy is one of the most important things a Jedi brings to the table."

"No wonder young Mikal said 'Coruscanti' the way that he did," Obi-Wan replied. "Have your people gathered what you need?"

Master Likwan sighed. "Almost. We're just collecting the last of the Kyber archive. I do have one question for you though, Master Kenobi."

"What is that?"

"Oh, here we go," Mikal said from behind them. They all turned to look at him. "Don't mind me," he said. "I just wanted to see this."

She shot him a dark look. "Maybe you could make yourself useful and pry Tzipa out of whatever trouble she's crawled into?"

"Tzip'ika's fine," he said. "I gave her her Life Day present early. She's enjoying her pink plastoid Mandalorian armour immensely and has latched onto Lieutenant Waxer. He's helping her learn how to do the clasps." He turned to Cody. "Tzipa's a four-year-old Togruta. She bites everything, but she really liked the idea of armour so in exchange for good behaviour and not biting - at least until she forgets - she gets the armour early."

"And you get at least one Jedi in armour?" Cody asked dryly.

Mikal grinned at him. "That too." He gestured at his leather jacket. "It's got armourweave and some durasteel plates in there. Best I can do for the flexibility I need at the moment."

Obi-Wan shot them both suspicious looks. "What is your question, Master Likwan?"

"Just so that my people know who to avoid, where are those clones you have in your army?"

Cody started, his jaw dropping open a little, distantly glad he was wearing his bucket. Obi-Wan looked a little nonplussed. "What do you mean? My troops are right here."

Wait for it, mouthed Mikal.

"Don't be ridiculous," the woman said, sounding exasperated. "Those are people like anyone else. The news we've received here has been quite clear the clones are some sort of biological droid, without genuine awareness. I would appreciate it if you would not pretend that I am wholly incapable in the Force, even if our traditions lead to lesser skill on the part of my tradition."

The General paused, then turned to Cody. "Commander, would you and your men be so kind as to take your helmets off?"

As identical face after identical face was revealed, the Jedi from that temple looked progressively more shocked, one after another turning toward Mikal. "I didn't want to get shipped back to Kamino," he said, answering one implicit question in all the stares. Then he shrugged. "I told you clones were people."

A little tiny figure in bright pink armour suddenly started noisily wailing from next to Waxer who had arrived with her. Mikal dashed over and picked her up. "What's wrong vod'ika?" he asked.

"We were mean!" she wailed. "We were so mean about clones and you're a clone and you're nice and smart and why didn't you say we were mean!"

While Mikal soothed the little girl and the shocked Jedi stared, Cody decided he had no idea what to think about someone assuming that he couldn't be a clone because he was a person. Fox's head was going to explode when he heard this one.

So, yeah. I don't really have anything else here. Also, I know it's maybe not as well-put-together as it might be conceptually, but this is kind of just a thing floating in my head.

Chapter Text

Wolffe and Plo Koon were performing a standard troop inspection when one of the troopers standing in formation abruptly collapsed. Plo hurried over, and internally agreed with the shocked exclamations of the troopers around him when the helmet was tugged off to reveal an exhausted-looking and unconscious teenage-equivalent clone. Gently probing with the Force, he realised the youngster was showing definite traces of Force use to mask his presence and what was likely Force exhaustion.

When the Medic Straps arrived, Plo informed him, "He seems to be suffering from Force exhaustion to go with the other physical ills that plague him."

"Force exhaustion?" Wolffe echoed from behind him. "He's a clone."

"He is showing every evidence of trained Force sensitivity," Plo replied. "As soon as he's awake, let me know. I leave the rest to your judgment," he said to Straps, "But this needs to be understood as soon as possible."

"Yes sir," replied the medic.

It was the next day before Plo was called down to the medbay. "As soon as you're done I want him in a bacta tank," Straps said, "But he's up to answering questions, General. Briefly."

"Of course," Plo informed him and moved to the boy's bedside. "As I am sure you know, I am Master Plo Koon. Might I have your name, young one?"

"Mikal. Mikal Kartezh," the boy said. "I . . ." He blinked rapidly a moment, clearly holding back tears before pushing his emotions into the Force in that way of one searching for momentary equilibrium. "After the Kaminoans sold me to a Hutt for a ship rat five years ago I escaped. Master Pelis . . . Master Healer Pelis Kanna of the Opanathite Jedi Temple found me. She took me in, apprenticed me later."

Plo had a vague recollection of that particular sect. They had an interesting take on some Jedi precepts and objections to others, but nothing that was concerning from a moral or ethical standpoint. "How did you come to be here?" he asked.

"The CIS decided to take exception to our temple." The boy's voice cracked. "I know a bunch of us got out, but we scattered and Master," his indrawn breath was half a sob. "She shouldn't have been trying to hold the line. She was a healer, not a knight, but there were initiates and she was protecting them. They shot her down." Plo moved next to the boy, not needing to consider it as he pulled the young one close, both physically and in the Force, soothing him and running his claws through his hair and using a gentle touch in the Force to ease the ragged edges of a broken training bond. "I . . . on Redishan one of your troopers decided to desert and I used a Force suggestion to get him to trade his armour for some of the supplies I'd scrounged. I was hiding from the clankers and the Force seemed to think it was a  good idea to hide with the 104th."

"You've been using a minor Force suggestion to keep anyone from noticing you were not an adult trooper," Plo said. "And, I would gather from Straps' comments, that you are injured."

"I've been in a healing trance every night instead of sleeping," the boy admitted. "The bacta would be better but I didn't know . . . I don't want to go back to Kamino. I can't. They all but decommed me, they sold me."

Behind his breathing mask, Plo smiled a little. "I think I can avoid that, Padawan," he said. When Mikal looked at him, frowning a little in confusion, Plo gently tapped on the bond that had spontaneously already eased into place between them.

Eyes widening in surprise Mikal said, "But I'm not Coruscanti and . . . and I . . . there are precepts you follow that we don't." He glanced away. "I don't know if Master Reeza - she's master of our Order - would want that."

"We can come to an accommodation," Plo suggested. "But the Force tells me I would be honoured to have you as my Padawan, if you would consent."

"Yes," replied Mikal. "I think . . . yes, Master Koon." He smiled at Plo.

Plo smiled back. "Then it will be so, but I think that Straps will be very irate if we do not allow him to treat you now." He wrapped the boy in the Force equivalent of a hug, feeling him relax and watching him exchange words with Straps that had the medic at first bristle, then become surprised and then develop a soft affection. Plo kept at it until the sedation was complete for dropping his new Padawan into the bacta.

Wolffe had been silently vibrating beside him and impatiently waiting for Plo to finish. "You have questions, Commander?" Plo asked finally.

"Are you taking him on as your Padawan then?" Wolffe asked.

"I am," Plo said. "He has much potential and I would not see him sent to Kamino, most particularly after what happened to him."

Wolffe pressed. "So, he'll have the same Commander rank as the other Padawans?"

"Unless you have a serious objection," Plo said, "I would not have him treated as different. He is trained as a Jedi, though somewhat differently than those in the Coruscant Temple. I would insist that he not outrank you, if that is your concern, Wolffe."

"We'll deal with it," Wolffe said. "I'll tell the rest of the 104th that we have one of our vod'ike as a Padawan-Commander, then."

The whole of the 104th threw themselves into making the 'Command'ika' feel welcome and fitting him in. Wolffe in particular was gratified when Mikal had shyly asked him for access to the CC command training modules, informing the elder clone that he'd been an unspecialised CT likely destined for cannon fodder before and would the elder help him understand how to do the job of a commander - and to make sure that the other clones understood how uncomfortable he felt with his unearned rank. Plo worked out a training scheme with the medics as Mikal had been intending a track as a Healer-Knight before and Plo was not a healer.

Mostly Mikal was learning as he went, whether command from Wolffe, healing from Straps or Force and sabre use from Plo. Sometimes, though, he had things to teach, such as the rather complex calculations that allowed a non-Force sensitive to treat Force overuse. Using the Force did take resources of personal energy and other kinds of physical strains. The Opanathi sect had spent the effort on developing non-Force treatments and ways of determining how many replacement calories a Force user needed, how much in the way of counters for buildups of toxins in the system. Straps had almost salivated when Mikal had talked him through it and Obi-Wan Kenobi had promptly called Plo to complain about his chief medic was now making him eat instead of being forced to take his word that the Force would sustain him. Plo had nodded along sympathetically, trying not to giggle at Mikal's unimpressed facial expression when he was told about the conversation.

When they were attacked by the Malevolence, Plo found himself in one life pod, his new Padawan in another and frantically feeding his fear for the boy into the Force to keep himself grounded. It was when the ship began to close in on the survivors that he felt Mikal tap into their bond and feed him a Force technique that the youth believed would hide them from the Malevolence's sensors. With nothing to lose, Plo told Wolffe he was going to try to hide the survivors from the massive ship and sank into the Force in tandem with his Padawan. The way the boy spun the Force was remarkable and practised. Most importantly, though, it was hiding the pods from the massive ship. Together they kept everyone hidden until the Malevolence left, raising the veil again when it returned. On the Negotiator, after they had been retrieved, Plo half staggered out of the life pod, exhausted from their efforts, deeply concerned about the near-lifeless sense he was getting from Mikal's end of their bond.

Wolffe was striding past Commander Cody to get to his men. "Has anyone seen the Command'ika?" he demanded urgently of the survivors as they emerged from their life pods.

"Who?" Commander Cody asked, trailing in his brother's wake. "You have a Padawan Commander now?"

Obi-Wan shot Plo a suprised look. "I hadn't heard you'd taken on a Padawan," he said.

"It was an unexpected development," Plo admitted. As another life pod arrived in the bay, Plo heaved a sigh of relief. "There."

His heart leapt into his throat as the door cracked open and the first words emerged from the panicked vod inside. "Medic! We need a medic! He's barely breathing!"

Obi-Wan's medical personnel leapt into action, pulling Mikal out of the pod. There was evidence of a serious nosebleed and the boy was clearly unconscious. The ripple of concern tore through the clones in the Negotiator's bay as word that a clone cadet was the one in need of treatment. "Oh Mikal," Plo said. He moved towards the activity and staggered. "Master Kenobi, he may have pushed too far in the Force, if you could make sure to draw him back, I am afraid I may be too tired to give him the help he needs."

"Of course," Obi-Wan helped him over to his student. In the background he could hear Commender Cody grumbling that the news that one of their cadets was now a Padawan should have been shared, but he was more concerned with getting his Padawan back with his fellow Jedi's help.

Finally, Mikal returned from where he'd been lost, his eyes flickering open. "I couldn't get them all," he said, grief-stricken.

"You did so very well, Mikal," Plo assured him.

Wolffe chimed in, "If it weren't for you and General Koon there would have been none of us left. Trust me, vod'ika, you were incredible."

Mikal seemed about to respond, but passed out instead. Plo let himself be taken to the medbay, relieved he had not lost them all, and doubly so that he had neither lost nor abandoned his apprentice.

Chapter Text

One of the more pleasant duties Medic Lieutenant Attros of the 260th Battalion enjoyed were those times they would stop on a planet and set up a clinic to treat local ailments with the better technology available on their Venator. Not only did he hardly ever have to worry about his patients dying but they were normally far more grateful than the brothers he had to practically tackle and manhandle into the medbay. He turned to organise a few odds and ends on the table when a scraping sound behind him alerted him to an intruder. It was a child, stealing one of the first aid medical packs on the table and sprinting off. He darted after her, knowing that the other medics would hold down the fort. The kid was fast for a Little and she dodged, ducked and wove, but Attros managed to finally get his hands on her. "Gotcha," he said. "Ow!"

She'd bitten him with sharp little Togruta teeth. "No! Lemme go!" she half yelled emphatically. "I need it!"

Attros managed to keep her pinned enough to hold onto her and turn her so they could talk face-to-face. "Why do you need it?" he asked.

She glared at him, mulishly. "I just do," the child who couldn't be more than a natborn five years old squirmed. "Can't tell you," she added.

From behind him, General Tiplee spoke. "Perhaps then, you might tell me," she suggested. "And further, as Attros is one of my men I can assure - promise you he won't do anything without my permission."

The little Togruta looked at the red-skinned Mikkian. "Y'gotta promise you won't make him go back," she said. "He said they were mean an' I'm not letting an'one be mean t'him."

"Who is he and who was . . . mean to him?" the General inquired.

"Nuh-uh," the little girl shook her head exaggeratedly, tiny little lekku twitching emphatically. "Nothin' 'less you promise."

The General eyed her, then said, "How about I promise I won't make him go back unless I learn they were mean for good reason?" she suggested.

The little girl eyed her a moment, then something happened that made the General's eyes widen in surprise. A moment later the girl relaxed. "Oh!" she said. The two stared at each other a little longer, then the Togruta looked at Attros. "Down please," she said. Attros' General nodded to him, so he put her down. "C'mon," ordered the child before darting off into the market.

They followed, Attros wondering what had surprised his General. "What was that?" he asked in an undertone as they trailed after the child.

"She's Force-sensitive," the General said, "And trained as much as I would expect a child that age to be at the Temple."

"She's a Jedi cadet?" Attros said, in surprise.

"She might be," General Tiplee told him. "How she got out here is another question."

"Here," the child said and pushed through some planks and a tarp that had been made into a lean-to next to a dilapidated building.

Attros followed her in first and was moving forward the moment his eyes adjusted. He was shocked however. Lying on the ground, looking quite ill, was a clone cadet. He looked to be young, the human equivalent of his mid-teens. "Pallet, I need you to ping my location and bring a stretcher, full spectrum scanner and tell them to prep the medbay on the ship." He was checking the cadet over, and the boy was clammy, running a serious fever, pale and vaguely green.

"He saved me when the droids attacked," the little girl said. "We hadda run an' his Master was hit an' he was hurt an' then he got sick an' he was scared 'cause he didn' wanna go back t'Kamino. He said they were really mean an' stuff."

Attros listened with half an ear as the girl told his General the story, using what few resources the medkit had, then working with his shocked fellow medics to stabilize the cadet for transport. It seemed he'd somehow gotten off Kamino several years before and had been adopted by some Jedi that didn't live on Coruscant. In fact, if what he was hearing was right, the cadet had also become a Jedi cadet. Then the temple had been attacked by droids and overrun. The cadet had grabbed the little girl in the evacuation and then they'd been separated from everyone else. As they loaded the kid onto the stretcher the little girl, her name seemed to be Tzipa, had collected a lightsabre and refused to let it go insisting she had to protect Mikal's - the cadet's - 'sabre.

As they began to move the stretcher toward the ship, the boy seemed to wake up. "What?" he rasped, then took in the vod'e around him. "No," he whimpered and weakly struggled. "No. Please. I can't go back. Please don't take me back."

"Shhh," the General soothed him, dropping a hand to his forehead. "We are not taking you back, I promise."

"Master?" he seemed to be more confused then. "What-"

She did some sort of Force osik on the kid and he subsided back to sleep. Then Tzipa began to cry noisily and the General was taken up with calming her down. Attros decided to focus on what he could do right then, and that was making sure that the kih'vod with him was treated and got better.

They managed to get him settled and a course of antibiotics stabilised him quickly. It also became apparent quickly that keeping Tzipa out of the medbay was an exercise in futility. One or both of the Generals could cart her off, but she'd slip them using some sort of Force trick that they were still figuring out and would reappear, parked on her ori'vod's bed. General Tiplee took quite a shine to her, as did most of the vod'e on board, and was soon giving her Jedi classes whenever they could pry her out of the medbay. It took a week before Mikal awoke. He blinked awake, looking around, confused. "Good morning, cadet," Attros said.

He was startled at the boy's reaction, which was to flinch back, then scramble off the bed, backing away, hyperventilating when he hit the wall behind him. He shook his head. "No," he said, shaking. "Please. Just . . . you could pretend . . . I don't know, but I can't go back. Please. I don't . . . they'll send me to decom for real this time. Please."

Attros flinched himself. He'd never had a cadet be frightened of him. Of trainers, or being taken to decom or any number of other things, but of him? Never. "Easy, Mikal. The General promised Tzipa we wouldn't send you back, and we won't."

The promise calmed Mikal down. "How is Tzipa?"

The door slid open then and the little Togruta flung herself at Mikal. "You're 'wake! I missed you! I was scared and you wouldn' wake up!"

"I'm sorry," Mikal said, dropping to his knees and wrapping his arms around her. "I didn't mean to scare you."

The Generals arrive in Tzipa's wake. "It's good to see you awake at last," Tiplar said.

Mikal stood, gracefully bowed like a Jedi, then swayed. "Lie down," Tzipa told him flatly.

"You're right," he said, and returned to the bed he'd been on before. He said to the pair, "Masters, thank you for all this, but what do you plan to do?"

Tiplee picked Tzipa up and carried her to Mikal's bed as she said, "Firstly we will arrange for Tzipa to join the creche on Coruscant, at least until we know what has happened to those of your temple."

"And me?" Mikal asked.

Tiplar glanced over at Attros. "Can you give us some time to speak privately?"

Attros gestured them into the private room at the back. He never knew how the conversation went, only that Mikal was named Tiplar's padawan and Tiplee kept little Tzipa on board instead of taking her to Coruscant and told any Jedi they met that the little girl was her padawan. The other Jedi were unimpressed, but somehow she just never left.

Chapter Text

Anakin had just finished declaring his firm intention to not take on a padawan as the hatchway opened. Sounds a little like a fight emerged, grunts and 'oofs' and once it had fully opened two bodies rolled down the ramp, grappling with each other the whole way down, coming to a stop at the feet of the knight and master Jedi, watching this all in perplexity.

"Put it on," said the slightly larger one, a human teenaged boy with dark hair. He was trying to wrestle the other into an article of clothing.

"No," snapped the smaller one, a Togruta girl. "Mikal, get off of me!"

"You need to put on something and if you're not going to wear armour-"

"A Jedi only needs the Force-"

"Being a Jedi doesn't preclude common sense," grated out the boy as he tried to pin her and somehow managed to get an arm onto her. "Ow! Did you bite me?" he asked. "What are you, five? Is this just a Togruta thing, biting people who are just trying to help?"

"You're trying to smother me!" she told him, twisting in a way a human spine was not meant to move and wriggling free.

"I'm trying to keep you from getting a blaster bolt somewhere serious. This isn't the Temple, Ahsoka!"

"Children," Obi-Wan interrupted the fight.

'Ahsoka' bounced up at once, "Masters," declared the Togruta girl. "I am-" She paused, yanked the half-on, half-off jacket all the way off and threw it at 'Mikal'. He caught it, folding it in his arms and shooting a glare at her. She turned her back on him. "Masters, I am Ahsoka Tano. Master Yoda sent us with a message. You need to get back to Coruscant right away. There's an emergency."

The boy shot her a dark look, then contemplatively looked at the jacket in his arms. It seemed nearly the same as the one he was wearing, just smaller.

Lieutenant Waxer burst out in surprise from behind his General. "Cadet?"

Indeed, the boy Mikal was a young clone. "No one's called me that since the Kaminoans sold me as a ship's rat four years ago," he said. "But Master Yoda was insistent that you and Knight Skywalker are needed on Coruscant."

After their brief and interrupted attempt to speak with Grandmaster Yoda, Obi-Wan turned to the two youngsters. "I believe it is time for proper introductions," he said.

The clone boy straightened and gracefully bowed. "Mikal Kartezh," he stated. "Opanathi Jedi. Former apprentice to Master Healer Pelis Kana."

"Former?" Anakin squinted at the boy, then tactlessly asked.

Obi-Wan winced internally. "You have my condolences," he informed Mikal.

"Oh," Anakin said inadequately. "I'm so sorry," he hastily tagged on.

The clones behind them made muffled noises.

"Ahsoka Tano," said the Togruta. "I'm the other padawan."

Anakin's eyes were wide as he took in the pair. "The other padawan?"

"We were assigned to you both," Mikal said. "Yoda was very insistent when the grandmaster of our order refused to send me. He did some sort of logical hoodoo to Master Likwan and the next thing I know I'm on a transport trying to convince Ahsoka she should wear something more protective than that into a war zone," the clone boy grumbled. He held out the jacket towards her and she hissed at him.

Anakin tilted his head at Mikal. "That doesn't look very protective," he said.

"It's layered with armourweave, small durasteel plates that run into the hood as well, and Master Kana had done a favour for someone who provided enough cortosis to provide some small plates on a few key points. I was going to cannibalise the old one for parts, but then the Force said I should give it to Ahsoka and she won't take it." Mikal shot her a dark look.

"A Jedi needs no armour but the Force," Ahsoka said primly.

"Very good, young one," Obi-Wan told her with a smile.

Mikal was unimpressed. "Maybe you don't need it, but why not have it for when your grasp on the Force fails? The Force isn't armour, it's a force field and sometime the generator breaks. Armour is there when that happens," he said.

"He's got you there, General," Waxer said.

"Yes, thank you," Obi-Wan grumbled.

"If you don't want me, Master Kenobi," Mikal started, "I am happy to go back to Coruscant and see if there's a healer who will take me on to finish my training."

Ahsoka meanwhile was in her own argument with Anakin about having been assigned to a knight who didn't want a student to begin with.

The master Jedi smiled then, and said, "Oh no. I wanted a student, and I do believe you will be an excellent one. Why don't you leave that jacket with Rex there, and he and Anakin can attempt to wrangle young Ahsoka into it."

Mikal took his advice, spending several minutes going over the necessary maintenance the armoured jacket required (Rex earnestly promised Mikal he would do his best to get the girl into the jacket), then joined the master.

Three weeks later Obi-Wan was complaining to the Council they should have sent his new Padawan to Bant because Mikal was following him around everywhere complaining about his eating habits and tendency to duck out of the medbay before his CMO was done patching him up.

(Obi-Wan actually wouldn't give him up, Mikal was a dream, especially compared to Anakin. Mikal actually listened to his teacher sometimes).

Chapter Text

They had rescued the group of Jedi and Jedi cadets adrift in a ship, and that was when Ponds had been told that the Coruscant Jedi weren't the only type of Jedi in the same way that the Cuy'val Dar weren't the only type of Mandalorian. They had a temple in what was now Separatist space, which had been attacked and caused them to flee. The fleet as a whole was now on the lookout for these refugee Jedi as the collection they were now ferrying to Coruscant was only some of the members of this temple.

This group, calling themselves 'Opanathi' apparently decided to be Jedi differently than the ones that were leading the GAR. What made Ponds puzzled and wary was how they had reacted to discovering that the clones were people. It had been odd to be told that he couldn't be a clone because he was a person, but the way they had looked at all the clones ever since their faces had been revealed was . . . weird. Several times he'd seen them seemingly about to ask something, then decide not to.

He was ambling through their ship, using some of his not-copious free time to do a casual inspection, when he felt something bounce off a leg, heard a childish giggle, and squinted a moment in the direction he'd heard it from. It was a flash of insight as he recalled Gen - Master Likwan telling them that Tzipa was one of their younger cadets and that she tended to use Force tricks to sneak around. Using his hearing and years of catching younger cadets up to no good before they got in trouble. He lunged and caught the little girl around the waist. "Nuh-uh!" she said, squirming. "No! I wanna see Mikal!"

"Who is Mikal?" Ponds asked.

"He said he's my or'vod an' I know he's here! He is!"

Ponds held her up to look her in the face, suspecting that if he put her down she'd be off at a run and he didn't want to have to chase after her. "He wasn't on your ship?" he asked her.

"No," she pouted. "He wasn't on the ship wif us. But I know what he feels like an' he's here!" She got louder and more emphatic as she talked.

Ponds eyed her. "Where is he, then?" In response she pointed diagonally down and to the left. It indicated that whoever Mikal was, he was decks below their current location, down into engineering territory that none of these refugees were supposed to get into. Ponds, keeping a tight hold on her, shifted her to one arm, cradled close, and commed his General. "Sir, one of the Jedi cadets has indicated that one of the other Jedi may have somehow got on board at another point in time. She insisted that he's somewhere in our engineering section."

There was a pause, then a woman's voice spoke, "Which of our initiates and who does she say is there?"

"What's your name, jet'ika?" Ponds asked the Torgruta.

"'M Tzipa," she declared. "Hi Masser Likwan!"

A heavy sigh was heard, making the little girl giggle. "Of course it is. Who's down in engineering, Tzipa?" the woman asked, sounding resigned.

"Mikal!" the little girl exclaimed. "An' I know you're gonna say I should be careful, but I know Mikal!"

"I . . . I'm coming down," the woman said. "I . . . Commander Ponds, were you intending to let her look for him?"

Ponds eyed the child. "I had wanted to be certain that her saying this was reliable before taking a child belowdecks, but if you feel she is, then I want to know who's on this ship."

Master Likwan seemed fond but exasperated as she said, "Mikal and Tzipa have a firm bond between them. Frankly, if Tzipa thinks he's here, then he's probably here. How he's here is something I want to ask him, but . . . anyone else I wouldn't be sure."

"Then I'll take Tzipa here down and comm you once we've found out what's happening."

"Alright. Just keep a tight grip on her. She's sneaky and fast," Master Likwan cautioned him.

Ponds kept a tight grip on the girl, who chatted happily with him as they were now heading for where she knew her ori'vod was. They got onto the lift, heading down until Tzipa declared them to be on the right level, then Ponds followed her directions, passing by vod after vod who turned to look curiously at their commander, leaving a wake of curious whispers behind them.

A few more turns and they were in one of the back corridors where an officer was leaning on a wall, glaring at a younger trooper who was hand-scrubbing some dirty piping in what appeared to be punishment duty. Ponds was taken by surprise when Tzipa abruptly wriggled her way out of his arms. She had been so docile he'd forgotten the warning he'd received. She bolted towards the trooper, shouting, "Mikal!" The kid turned, eyes wide, catching the girl as she jumped at him, then he seemed to blur and an exhausted-looking cadet - one who was certainly not old enough to be on their ship as a trooper - was standing, holding the child.

"Tzipa," he murmured, and held her close.

Ponds exchanged wide-eyed looks of shock with his officer, Lieutenant Twister. "I don't . . . what?" said the other vod.

"General," Ponds said into his comm. "I believe we've found Mikal. We're coming back up and we'll meet you in conference room 5-Kresh."

The trip was quiet but for Mikal's soft conversation with an enthusiastic Tzipa.

When they got to the conference room, Mikal was warmly greeted by Master Likwan. Once they were seated, Mikal holding Tzipa who had refused to let go, the cadet said, "I suppose you have questions."

"You're not CT-5984, are you?" Twister blurted out.

Mikal's lips twisted in a grimace. "CT-72-0917," he said.

"No!" Tzipa declared. "No! Thass not your name! You said we all gotta have names an'-"

"Hey, hey, easy." Mikal pulled her closer. "Lieutenant Twister doesn't mean anything by it. The Kaminoans numbered us, and that was the number they gave me, I'm not saying it's my name."

Twister shook his head. "Of course not, jet'ika. It's just that he's been pretending to be the other vod since he came on board."

"Where is he?" Ponds asked.

Mikal shrugged. "The Force said I should trade spots with him. I had some supplies and he wanted to get out while he could. He should be long gone by now. Hopefully to safety."

"You've been using the Force to convince the other troopers that you're old enough to be on board," the General stated.

The cadet nodded. "I wasn't . . . the Kaminoans sent me to decom," he said. "Except when I woke up I was being held as a ship's rat. I got away because they weren't expecting someone my age to be able to fight."

"Then he finded me!" Tzipa declared proudly. "My Ima was mean an' Mikal finded me and took me 'way, back when I was two."

"Her birth mother was . . . bad," Mikal said. "When I asked Tzipa what her name was she told me she wasn't sure since her mother called her 'idiot', 'cheeskar' and 'poodoo'."

Tzipa spoke up again. "An' he gived me my name!"

Ponds stifled his fury. At least his serial ID number was all his own and wasn't an insult. Who would do that to a child? He could see Twister's tension as well.

Master Likwan spoke then. "Pelis . . . my good friend Master Healer Pelis Kana found them both and brought them to our temple. Mikal never told us where he was from and in the end we chose not to push." She looked earnestly at him. "Mikal, I wish you'd told us you were a clone when the news first broke. I am sorry for what we said all those months."

"It's okay," he said. "I guess. I was just scared you'd send me back. I . . ." he looked at the General, anxious. "I can't go back, Master Windu. Please. I . . . they sent me to decom and -"

"First," the General said, "We have informed the Kaminoans that they are never to send anyone to be decommissioned ever again. Whatever happens, that will not be any concern."

As Mikal relaxed, Master Likwan spoke. "Mikal, you are a padawan. Yes, Pelis died in the attack, but we will find you another to apprentice to. You are a Jedi and we will not lose you like that." Then she looked at Ponds and Twister apologetically. "I must apologise for how we have reacted to you all. When we found out you were clones and that clones were people was the moment we found out Mikal was a clone. It's been difficult."

"We had a lot of arguments about whether clones are people or not," Mikal said wryly.

Twister looked at Mikal, inhaling in sudden understanding. "That's why you did that prank," he said. "You were getting in trouble so you'd be away from the General when he came through on inspection."

Ponds had wondered why the kid was on punishment duty. "It seemed the fastest way to get away," he admitted. "I miscalculated on the soap, though. I really didn't think it would get into the corridor and make Lasher slip like that. I didn't want anyone hurt."

"Soap?" asked Master Likwan.

"Remember that time Keilyn put detergent in the fountain?" Mikal asked.

"Ah."

Mikal was moved in with the other refugees who welcomed him as one of their own. Ponds found himself quite liking the cadet, who between training with the other Jedi and looking after Tzipa was often found in one of two places. The first was with the squad he'd been assigned to when he was impersonating a full trooper, filling in on the duties that he'd been assigned when they thought he was CT-5984. The way the squad interacted had shifted slightly, the older troopers adopting the cadet as their kih'vod. The second place was with Master Windu, who had taken a shine to the boy, teaching him lightsabre techniques.

They returned to the temple on Coruscant, dropping the refugee Jedi off there (spending three hours capturing Tzipa, carting her off the ship and then having to go after her again when she slipped past them all back on board), then leaving for the front. Once they were underway Ponds was startled to arrive at his General's office to find Mikal there with his General. "I was hoping, Commander," General Windu said, "That you would be so kind as to help my new padawan settle in to his new quarters and duties and make sure the rest of the ship is aware of his new rank and obligations."

Ponds grinned as he led 187th's new padawan commander to his new quarters. He'd make sure to brag to all the others that his ship was the one with one of their vod'ike as a padawan commander. Cody was going to be so jealous.

Chapter Text

Medic Lieutenant Laser was deep in crisis coping mode.

They weren't a battalion but a medical squadron sent to back up the frontline battalions whenever they had a face-to-face clash with Sep forces. Their general, Bant Eerin was a Jedi healer and was just as dedicated to saving the lives of Vod'e as any clone medic. Right now, though, they were being blitzed. The 212th's medics had called in overwhelmed and their ship had been diverted. Worse, there weren't just GAR casualties, the fight had gone into the streets of a nearby city, wreaking havoc on a population that had nowhere to run to to get away.

In the aftermath they were working side-by-side with the 212th medics, local healers, nurses and healthcare workers of every stripe that could be put to doing anything to help. No one had any time to distinguish between a clone or otherwise and that was how it took so long for him to notice that a cadet was working with them.

He wasn't just working with them, though. Laser had worked enough with Eerin professionally to know that his general could and would evaluate a patient using her Force powers when a scanner wasn't available. The cadet was working the way that his Jedi worked. "I need a bacta injection, two cc level three antibiotic and a splint," the kid called to him. Laser hesitated only a second, his eyes meeting the cadet's. Then he made a choice to trust and grabbed the requested items and passed them over.

"Thanks," the vod'ika said as he competently wielded the instruments, strapped the leg and then clearly used the Force to pick up the stretcher to move the vod over. "That'll hold until someone can deal with him properly."

They both turned back to what they were doing. Laser to help a local doctor with an emergency surgery and the kid to triage of several shellshocked locals.

A half hour later, a shout went up that General Kenobi was coming in hot, in pieces. "I'm losing him!" a medic from the 212th shouted.

The cadet swore, slipped around and got a hand on Kenobi. "Fix what you can, I can hold him stable!"

"What the kark-" the 212th medic was about to push the kid away when Laser stepped in.

"He's got it, work around him," he snapped to the other, hands already running a scanner to figure out what needed immediate dealing with. According to the scanner, the general should have bled out three minutes ago.

The cadet looked up at him, eyes a little distant the way that General Eerin's were when she was doing something really complicated while healing. "He's in a healing trance, which stabilised him enough to get here, but he's slipping away. I've taken over regulating and keeping his blood where it should be," he explained. "Just start fixing the critical things, the through-and-through and the shrapnel puncture in the lung."

They worked like crazy, but the kid was clearly tiring. There were a few slips and sudden bleeds and the vod'ika was evidently overreaching himself. Suddenly General Eerin was there. She looked at the kid. "Have you ever done a handoff?" she asked.

"Once," the kid gasped.

"On three," she told him. "One, two . . ." on the unspoken three the cadet staggered away from the table and Kenobi's vitals stabilised significantly. "Get him to a tent, some food and make him rest," she said. "He's overworked himself in the Force and he'll collapse otherwise."

One of Laser's team corralled the kid who looked dazed as he was led away.

When the madness had subsided, Laser went looking and found the kid ensconced in a vod pile, dead to the world while the older clones cuddled him and talked in low voices. "Is it true he saved the General?" one still in 212th-painted armour off to the side asked.

"According to General Eerin, if he hadn't held General Kenobi with the Force he wouldn't have made it until she got there." He looked at the unfamiliar vod'e and added, "She thinks he should be fine."

A ripple of relief ran around the clones. Laser understood that. If it had been his general in that position, for all she was a healer and not a proper general, he'd be just as anxious and just as relieved.

His general showed up then. "How is he?" she asked. "Did you get him to eat?" she gestured at the cadet.

"We were going to," Laser recognised Sticker, who was plastered to the kid. "But he fell asleep the moment he sat down. I didn't want to wake him."

General Eerin winced. "Oh. I'm afraid we'll have to wake him, though. If he doesn't eat soon he'll have a real headache when he wakes up later." She leaned down and murmured to the cadet, who whined and tried to burrow into the vod in front. "Come on, you need to eat something."

"Master P . . ." the kid snapped awake and inhaled sharply. "Oh," he said. "Sorry, Healer . . .?" He trailed off inquiringly.

"Bant Eerin," she informed him with that slow blink and shoulder movement that Laser had learned was a smile for Mon Cala.

"Mikal Kartezh," he said and pulled himself to his feet, bowed like a Jedi, straightened, swaying alarmingly which cased Laser to lunge to his side to brace him, and Sticker to produce a ration bar. "Thank you, Sergeant," he said to Sticker.

Laser followed his general's lead as they brought the kid to a side tent where Commander Marshall Cody was also waiting.

"How did you get here, Cadet?" the Commander asked, kindly.

The cadet took a shaky breath, then said, "I . . . the Kaminoans, years ago, they decided to send me to Decom. I . . . they started and I thought that would be it, but I woke up on a ship. I found out one of them had sold me to make a quick credit. Pretended they'd done me in and sold me to be a ship's rat," he said. "They weren't expecting what a cadet was capable of, and I got away. I was lucky. I was found by," he turned to General Eerin, "Have you heard of the Opanathite Jedi?" he asked her.

The Jedi clearly thought about it a moment. "I think so. They split off a few hundred years ago. Settled in the Outer Rim. It's now CIS territory," she said.

Mikal nodded. "Master Pelis Kanna of the Opanathi Jedi found me. She brought me there and after a couple years made me her apprentice. I was going to be a Healer-Knight," he said. "Then the Seps decided to bomb our temple just because we're Jedi, even though none of us had anything to do with the war. We had to run and my Master she . . ." He swallowed, taking a trembling breath, and didn't need to say it. It was obvious. "We scattered, grabbing whatever ships we could to get off-planet, but I don't know where the others are. I've just been drifting," he admitted. "But the battle happened and-"

"And you are a healer," Laser's general said gently, "And so you couldn't not help."

The cadet nodded. "I just . . ." he looked at the Commander. "Please don't send me back. I can't, I just . . . I can't."

"There's no need for that," Eerin said briskly.

"Why not?" Mikal looked at her, somewhat warily.

She blinked and shifted her shoulders in a smile again. "Because Master Fisto has been bugging me to get a padawan for a long time. I didn't want to bring a youngster out here, but you are a partially trained healer, very talented if your work here today is anything to judge by, and it would be a waste for you not to finish your training. Would you agree to be my padawan, Mikal Kartezh?"

The vod'ika lit up. "Yes Master Eerin! Thank you!" Then he wilted a little. He turned to include the Commander in his next question, "Could I ask you to send word to look out for the others from my temple?"

Cody smiled at the boy. "I'll pass word along and make sure my General keeps that on the minds of Jedi-run battalions," he promised Mikal.

"Now eat your ration bar," General Eerin told the boy.

"Yes Master," he said obediently, and ate it making faces at the taste the whole time

Chapter Text

Quinlan had hated the idea at first.

He worked alone or if necessary with a Jedi partner. He did not work with a bunch of soldiers, however well-trained.

The first mission had been a failure. Quin had been ready to blame the clones when CT-4343 had rather sharply pointed out he had told them nothing. He had handed them mission objectives, then acted as though they could read minds. They weren't Jedi, they didn't have Jedi magic, and expecting them to competently help when he refused to give them the information needed to do so was to invite failure.

Quin had been doubly ashamed when the irritation had worn off, because he had the same trouble working with other Shadows, and the fact that he tended to shield extra tightly against the occasional accidental brush of skin against the memories held in various objects just meant that he was harder to read than most Jedi in the Force.

The next time, he overcompensated and '43 had also pointed out that they were adults who did not need to be told that you need to open a door in order to go through it.

As the others relaxed, becoming more sure that Quinlan wasn't going to have them 'decommed' (when he found out what it was it had been all he could do to keep from comming the Temple in the middle of his under cover mission to confirm that it had been stopped) a rapport began to build. They were all surprised when a new vod, seemingly a shiny, had been unceremoniously added to their little roster.

By this time he'd learned their names, had even been able to help '90 pick one for himself (Reels, Anders, Cover, Nexu and Plate - or Ray, Aster, Carl, Ned and Paz when they were undercover). It was odd to have a new member who only went by a number again. When informed he'd need an undercover name, even if he didn't use one the rest of the time, he looked thoughtful and finally came out with Kanan.

The first mission was almost botched with the new member messing up the rhythm the little group had established for their ops. Still, he'd been parachuted in for a reason, so despite Cover and Nexu advocating the kid be sent back, Quin decided to stick it out.

The second mission went ridiculously smoothly, the new kid slotting himself in to cover gaps none of them had really noticed. He still didn't know enough, but somehow he was always having the unholy luck to find just the right spot, just the right twist of the wrist, just the right guess at a code, and Quin began to have his suspicions.

The fifth mission with their new member solidified things for Quin. Only a force-sensitive could have the kind of luck the kid had that many times in a row. Someone in the temple had probably noticed the clone's force-sensitivity and had sent him to Quin because he'd both be useful and he'd be away from the sort of carnage that an unshielded mind could suffer around battlefields. That sort of thing built up over time, even if the force-sensitive person in question hadn't trained himself to sense more.

Still, it was a bit of a pity he hadn't been found early enough to give him training, because Quin would catch flashes of raw strength that hadn't been totally subverted into luck, in that way the untrained tended to subvert their power.

Eventually, even the kid's luck ran out and they got captured. Quin wasn't sure what was going on, because he'd been clapped into a Force-suppressant collar which meant he was hobbled in terms of what he could see about the situation or help them get out.

Then the Separatist intelligence agents who'd caught them decided to stand around and gloat. "Oh, look at you Jedi. Useless without your Force powers," one said.

"And the flesh droids. Do you like to hang around them because they don't have feelings?"

"Really?" Anders asked. "This is what you're going for? Taunting like a first stage cadet?"

As the others jeered right back at their captors, Quin realised one of their party was missing. The kid was nowhere to be found. When the agents had decided they weren't going to get anything out of them for the time being, Quin and his team were left alone.

Anyone see where '78 went? He flicked his fingers in the GAR's sign language, keeping them out of sight of the recording devices he could spot.

Escaped was Nexu's contribution.

They traded ideas for escape while Quin worried about the kid. Had he gone for help? Tried to get off-planet? Been captured and killed?

It was much later that their silent debate was interrupted by the youngest of the clones slipping out of a vent. He'd stripped out of nearly everything to fit, but he was also carrying Quin's sabre and dragging several blasters with him as he hastily opened the door to their cell. He reached to get at the collar and Quin was about to tell him not to worry about it so they could just get away when it was too late. The agents burst in and it devolved to a firefight and Quin couldn't help. He didn't dare try to do anything with his sabre when he didn't have the Force to be sure of what he was doing with it. They were in a terrible tactical position and getting out wasn't going to happen. The vents were too small for an adult to fit in, even if they'd had the opportunity to use them to try to get away. The others were all too busy trying to keep the attackers at bay to be able to get the collar off.

The vents were too small to fit an adult?

Quin blinked, then cleared his head. He had no access to the Force, but you could bend or break a mind trick with enough mental focus.

Across the room, a slender teen-aged clone down to baggy blacks that were too large on him was shooting at the agents.

Quin prided himself on his instincts. "Kanan, use my 'sabre!"

Their eyes met and then a hand reached out, the weapon flew through the air into the teen's outstretched hand and he launched himself through the air, slicing through blasters and dodging shots as only a trained sensitive could do.

He left no survivors and shot Quin an agonised look, even as he hurried over, getting the collar off. "They can't know," he said. His hands were trembling as they worked the lock.

"It's alright," Quin told him, getting everyone back to their small ship and the hell off that planet.

In hyperspace they all settled around him. Quin watched from the sidelines as the clones' whole demeanour underwent a shift to sort of parental and in no time they had the boy - because he really was an actual kid, not just young enough to get away with calling a kid - cuddled under a blanket.

"Those are some pretty impressive mind tricks you've been pulling," Quin told him.

The story he told of decommissioning, sale, escape, the massacre at his temple, it was enough to make even Quin wince. "I'm sorry about forcing myself in here," he finished. "I . . . I didn't know where else to go and when I had the chance to get in I just . . . acted." He'd sliced the system in order to create false orders for them to add him to their team.

"What you did was dangerous," he said. "Not just for you, but for all of us."

He ignored the giant tooka eyes from his team as they resisted the urge to more actively cuddle the kid.

"Luckily you have some impressive skill with the Force and subterfuge, enough to get us out of that." He looked up and said, "I know I'm no healer, but having a second Force sensitive on the team won't go amiss. Would you agree to be my padawan, Kanan?"

"It's Mikal," the kid told him. "Mikal Kartezh, and I would be honoured, Master Vos." He formally bowed and Quin winced.

"Could you maybe just call me Quin?" he asked. He'd never liked overformality.

"But that would be disrespectful, Master."

The barest hint of a smile stopped him from arguing so he threw a pillow at his new student instead. "Aayla's really going to like you," he told Mikal, "And maybe you could keep that up the next time I'm around Obi so that I can make fun of him because my padawan is better-behaved than his ever was."

Chapter Text

Quin was sitting next to Reels, enjoying the brief respite of lunch at the small pub before they both had to take the plunge into the op that evening. They'd spent days watching the small base a few klicks outside town, taking shifts with the others in their little unit to get all of the guard shifts noted, their rounds, the ways and places they looked and didn't looked, casing the place for surveillance devices, sensors and anything else they needed to know before trying to break in. They were both enjoying the meal, an unnecessarily large amount of food that Reels was planning to bring back to share leftovers with the others.

"Hi," a small voice said beside him. Quin glanced down and saw a little Togruta girl smile at him. "'M Tala."

"Nice to meet you ad'ika," Reels said. "But shouldn't you be with your . . . whoever's looking after you?"

A voice from the other side of the table pulled Quin and Reels' attention, "She really should," said an oddly familiar-looking young human man. Dark brown hair, brown eyes, tan skin and a mostly unremarkable and forgettable face - the sort that looks familiar because he just somehow looked like an everyman - with a smile on it greeted them. "I'm Pelin," he said. "Tala's in my care," and he raised his voice slightly in the tone of mildly exasperated parents everywhere, "And should know better than to bother people trying to eat lunch in peace."

Tala heaved an exaggerated sigh and lugged herself and a little bag full of something with her to her guardian. "I never getta do nothin' intrestin'," she grumbled.

Pelin picked her up, tapped her nose and said, "Never get to do anything interesting," he corrected. "Sorry to bother you both."

"It was no trouble," Quin told him. He turned back to his food, but saw Reels crane his neck after the pair with a wistful look. When he glanced back the two had disappeared as though they'd never been there and Reels heaved a sigh. "Something wrong?"

The clone's mouth twisted a little wryly. "I just miss the kih'vod'e," he said. "I like kids."

"Ah," Quin nodded. It seemed a characteristic of many of the clones he'd met. He looked down at his plate, then glanced at Reels', blinking in surprise. It seemed there was less food there than he'd thought.

****

They'd tried a few runs at the base, but they just hadn't gotten the timing quite down and there'd been some sort of unexpected issues with them, causing the guards to be on a higher alert than they'd expected.

The whole team had been forced to wait longer, and Quin had wound up taking each of his team to that same pub. For the sake of minimizing outsider curiosity they'd decided they'd each pretend to be the same person, which was an advantage of clones. You could, if necessary, play a shell game with identical faces, and it let Quin bring all of them to get a nice meal on the company credit, so to speak.

It seemed little Tala and her guardian were also regulars. She'd wander about, popping up out of thin air to greet random people. Pelin would follow after her, spouting apologies and carrying her off again, the bag she carried everywhere dangling from his arm while she giggled and squirmed in his grasp.

She also made a point of coming to their table to say hi, talk about the cute tooka she'd seen the other day or how much she liked Quin's hat.

The boys all liked her and gave her jerky, which she ate with enthusiasm and thanked them for profusely.

What was even more interesting were the looks Pelin gave them when he thought no one was looking. They were wistful and despite himself Quin couldn't help pummelling his brain to try to recall if and where he'd seen Pelin before.

***

In the end, all their efforts were for naught and they were captured anyhow. The CIS operatives gloated, interrogated, gloated some more and left them all locked up.

They were working on a plan, hoping to get out before they wound up on a ship bound for Serreno or someplace else deep in Sep territory. It was hard, though, as Quin had been put into a Force-suppressing collar, the others were restrained in separate cells and none of them had a good enough notion of the layout so as to make escape possible. It was hard to plan when you could only communicate in signs and heavily coded brief words, and more so when you could only sign to the three in the facing cells and not with the two on either side of you. They were under surveillance, obviously, so any planning had to be subtle.

The latest round of interrogation had just ended and they were all settling in to a long session of relayed plans when the first of their cells opened. Anders stepped close to the door, glancing left and right quickly before seemingly shrugging at the weirdness and taking advantage. He headed to the cell across from him, the one to Quin's left, working on overriding the control and getting Reels out. Across from Quin Nexu didn't even pause as his cell opened and he headed straight for Quin's cell. There was a thud and an 'oof'ing sound and they all turned to stare at little Tala, who had just appeared out of thin air an access key clattering to the ground as she fell over.

An alarm sounded and the first guards arrived, getting taken down by Anders and Nexu, who took the blasters off the guards and used them to shoot the locks on the cells, letting the others out. They got more blasters as more guards arrived, but they were cornered. Quin grabbed Tala, pulling her behind him and joined the others in shooting. "Any ideas?" he asked the others, then staggered as little Tala's fingers found their way onto his skin, leaving him open to an incredibly loud psychic blast calling for help in the Force, despite the anti-Force collar on his neck.

Ah, the joys of his psychometry.

Then the sound of a lightsabre reached them. It was Pelin, cutting through the guards, throwing them this way and that as he cut through. "Mikal!" shouted the little girl happily.

Quin winced as the shout was echoed in the Force through his skin and saw Pelin shake his head, the impression of a twenty-something human man fading into a teenage-equivalent clone, before the other did something with the Force that put an actual illusion back up. He took the lead, somewhat awkwardly, but between the skills of his team, having an eminently - though not completely - trained force sensitive carving his way from the front and little Tala enthusiastically using the force to shove at their opponents somewhat indiscriminately, they made it out and scrambled to their ship, barely making it off-planet.

The illusion had fallen and Pelin-Mikal was pale and exhausted with Tala dead asleep on his lap.

"Cadet?" Plate said as he knelt beside the kid. "You okay?"

The boy summoned a weak smile. "Just tired. Tzipa's perception trick is effective, but it's hard to hold for long periods of time."

"Tzipa?" asked Plate.

"Tala's name," explained the younger clone. "Her name is actually Tzipa. I'm Mikal."

Quin cut in then. "You've overextended and you're exhausted," he told Mikal. "Get some rest, you can tell us how you and Tzipa wound up here, together, later."

A moment later he was taken aback at the casual efficiency with which the older clones bustled the younger onto a jumble of sleeping pads on the floor, all of them stripping down to what they normally slept in and cuddling him and Tzipa in the middle of the pile. Cover shot him a glance and held out a hand in invitation. Quin smiled wistfully at them. He couldn't really do that anymore with more than one unshielded mind, and most clones didn't have shielding of any particular strength. He shook his head. "I can't. Too much skin contact for a psychometric," he explained, then settled nearby to bask in the comfortable atmosphere. Mikal was already dozing, a near-reflexive reaction to being soothed and cuddled by older clones like that.

Over the next several days Mikal told them his story and about how he and Tzipa had fled from the Opanathite temple when it was attacked and how they'd been making their way, using the Force to con people and stealing food by having one or the other of them sneak up on people and take food off their plates in pubs. The technique was one that the tiny Togruta girl had perfected while still with her birth mother, who had rarely remembered to feed the child. In response Tzipa had been forced to learn how to use the Force to sneak up on people and take things she needed. She had taught Mikal and Mikal, upon Quin's request, duly taught the shadow the technique.

Three weeks later they had two new permanent additions to their little crew. Quin's new padawan, Mikal, and little Tzipa whose presence allowed them to look even less like spies or soldiers and who was mostly still there because she refused to leave Mikal and tried to bite the crechemasters in the temple on Coruscant and still managed to sneak back onto their ship without anyone noticing.

Chapter Text

"Why won't you listen to me!?" a ragged voice, half a scream in it, caught Colt's attention immediately and he found himself at the landing docks almost without thinking. A clone cadet, one of the older ones but not yet old enough to be sent out, was struggling in the grasp of the security mercenaries the Kaminoans tended to use in lieu of troopers when any of their number visited places on business unrelated to the war or the Republic senate.

He frowned, because the kid's movements were strangely unpractised. He was moving like an untrained civilian. Even the youngest of the vod'e would have put up a more competent fight. "What is happening here?" he asked.

"This clone-"

"I'm not!" the boy shouted. "You saw my ID. I'm a citizen of Gharentid and just because we happen to be on the wrong side of the border doesn't give you any right to hold me hostage and pretend I'm a karking clone!"

Mona Li, the longneck, said, "I have checked your DNA-"

"Without my permission-"

"- and you are, without a doubt, Kamino product. Thus, we are retrieving stolen property."

"Kark you!" the boy swore, struggling harder, yet still wholly ineffectually. "I'm not one of your karking flesh droids!"

Colt was too shocked at the sight of one of their own - and despite whatever the cadet was claiming, he was a fellow clone - calling the vod'e flesh droids, to intervene as they carted the still-struggling cadet away.

"What the actual kriff," said Lieutenant Lacer.

"I have no idea," Colt replied. He strode after them, wishing that General Ti was there. She would have the authority to stop this and maybe figure out what was going on. He caught up just as the Kaminoan had the cadet practically thrown at a squad that was listed as down from four to three. He protested, trying to convince them that he should be given the opportunity to talk to the kid and maybe find out what was going on, but he was overruled. All he could do was give orders to the rest of the members of Rancor to watch the new kid - he insisted his name was Mikal and had utterly refused to answer to the number the Kaminoans had assigned him when he couldn't produce one - and try to figure out how the kriff one of theirs seemed to have no idea who he was.

The next couple ten days were filled with wild speculation as the kid argued with trainers, got into trouble and refused to accept anything until they started to go after his squad. Only then did he capitulate. He made himself well-disliked by his squad for it, though that anger seemed to wear off shortly after. It was almost painful to watch him as he fumbled every training exercise like a tubie's first stumbling steps. He kept getting his bracers on the wrong arms, the shin guards on the wrong legs - if it was an act it was a fantastic one, because he never made a mistake that was openly stupid. It was always something that made sense if he'd never had to do those exercises or put on armour before. Straps out of order, items too loose and unending awkwardness about moving in the armour.

If he didn't know better, Colt might have believed the kid. The two things that kept him suspicious were the fact that the Kaminoans had tested him and the boy was absolutely a clone. The other was the way his squad had abruptly closed ranks around him after a training accident. Somehow (Colt had his suspicions about the Kaminoans causing 'training accidents' now that they couldn't decom anyone), the four cadets had been caught in a sealed training room with waves of droids on the highest settings for hours. Somehow the missing squad had slipped through the cracks. When they managed to get the droids deactivated remotely and crack the doors of the room open, they'd found the cadets sheltered behind a barrier made of deactivated droids, two of them desperately performing first aid on Mikal, the worst injured of the four, and who had passed out upon spotting the adults coming in the door.

The recording equipment in the room had been damaged and they were still trying to recover something to have some idea of what had gone down in there. They'd asked the cadets before they could have a chance to get their stories straight and each one had told a different version of what happened. Nester had put them back-to-back, Mikal demonstrating competence equal to his squadmates; Plates had insisted that Mikal had been hit almost immediately and went down at the start while the others had struggled to survive the onslaught; Gradient had indicated Mikal had been bravely providing useful tactics from the back and cover fire. Mikal, when asked upon regaining consciousness, had cheerfully insisted the others were covering for him and that he'd cowered uselessly in the wrong spot, and wasn't that proof he should be sent away?

Colt had told him no, and Mikal had closed his eyes, taking a shaking breath, saying, "I guess that's it, then."

The next day, the squad that had previously barely tolerated him closed ranks around their fourth member.

General Ti had returned and had joined them in watching Mikal, planning to approach the cadet once she had a better bead on him. That plan was shot when Separatists appeared out of nowhere, attacking Kamino. Colt was desperately running the battle, praying for backup, when he was cornered by Grievous. He'd been shooting, backing away from Grievous and his droids when he was suddenly choking, being dragged through the air by the neck. There was a crashing sound, the whir of a lightsabre, and he fell to the ground. When he looked up, Mikal's squad was surrounding him. All of them only partially armoured, Mikal in front of them, brandishing one yellow and one green lightsabre. The droids had been smashed leaving only Grievous and the Separatist Ventress. Colt got to his feet.

"Oh, look at that," Ventress crooned. "Baby clone thinks he can fight me. Where'd you get the lightsabres?"

Mikal seemed to be settled into his skin in a way that Colt hadn't seen before. "They're mine, Sith. Maybe I can't win, but I don't need to win."

"You just need to delay long enough for them to get away?"

"Something like that," Mikal threw himself into the fight, but it was almost immediately clear that he was outmatched. And yet, somehow he kept avoiding permanent injury, coming back to challenge again. Colt and the cadets provided cover fire and somehow - he was never sure how - they held back the pair until Skywalker and Kenobi appeared, followed by members of the 212th and 501st. With Ventress and Grievous being held back, Mikal staggered and passed out. Colt grabbed the kid and passed him to his squad, who carted the kid off. Colt did his duty and stayed, then ducked off before Kenobi and Skywalker could pin him to ask questions.

He made his way to the medbay, finding Mikal already awake. "You know I need to ask about this," he said.

Mikal sighed and pressed his lips together a moment. "Sir," said Nester, "I-"

"It's okay '35 . . . Nester," Mikal said. He glanced behind Colt. "Master Ti, Master Kenobi, Knight Skywalker."

Colt glanced behind him to see the three generals had arrived as well. Mikal took a breath and explained. Told them about being sent to decom and waking up as a ship's rat. His squad, who it turned out was his original squad, clustered around their fourth, mulishly defensive of him. Colt couldn't blame them. If he'd lost a squadmate to decom and they'd reappeared from the dead like this, he'd probably be just as defensive. The boy went on to explain that he'd been found and saved by a splinter Jedi sect in what was now Separatist space. After his performance with the two lightsabres it was not shocking to find out that he'd been apprenticed to one of them. Apparently the Separatists had attacked these Jedi too, and in the process of escaping from the massacre Mikal had stumbled into the path of Mona Li and had been unable to get away. He'd been hoping to bluff them, and when that didn't work he'd been waiting to escape. Mikal shrugged. "I didn't want to hurt anyone," he said. "So I was waiting. And then this." He gestured broadly, clearly indicating the failed Separatist invasion.

"How badly were you hurt?" Skywalker asked. "I saw you go down right after we got there?"

"It's Force exhaustion," Mikal said. "I . . . Opanathi Jedi don't train as hard as the Coruscant ones in sabre use. But there's a trick, if you only need to last for a short while - or if you're making a last stand," he added, spurring Plates to grab his vod's hand. Mikal gently laced his finger's with his squadmate's a moment. "But if you open yourself to the Force, align both the living and the unifying Force, then use both lines simultaneously, bent very directly to predicting your opponent, you can become orders of magnitude better. It's just . . . tiring," he explained. "But I had to delay Ventress and Grievous."

"Is that how you survived being caught in the training room malfunction?" Colt asked.

"No sir," Gradient said. "He just took off half his armour and starting flinging himself around and the droids just went down and kept going down until he had enough to just make the droids into cover for us, then we were able to shoot them like normal. He still did some jare'la things, but nothing like . . . that."

The three Jedi exchanged looks and sent Colt and the three cadets out of the room where Mikal was resting. Colt went to work, organizing Rancor to get Kamino back up and running. He didn't have the heart to tell the cadets to leave their squadmate, and he left them hovering around the medbay anxiously. That evening the announcement was made that Mikal was now General Ti's padawan-commander.

Colt was unsurprised when Mikal's new quarters became the de facto bunk for Mikal's old squad plus two others his was particularly friendly with.

Chapter Text

Cal was grouchily trying to understand his homework, sitting in the mess during meal off-hours, hoping that a change of scenery from his quarters would help him with this frustrating introduction to philosophy course.

"You okay?"

He glanced up to see one of the younger vod'e, the ones they called 'shinies', had sat down next to him. "Huh?" he asked inelegantly, then blushed.

The clone smiled wryly. "You just fe - looked a little . . . mad? Frustrated?"

The padawan heaved a sigh. "It's this philosophy course I have to take," he said. "I know Master Tapal said it's important, but it's so . . . why do I need to know why Master Olen constructed the stoic mode of thought and its utility compared to hedonism?"

"It sounds impractical," the shiny agreed. "But maybe it's about practice and also understanding what it means to be a Jedi, both."

Cal blinked at him. "What do you mean?"

"Okay, so when you're a proper n - general," he started, "When you've graduated, you're supposed to do stuff like help peace treaties and things."

Sighing, Cal interrupted. "If the war is over," he said glumly.

"If it's over then," agreed the vod. "But if you're dealing with two groups who have totally different worldviews, you'll have to understand how they see things, their ethics and whatnot, so that you can both make the agreement equitable and so you can help them see that it is equitable. But also, being a Jedi is supposed to be more than a laser sword and looking cool, right? There's trusting the Force and making all the choices that the Jedi make, like living in simpler surroundings, and you should understand how and why that makes you a Jedi, and also whether you agree."

Cal frowned. "Why wouldn't I agree?"

"Have you ever heard of the Opanathite Jedi sect? Or the Altisians? The Green Jedi on Corellia?"

"No," Cal said. "What are they?"

It turned out that the Opanathite Jedi thought that the Jedi had become too distant from normal people and insisted that the only way to be sure a Jedi understood normal people was for them to be normal for a while. The vod, whose name turned out to be Pelin, explained that they lost a lot of potential Jedi to a normal life and pointed out that if they were choosing to leave, maybe being a Jedi wasn't actually for them, but that other Jedi insisted on keeping their people from a lot of normal life things, so that they never even knew if being a Jedi was really right for them. He explained about the Altisians who felt that the Coruscant temple was letting fear of Falling guide them when it came to how they defined attachment and that Jedi should be allowed families like in the old days. He explained the Corellian choice to remain far more militant, like before the Ruusan Reformation, and that they'd narrowed their sphere to just the Corellian systems in the process.

It was weird and neat and as Pelin explained, Cal understood that learning those philosophies really was good practice for thinking about being a Jedi and also for understanding how other people thought about things. Pelin had to leave before they were really done, but he was super-helpful, and that evening Master Tapal had been very impressed with his essay.

The next time he had trouble with his homework and Master Tapal was busy, Cal looked up Pelin.

Pelin was awesome. He was one of the younger vod'e on board, which made it a little less awkward to hang around than some of the troopers who were way older than Cal, but more than that, he just treated Cal like . . . well, another person. He didn't hesitate over using Cal's name, and even called him 'Padawan Kestis' rather than 'Commander Kestis' when they were in more formal situations. It was really nice to feel like he wasn't being put on some sort of Jedi pedestal.

Cal found out that Pelin was really really different from the other Vod'e a couple tendays later, though. They'd been joking in Cal's quarters when Cal had elbowed him in retaliation for a bad joke. Pelin doubled over with a gasp, and Cal had reached for the comm to call a medic when it flew from his grasp into Pelin's hand. "No!"

"You're force-sensitive!" Cal exclaimed, gaping.

The face that looked back at him was also even younger. He didn't look the equivalent of human standard eighteen to twenty. He looked like he was in his mid-teens, only a little bit older than Cal. "Please don't," Pelin begged.

"I don't understand," Cal said. "Why are you here and not . . . not on Kamino?"

Pelin sighed. "I was sent to decom several years ago, before the Jedi came to Kamino. The longnecks sold me instead to make a quick credit. I was found by Master Healer Pelis Kana from the Opanathite Temple."

He told his story to Cal, then begged the padawan to let him stay, to hide on Albedo Brave. Cal didn't think the Jedi would make Pelin - Mikal his friend had said his name really was - go back to Kamino, not if he was actually a fellow padawan, but Mikal was scared and the redhead didn't think it would hurt anything to let Mikal stay. He told Mikal that he'd let him stay on two conditions.

"What are those?" Mikal asked, warily.

"You teach me how you made yourself seem older, and you let me help with your injuries," Cal said.

Mikal seemed to melt in relief. "I can do that," he said to Cal.

That was that. Mikal kept on being 'Pelin' and helping Cal with his homework. Cal meanwhile used his connection to the Jedi Archives to get materials for Mikal to continue his studies as a padawan and helped him carefully bamboozle the medics into continuing to believe that he was a full trooper. They helped each other and Mikal seemed to relax as time passed, though he periodically needed to be hugged when he got too caught up remembering the attack on his temple and having to run. Cal wasn't sure what to do about that, because Mikal should probably be telling someone to look for survivors, but the Opanathite were in Sep territory which meant they couldn't go there to look . . . it was a whole thing and Cal could see how Mikal would be nervous that someone might just order him back to Kamino despite him being a pretty awesome Jedi in Cal's opinion if anyone wanted to know.

Mikal also had a super-interesting technique for meditating with a forming artificial kyber crystal that could be used to stabilise them into being almost as good as regular kyber. His old 'sabre had one of those and he'd walked Cal through making one for himself. They needed constant meditative upkeep, but it was still neat to have a backup. That said, since Mikal's temple had limited access to kyber resources, they had developed a tradition of handing down kyber and he said he felt like his master's old 'sabre was calling to him to use it. He'd saved the 'sabre in the attack on his temple that had killed his master and Cal let Mikal have access to his own kit for fixing it up.

Periodically they'd reserve one of the training rooms on the Albedo, lock the doors and practice together. It was different from training with his master. For one thing, Mikal's style was a purely defensive variant on Ataru, and second, Mikal wasn't nearly as good as Master Tapal, so the fights were much more equal, which was nice. Also, it was fun to go walking in the markets on a few planets and have people see a sixteen-year-old and not a child. Mikal's technique for making people perceive him as not quite what he was that he said he'd learned from a friend at his temple was absolutely wizard.

Spending so much time together also got Mikal assigned to Cal's personal squad, which was pretty awesome too.

It all fell apart when they got attacked while investigating a Sith temple the Council had wanted them to check on in case the Seps tried to get stuff from it. They were attacked and while Master Tapal was pinned down on the other side, Count Dooku's apprentice, Ventress, showed up. She blew past the Vod'e defending Cal and he got flung into a wall. Cal dazedly stared at her when he heard Mikal shout behind her. "Hey! Over here, Ventress!"

"Give that back!" she shrieked and gave chase. The men shouted and reached for Mikal, who just force-jumped off a ledge.

"Pelin!" Stance shouted.

"He'll be okay," Cal said woozily. "I mean, if he stays ahead of her."

"He's literally running in the branches like a Jedi," Looker said from the doorway, sounding baffled.

Cal would have tried to respond, but his gloves had been torn without him realising and when his palms touched the altar-thing in front of him, he was lost in an echo.

All there was, was screaming.

Time passed and Cal felt buffeted by the pain and the dark.

Suddenly it resolved, like surfacing from under the water and hearing the way the world bursts into sound and colour as you reach the air and take a breath.

"There you are," Mikal said, his fingers lightly pressed to Cal's temples.

Cal felt like he'd gone a few rounds with a gundark, but, "You okay? Ventress hurt you?"

Mikal grimaced slightly, but said, "I'll be fine." He turned his head, saying over his shoulder, "Gen - Master Tapal, can you hand over the gloves?"

"I can, and when you've both finished recovering in the medbay, I look forward to an explanation of everything." His master moved into Cal's field of view, handing gloves to Mikal who slipped them onto Cal's hands, which felt floppy and weak.

"It's fine," Mikal said. "I can ex-" he stood quickly, then staggered, Commander Sharp caught him as he seemed to drop like a rock, then shifted the teen-equivalent clone to rest on one arm, his legs draped over the other as he brought him to a stretcher. "M'okay," he insisted, slurring the words.

"Just rest vod'ika," Sharp told him. He glanced over at Cal. "You too."

Cal let himself be bundled onto a stretcher. "Don't be mad," he said to Master Tapal. "He was scared and he asked me not to tell."

"Since he is the one who saved the relic from the Sith and saved you from the echo, I am not inclined to be very angry," his master said, "but you should have told me."

Cal was falling asleep fast despite his wish to stay awake and make sure Master Tapal understood about Mikal. He just made a mental note that he had to remember when he woke up.

Chapter Text

When Anakin found the half-trained clone Jedi padawan working in with the medics on Christophsis every bit of his sympathy for the lost master and for the escape from slavery that was granted by a Jedi that reminded Anakin so much of himself in a way, it prompted him to offer to help the kid complete his training. Anakin consulted with Rex and Kix, making plans to contact Vokara Che to help him with co-mastery so that Mikal could finish training to be a healer like he wanted, with Kix handling the non-Force-related education as much as possible.

Rex had pretty much adopted the kid, saying he saw himself in a cadet who was different and slated to be cannon fodder by the longnecks (Anakin couldn't help but approve of rude nicknames for slavers), but who had potential to be more.

The one thing he'd been trying to figure out was the right way to say this to Obi-Wan, because Anakin wasn't sure whether his Master would think training a padawan from a different Jedi tradition was the right thing. He obviously hadn't brought it up when they made their calls out, because getting Senator Organa and his men out of this alive was somewhat more important than whether or not he'd taken a padawan.

When the 212th arrived and after everything had stabilised for the moment, Anakin strode up to Obi-Wan, still distracted by how he was going to explain this.

"Perhaps they brought my new padawan with them," Obi-Wan said as he looked at the smaller ship landing in front of them.

Anakin sighed. Mikal was one thing, the kid was already partly trained and having him with Anakin was better than out in the Galaxy alone. But some kid fresh from the Temple on Coruscant? "You really think it's a good idea to bring a padawan learner into this?" Anakin asked him.

"I spoke to Master Yoda about it," Obi-Wan said. "You should put in a request for one."

"No, thanks," Anakin said. He was about to continue when Obi-Wan spoke over him.

"Anakin, teaching is a privilege. And it's part of a Jedi's responsibility to help train the next generation."

Aggravated, because he'd have thought that of all people Obi-Wan would understand the problems that came with being railroaded into a padawan you didn't really want, Anakin said, "I'm not having an untrained child brought to the front lines that I haven't even spoken to before." He frowned, glancing around, because Mikal was supposed to have shown up by now so he could be introduced. Where was he?

The conversation was derailed by the child wearing ridiculous skimpy clothing half bouncing off the ship, their efforts to get contact outside for reinforcements and the arrival of enemy ships driving away the cruiser, breaking their link with the outside.

Finally Obi-Wan introduced himself to the girl, and she declared herself to be Ahsoka Tano and that, "I'm at your service, Master Kenobi but I'm afraid I've actually been assigned to Master Skywalker."

"What?" Anakin said. "No, no, no."

He would have said more, but Rex's voice came on over his comm. "Sir? Kix wants to know when you'll send Mikal back. He said the kid's better than a scanner in a pinch."

"He's not with you?" Anakin said, feeling shades of panic kick in. "I was wondering where he was, but I thought he might have been delayed with Kix."

"No, sir. I'll get someone looking for - what the?" Rex's comm abruptly shut off.

Anakin hissed. "I have to go."

"You should take her with you," Obi-Wan told him.

"No," Anakin snapped over his shoulder as he started to head for Rex and the command tent. "I shouldn't, because I don't need her along. I need to find my padawan who's just gone missing."

"What?" Obi-Wan asked him, eyes widening in surprise.

They were interrupted by 212th clones dragging Mikal towards them, Rex and Kix in hot pursuit. "Sir!" Cody was snapping from the front, "We found this cadet-"

"Let me go!" -- "Let him go!" Anakin and Mikal said at the same time.

Thankfully, Anakin's authority was enough for the gold-painted clones to loosen their grip in surprise. Mikal wrenched himself away and bolted to Anakin, who pulled the kid close. "I'm so sorry. Are you okay?"

"I'm okay Master Skywalker," Mikal said.

Rex shot a flinty glare at Cody, who jerked in surprise at his vod's anger. "Cody," said Rex, irate enough to calculatedly drop a superior officer's rank. "Meet the 501st's new padawan commander, Mikal Kartezh."

Anakin straightened. "Obi-Wan, this is your new grand-padawan, formerly of the Opanathi Temple. I was going to introduce you and talk to you about making sure to spread the word to look for survivors."

"But he's a clone," Sergeant Boil said, sounding stunned.

"He's force-sensitive," Anakin replied. "And we'll need to keep an eye out for other clones who the Kaminoans decided to sell rather than send to decom as well." He turned to Ahsoka. "I'm sorry. I know this may be a disappointment, but I would have told the temple sooner if we hadn't been blockaded in the way we have been."

"Oh," the Togruta girl said. "I . . ."

Anakin shot Obi-Wan a heavy look. "Frankly, I think you'll do better with Obi-Wan," he said. "It's about time our lineage actually chose our own padawans instead of letting Yoda and circumstance bully us into taking students we didn't specifically pick or ask for."

Chapter Text

Fox wasn't totally sure about what they were supposed to do with the young clone they'd found in the lower levels. They'd been sending them out younger and younger and this one . . . well, Thire had said that when they'd found him, lost and confused, wandering with a concussion far lower down than he should have been, they'd all thought he was still cadet-aged. By the time they'd gotten back to base, hauling the kid into the medbay, they'd determined he was just lucky enough (bad or good luck only time would tell) to have one of those faces that looked younger than everyone else. He was too comfortable with things off Kamino, too used to seeing non-Vod'e, non-trainer people to have been fresh off of training, but he couldn't have been far past that.

It was also clear that however he'd gotten the head injury, it had taken at least some of his memories, because he had a strange mix of understanding of how things worked, how to address his superiors, how to salute, and not understanding how to handle the basics of military discipline.

He was a tricksy fighter in sparring, though. Unlike most clones who learned to use their bioengineered muscle mass and weight to slam into an opponent with an unstoppable force, the new kid, Pelin, was slippery and flexible, eeling his way around an opponent and tripping them up that way, using an opposition's momentum against them. Stone had fallen for it and had gotten thrown into a wall opposite by the wholly unexpected fighting style. Once they'd learned his style, Pelin was around average, but he never was wanting for sparring partners as the novelty of how he moved kept others in the Guard interested.

Pelin had found his place after a few weeks, easing into the medbay. Fox's CMO, Sharp, had said Pelin had clearly had some medic training, but it was either incomplete or something else lost from the concussion.

In the end, they decided not to report anything and just quietly slotted him into their ranks.

In retrospect, the eventual end was traceable back to one conversation which started the ball rolling.

"Sir," Pelin began. "Do you know when we're to be resupplied? Medbay is low on Bacta and some antibiotics."

It had been another day of listening to the Chancellor lie about "supporting our brave troops" and Fox was a little bitter.

Was he ever not?

"Welcome to the Guard," he said with that falsely chipper voice that was so much bleaker and angrier than anything else from the juxtaposition alone. "Cushiest job in the GAR."

The younger clone's eyes narrowed. "I see," he said. "So where do I ask about those supplies that you can't know about how they were acquired?"

It made the edges of Fox's lips twitch upward just a little. Pelin was smart. He wasn't protesting, he just moved forward to ask how the Guard got things when they were actively shorted. Fox pointed him to Hound, whose work with Grizzer let him go to a lot of places and drop points no one else would have an excuse to see.

Master Healer Vokara Che would be the first to admit that, with the main Jedi Temple housing ten thousand people of all ages and species, no one could know every single Jedi who also had things to do other than keeping track of them. That was why at first, the human padawan in his mid-teens slipped under her radar. He had clearly had some healing training, more than most, but there were many Jedi who learned more healing with the expectation it would be useful at some point in their lives.

Sometimes when they were busy he'd be there, quietly slipping through the background, providing help in the chaos of youngling vaccinations or sorting supplies on busier days.

Vokara started to notice little things, though, like the fact that she never saw the boy's master, nor did he seem to have any friends or even know anyone at all in the Temple. He looked familiar, but in a way that seemed more like 'one of those faces' than true familiarity.

No one could know all the Jedi, but they all had circles of those who knew them and Padawan Pelin Kana had no circles. He also felt oddly . . . blurred in the Force. He had the sense around him you might find if someone was pulling a mind trick, but Vokara couldn't see what the trick was.

That being said the Force indicated no danger in him. In fact, the Force seemed to gently wrap around him in a way that made Vokara certain that whatever was up with him, he had nothing but the best of intentions.

So, she decided to keep an eye on him.

She carefully engaged in conversation, offering to answer questions, offering advice, testing the edges of who he was and what he said about himself. Vokara found an enthusiastic student, interested in healing, talented and kind. He seemed to be doing a few different healing-related projects, as when she'd find him in the archives he'd be investigating memory loss, fugue states and even sleepwalking, but also more primitive healing methods, such as casting broken bones and major wound closures not involving Bacta.

It was when she started tracking him that she found he might not be a Jedi at all. Pelin would be found in the Healing Halls and the Archives, but never anywhere else. She couldn't find him in classes, the refectory, the training salles, the residential portions of the Temple - the only other place she'd ever seen him was collecting samples out of the Room of a Thousand Fountains.

He was a trained Force-sensitive and he felt like a Jedi padawan in the Force, but that could just be a deception. It was weeks, but she eventually trailed him right back out of the Temple. Vokara wasn't a shadow, so she lost him fairly quickly, but she was invested. More, something in the Force kept telling her that she didn't want to bring anyone official into this just yet. So, she kept watching Padawan Kana and following him a little further each time he snuck back out of the Temple.

Pelin had been disappearing whenever he was off-shift, something Fox became aware of only because word reached him that the others were a little concerned that you'd never find him joining the others at 79's, playing paintball or anything else they got up to in their free time. He trained, he did his shifts, he was never found having done anything to be seriously reprimanded for, but it was a little odd. Hound had asked permission to have Grizzer track him, just to be sure he wasn't getting into some sort of trouble.

When he had Thire ask around for him, Fox found that Pelin had found some sort of supply point for the medbay. Thire looked an odd mixture of relieved and concerned. "So, Sharp said that Pelin's been coming up with supplies, but not just regular things like Bacta bandages. He's got a bunch of reference material from who-knows-where about less advanced treatment methods. When they ran low on painkillers, for example, he came back with a bucketload of plants that he showed them how to process into a painkiller. Sharp says it's a little harder to prescribe exactly, but it's safe, does the job and they've taken over that disused bunker on level 2562 to use as a greenhouse and drying . . . thing."

Fox sighed. He had a headache from dealing with the Chancellor again, not to mention another blurry hour that had just vanished from memory, and while on the one hand he was delighted that they had a safe, potentially regular supply for the medbay, there was no telling how this might come back to bite them if it got out. "Send him my way, would you?" he said. "I need a word."

When the kid showed up, he looked anxious. "What can I do for you, sir?"

"I'll be blunt," Fox said. "I'm glad you've found a way to supply us, but I need you to understand exactly how precarious the situation is. The first time that I had requested additional supplies, the Chancellor made a statement about the expense of maintaining the Guard and three squads were reassigned. We don't know where they went, they have not reappeared anywhere else in the GAR."

Pelin paled. "I'm sorry, sir. I didn't realise . . . I can-"

"I know," Fox said. "I'm not telling you to stop what you're doing. But you need to be careful. Very careful. Am I understood, Trooper?"

The kid nodded. "Yes sir." Then his head cocked. "Headache again, sir?"

"Just a side-effect of dealing with the Chancellor's osik," Fox told him dismissively. Pelin's eyes narrowed and he seemed to jerk a little forward before seemingly remembering himself.

"Every time you deal with him?" he asked.

Fox gave him a grim smile. "Feel lucky you found your way in with the medics. Dismissed, trooper," he added before Pelin could follow in the footsteps of the other medics and harass Fox about things like extra sleep and pain meds he didn't have time for or didn't have supplies for.

"Yes sir." Pelin's salute and about-face were textbook perfect. In spite of himself, Fox smiled. Whatever had happened to Pelin before his arrival at the Guard he was the sort who would be an asset wherever he was assigned. He just wished they had been able to find out where Pelin had been assigned before so they could reassure his original CO and company that he was fine.

He was less impressed when Pelin showed up a half hour later with Sharp in tow, carrying a mug of tea that they both forced him to drink. It tasted like Stone's socks smelled.

It also dulled the pain of his headache back down to something tolerable enough to sleep.

"Shut up," he groused to Sharp when he was forced to admit it. Fox also ignored Sharp and the other medics cuddling Pelin in triumph while he nursed his sock-tea.

Vokara was fascinated.

She had tracked the pretend padawan to a small warehouse, watching him slip into it, then slip back out again a few minutes later, braid missing and now dressed in a clone trooper uniform. More significantly, though, the blurring she had experienced wasn't gone, it was shifted, and Vokara could see through his mind trick clearly. It was a delicate and subtle thing, reliant strictly on the expectations of the watcher. That is, the last thing she would have expected was to see a Force-sensitive clone doing a creditable job of pretending to be a padawan. Having now seen past that, it seemed that his mind trick was now aimed at convincing people he was a fully adult clone, when he was not. A short time later she stalked him to a different building where he met a clone from the Coruscant Guard who was handling a massiff. They collected something out of the bunker and even strapped some items onto the massif before leaving.

The whole time, young Pelin kept glancing back, clearly sensing her there, but not quite experienced enough to use the Force to find her.

As they drew closer to the Guard's barracks, however, Vokara could feel a churning in the Force. More, she could tell that something was coming that . . . would need her. Pelin felt it too, his stride lengthening and forcing the other clone and the massif to speed up as well.

And then Vokara saw the movement, the injured, clones carrying their brothers into the building. Pelin broke into a run and Vokara didn't hesitate.

The clones were taken aback at her sudden presence, but their medics didn't pause in their work. Pelin flinched for a moment, then assigned himself to work with her.

Vokara had raised one padawan to healer-knight and working with Pelin was just as comfortably familiar as Kasta had been. He blended his Force presence with hers with the ease of practice, settling into the assistant role that healer padawans took during their training.

Pelin was a clone, but he was also a Jedi padawan, and a good well-trained one at that.

Vokara also noted that, despite the Republic refusal to give the clones' medics the proper title of 'healer', they were as well-trained as any non-Force-sensitive university-trained healer she had ever dealt with. She and the other temple-bound healers had very few opportunities to work with the clones, and the frontline Jedi's complaints about Republic treatment of them were all the more poignantly pointed as Vokara found herself in a medbay working with professionals that should have been paid the standard rates for Republic healers and were instead treated as some sort of superior droids.

When the crisis ended, the last of the injured clones treated and resting, she turned to find one of their commanders at attention behind her. "General," he said with a sharp salute.

"Firstly," Vokara told him with some aspersion, "I am not in charge of any battalion such that I would deserve such a title. I am a healer, my name is Vokara Che, and if you cannot bring yourself to address me as Master Che, call me Healer Che." He shifted, something in him wary rather than put at ease by this. "Second, would you be so kind as to give me the name you would prefer that I use to address you by?"

"Commander Marshal Fox," he said, "CC-1010 by designation," he added.

"Commander Fox," she said, nodding. "I believe we have something to discuss on the matter of Pelin Kana."

His eyes narrowed, "Do you mean Trooper Pelin?" he asked.

On a suspicion, Vokara said, "I believe he is a great deal younger than the rest of your people, Commander Fox." She delicately flicked at the boy's mind trick, destabilising it and watched as the commander's eyes went wide with shock.

"How . . ." he trailed off, clearly unsure of exactly how to phrase the question.

"I can say that the young man used a Force trick to convince you and the others that he was . . . as old as he should be, I assume, as he did at the Jedi Temple, to convince us he was a padawan," Vokara told him. She turned to the boy. "But what I can't answer is how you learned it."

Commander Marshall Fox had turned as well, fixing the youngster with an intense look that made Vokara absently grateful she wasn't under the man's command. "It also doesn't explain how you got off Kamino."

"When I got sent to Decom, they sold me instead," the boy told them. He straightened. "I was found by the Opanathi Jedi. I . . . they took me in and . . ." he took a deep breath. "I am former padawan Mikal Kartezh," he said, then produced a point-perfect bow.

"Perhaps, Commander," Vokara said, "We should take this somewhere private."

Fox agreed and they brought the young clone to Fox's office where he explained about his time as a healer-knight-in-training, how the Separatists had attacked their temple and how he'd escaped and stumbled into the cargo bay of a transport, falling asleep and waking up on Coruscant, running and hiding until he was picked up by Thire's patrol. He'd panicked and thrown out the suggestion that he was old enough to be off Kamino, and by the time his concussion had resolved his story had been set and he was scared of changing it.

He explained that he'd snuck into the Temple in search of additional medical supplies, doing research into the Guards' blackouts, Fox's headaches and what they could use for supplies when the Republic was refusing to provide them with any.

When he was done, he looked at them both tense and worried. "Please don't send me back to Kamino," he begged.

Even if she had not been planning to ask the question she was about to, it would have taken a harder heart than Vokara Che had to refuse the request. As it stood, however, "I believe, Padawan Kartezh, that you would be a credit to the title of Healer-Knight, even should you choose to follow the path of the Opanathite Jedi." Mikal looked at her with so much hope it was almost painful. "Mikal Kartezh, would you do me the honour of becoming my padawan?"

"I . . ." he turned to glance at Fox out of the corner of his eye. "I'm sorry sir," he said. "About lying and -"

Commander Fox held up a hand, "Pel - Mikal," he corrected himself. "As you have been under my command most recently, I will make the appropriate notation on your record that your services have been requisitioned by General Che."

"Thank you Commander," Mikal said. He turned back to Vokara. "Yes, Master Che. I would be honoured to be your padawan."

Vokara smiled. "Very good, Mikal. Then why don't we get you set up at the Temple, and I will consult with the Guard's healers to ensure you can gain valuable cross-training in a practicum setting."

That also meant she'd have access to the medical files on these clones so that she could help her padawan with figuring out those so-disturbing blackouts he'd been looking into.