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The game was called limmie in the core, bolo-ball in the rest of the galaxy, but in Mandalorian space it was known as meshgeroya: the beautiful game. Although metropolitan Coruscant didn't seem to give much of a damn about it, Rex had yet to meet a brother who didn't have a hardwired love for the full-contact sport. All he could figure is that it must have been a Prime trait, like the sweet tooth they all seemed to have inherited.
"Crouch!" Coric called from the side. Being that he had nerve damage from catching two grenades to the face on Teth and could hardly walk anymore, he didn't participate in the game except to referee.
Jesse and Fives swung their arms over Rex's back. The squad of nine on both sides of the chalk-paint line got into a low position.
"Bind!"
Rex shoved forward into Appo's shoulder with all of the strength of Jesse, Fives, and the six other brothers on his team behind him. He grabbed Appo's utility belt and braced his feet against the durasteel, silently thanking his vod'ika and her sabers for leaving such convenient scars in the metal.
"Sweaty shabuir. Like holding a greased womprat," Appo grumbled into his ear.
Rex snickered. He liked to call skin side for that exact reason. Given that it also meant that he was at a bigger risk of losing his skin once he hit the hangar floor, shirt side couldn't exactly call it an unfair advantage.
"Set!" Coric tossed the ball underneath the tunnel that their bodies created. After a few seconds of perpendicular shoving, Rex's foot darted out and hooked the ball backwards and out through the rear of the scrum to Echo, who threw it out victoriously to Kix. Kix darted around the pack, jumped over Nax, and made a flying leap for the painted red goal-line.
"Osik." Appo leaned forward with his hands on his knees as the troopers whooped and slapped each other on their backs, breathing heavily. "New rule is that I get a shabla Domino too if you're going to make the meatballs props."
"Not the Captain's fault you can't bench more than eighty kilos, vod," Fives crowed. He and Echo shook their hips in an identical victory dance, wearing the same shit-eating grin.
"That's Lieutenant to you, vod," Appo said warningly.
"Alright, alright." Rex put his hands on his hips and twisted to crack his back. "I'm calling half-time."
"Thought I was the referee!" Coric called from the sideline.
"I'm still Captain." Rex grinned. "You lot go and rehydrate."
"Yes, Sir," grumbled a dozen-plus-half troopers, trudging off to the sideline. Rex reached for an electrolyte drink and paused with it halfway to his mouth. Coric's posture had changed and he was leaning against a munitions crate, wincing and breathing oddly.
Rex quickly and quietly made his way next to him. "Where'd you leave your cane?" he asked the medic quietly.
Coric shook his head. "I'm fine," he insisted.
"You've got it for a reason, vod, and nobody thinks worse of you for needing it," Rex assured him. And anyone who did think less of him would be assigned fresher duty if they so much as breathed a word. He'd like to see anyone else survive back-to-back grenades to the face and still have steady enough hands to stay on The Resolute as the 501st's permanent, ship-side Chief Medic. "Now where'd you leave it?"
"Rec room," Coric mumbled, still looking embarrassed. The line of scar tissue that pulled his mouth into a permanent sneer tightened. "Deck 30, section Alpha."
"I'll be right back." Rex clapped him on the back. "Don't start without me, 'lek?"
Coric nodded, huffing out a laugh. " 'Course not. You're the Captain, remember?"
Rex took off for the turbo-lift immediately, the fact that he was still shirtless slipping his mind entirely until he stepped out onto Deck 30 and felt a chill slither down his spine from the sudden difference in temperature from the hangar. His sweat evaporated quickly in the recycled air, and by the time he actually got to the rec room door he was covered in nunabumps.
" …so when combined, the two create a highly caustic—" Ahsoka stopped mid sentence. She was stretched out on the rec room's sofa on her belly, bare feet kicking the air behind her and speaking to a small portable holoprojector that had General Kenobi's head floating atop it. "A… A highly, um," Ahsoka coughed. "Hi, Rex."
"Hey, kid." Rex spotted Coric's cane propped up in a corner.
"What… what are you up to?" Ahsoka pushed herself up to a sitting position.
Was he imagining that her lekku stripes looked darker than normal, or was it the lighting? "Jaig and Akul have a limmie game going in the hangar." Rex waggled the cane at her. "Gotta get back."
Ahsoka's stripes were almost black. "What's limmie?"
"What's limmie?" Rex almost gasped, horrified that he had let his own vod'ika go so long without knowing the best game in the galaxy. "Oh, you're coming with me, kid. Your life will never be the same." He picked her up by the waist and hauled her up onto his shoulder, bouncing her as she shrieked with laughter.
"Unfortunately, Captain, Padawan Tano will be busy catching up with her chemistry coursework for the rest of the afternoon," General Kenobi piped up, reminding them of his presence.
Rex set her down, disappointed and slightly guilty for getting her hopes up. "Sorry, littl'un. Next time." He patted her between the montrals apologetically.
"Aw come on, Master, please?" Ahsoka blinked big, pitiful porg eyes at the High General's hologram.
"No, Ahsoka. Good luck with your game, Captain." General Kenobi bowed his head, dismissing him.
"Hold on, what's wrong with your skin?" Ahsoka stared at his chest and touched his right pectoral with a ginger hand. "You're all… lumpy. Did you get exposed to some chemical? Do you have allergies?"
"I'm just cold," Rex assured her.
"Cold?" Ahsoka exclaimed. "I've been cold plenty of times, I never broke out in hives!"
"Hives?" General Kenobi asked.
"Rex is having some sort of reaction!" Ahsoka looked up at him, stricken.
"They're just nunabumps, General," Rex said to the hologram. His cheeks felt twice as warm as the rest of his body.
"Nunabumps?" Ahsoka wrinkled her nose. "Those… Those aren't contagious, are they?"
"It's a reflex, my dear. It's caused by muscle contractions under the skin that make one's hair stand up."
"That doesn't happen when I get cold!" Ahsoka protested.
"You don't have hair follicles."
"But—"
"It's perfectly normal, Ahsoka. Now please sit down, we have a great deal to go over."
Ahsoka's eyes nearly bugged out of her head. "Hold on, you've got stripes?" she asked, leaning in close to stare at the stretch marks painting his hips. "Do all of the clones have them? That's so cool, I didn't know humans could have stripes!"
"They're, uh, not uh—"
"Ahsoka, I believe that I asked you to sit." Kenobi didn't sound angry—he actually sounded like he was trying not to laugh—but Rex didn't feel like pressing his luck.
The kit flounced onto her belly, pouting. "Have fun, Rex," she said glumly.
"And Captain? While I thank you for your contribution to Ahsoka's impromptu biology lesson, do remember that outside of the barracks and PT areas the top half of your bodysuit is required."
"Yessir," Rex said, staring at the floor. He fiddled with Coric's cane. "Sorry, Sir."
"Um, so when you combine, combine um…" Ahsoka stared down at her datapad. "What was I talking about?"
Rex slunk out to the hall, his nunabumps long gone in the wake of his full-body blush.
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