#and cc war veteran

[puppetwoman17]

Instead of the years in the time bubble going by like 🫰, what if their lives went on in their heads. What if their bodies were all still kept in unaging stasis, but their minds played out the most perfect versions of their lives.

Billy and Mary got to grow up with their parents, and they lived with them and their uncle and cousin in a by mansion, always happy.

Freddy never lost his parents, and his grandpa never died. Despite not letting his disability get to him, he lives in this mindscape with two functioning legs. Kit is alive.

Ibis and Taia are in ancient Egypt, living out their sublime love life together, with no trace of the memories of their messy relationship.

Ebenezer’s son lived. He isn���t dying of old age in his bed. He’s healthy. He has more money than he could ever want.

Susan Barr is alive. Jim and her raise their daughter, continuing their crime-fighting partnership.

Mr. Morris has his whole family with him. They all live in Fawcett, and he gets to see them whenever he wants.

Sivana’s wife never left him. In fact, he’s a free, good man with all four of his children.

Ibac has never been Ibac. He’s only Stanley Printwhistle, and every insult bounces back on him. He’s sure of himself.

There are others.

The widow from the 1800s who dances with her husband and plays in the courtyard with her children.

The caveman whose family died, crushed under their own home, now with him as he runs to slaughter another bull.

The girl who ran away from her abusive foster home, now reunited with her parents and older sister.

The boy whose war veteran father was a picture perfect cutout, and not an abusive monster who needs to rot in jail.

Over the years, slowly, so very slowly, it all begins to collapse. Because perfection feels wrong, even if you aren’t aware. Because memories can overlap, and they can intersect.

CC Batson is alive, but Billy remembers looking in a mirror and seeing blue eyes instead of green (why does he look in a mirror and see his dad’s face?)

Freddy’s leg feels funny. Always has. He can walk fine, but there’s always a tingling sensation there.

Sivana doesn’t expect all four of his children to be home.

The boy watches his father’s hand carefully in case it speeds toward his cheek. He doesn’t know why.

Over time, their minds break free from their perfect prisons. The real world shows its disgusting face. Fawcett looks just like it always has, but so much…heavier. The leaves have overgrown, and the sidewalk is chipped of its paint.

The dead are dead.

Those trapped in time are still trapped in time.

Some relatives don’t get better.

And Fawcett City’s people must grapple with the fact that their perfectly curated reality was all a lie.

Almost simultaneously, there is an unspoken promise. What happened here will never be spoken of.

They will rebuilt their city. Their lives. And they will move forward. And they will forget what their minds conjured in an attempt to keep them pliant.

It is a closely guarded Fawcett secret, hidden behind their bright smiles and eagerness to move on. They don’t want to think about it.

Sometimes they dream though.

Billy dreams of going to a coffee shop with Mary and mom and dad.

Sivana dreams that he kissed his wife good morning and hopped off to his respectable job.

The runaway girl dreams that she’s only running toward her new home.

But when they wake up, it’s never spoken of again.

[bugflies00]

i think the reason dsmpblr is so chill nowadays is a) theres much fewer of us -> fewer chances of there being freaks b) if youve been there this long you HAVE to have developed some kind of maturity in regards to ccs. its like we’re war veterans . you develop some kind of coping strategy. also c) with the server being over theres no arguing about what Should or Will happen

[whencyclopedia]

Beer Hall Putsch

The Beer Hall Putsch or Munich Putsch was a failed attempt by the German National Socialist (Nazi) Party to seize power, first of the Bavarian and then the German federal government on 8-9 November 1923. The coup, led by Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), failed because other right-wing politicians, the police, and the army did not give their support.

The Nazis & the Crisis of 1923

Hitler became leader of the Munich-based NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers' Party) in 1921, taking over from Anton Drexler (1884-1942). The party was neither socialist nor at all interested in workers, but Hitler had chosen the name to give his ultra-nationalist party as wide an appeal as possible. Known as the Nazi Party, it was also vehemently anti-Semitic and against the German establishment, which it saw as the root of all ills, everything from the signing of the humiliating Treaty of Versailles which formally closed the First World War (1914-18) to hyperinflation. The Weimar Republic, as Germany was now known, was beset by weak coalition governments, which struggled to cope with a series of severe post-war challenges. By 1923, the Nazi Party had over 55,000 members, although this was much fewer than the Social Democratic Party, for example, which had 1.2 million members.

In the summer of 1923, the German government was in the middle of yet another crisis. France had invaded parts of the heavily industrialised Ruhr in western Germany in order to force the country to make good on its obligations to pay France war reparations. The government declared a state of emergency, and the army was given chief executive power. In Munich, the leader of the local government, Gustav Ritter von Kahr (1862-1934), the local army chief, and the chief of the police force were all given extraordinary powers to deal with the crisis. All were right-wing in political orientation, and Hitler saw this as an opportunity to take power, or, even better, to force an invitation to take power from what he considered like-minded politicians and army figures. Hitler ultimately intended to march on Berlin, much like the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) had marched on Rome to seize power in October 1922 (when the Italian king felt obliged to invite him to power). First, Hitler would deal with Munich, and his primary weapon would be his own paramilitary followers.

The Nazis used a paramilitary group, the SA (Sturmabteilung) stormtroopers, to frequently rough up the political opposition and generally strut about looking important. The SA, led by Ernst Röhm (1887-1934), even became too powerful for Hitler's liking, and so he created his own personal bodyguard called the Stosstrupp-Hitler (Hitler Shock Troop). Stosstrupp members included Julius Schreck (1898-1936), Joseph Berchtold (1897-1962), Ulrich Graf (1878-1950), Hermann Göring (1893-1946), and Rudolf Hess (1894-1987). Other key supporters of Hitler included General Erich Ludendorff (1865-1937), the WWI veteran who had found himself out of favour with the Weimar establishment ever since the armistice. Hitler hoped General Ludendorff would be a respectable figurehead for a Nazi-driven coup d'etat.

Nazi Gathering, Bürgerbräukeller

Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1978-004-12A / Hoffmann, Heinrich (CC BY-SA)

Continue reading...

[literallyjustanerd]

Should've Switched Majors (Clone Shenanigans)

Summary: A very unfortunate grad student at the University of Coruscant is just trying to finish her thesis for her Investigative Journalism degree. Unbeknownst to her, she's picked the galaxy's worst interview subjects.

Words: 1,492

Characters: Commander Cody, Captain Rex, Domino twins, Waxer, Commander Fox, Commander Bly

University of Coruscant School of Arts Student Number: 218249662 Student Name: Lila Un’qara Course: Masters of Media and Communication – Majoring in Investigative Journalism Final Thesis: Unsung Heroes: Silenced Voices From The Republic’s Front Lines

[Recording Start]

Lila: Okay. The time is now… 0935 standard hours. We’re here in Briefing Room B of the GAR headquarters on Coruscant level 5127, where I’ve been graciously allowed time to speak with some of the Republic’s most decorated soldiers. To start, I’m sitting down with CC-2224 of the 212th Battalion. Though if I’ve been informed correctly, I believe you go by Cody?

CC-2224: Commander is fine, thank you.

L: Oh. Uh, right. My apologies, Commander.

CC-2224: Don’t mention it.

L: So… Your records indicate you’ve been in active service since the beginning of the war.

CC-2224: That’s right. I was decanted from Kamino with the first batch of Clone Commanders.

L: I’m looking at a transcript of your prior operations. There are some major battles here – Christophsis, Ryloth, Saleucami… You’re a true veteran.

CC-2224: As much a veteran as any of us can be, I suppose.

L: And as a Marshal Commander with such a prolific record, you must be highly regarded among your peers and superiors?

CC-2224: My brothers trust me as their Commander.

L: And your GAR command? Generals and Admirals? The Jedi?

CC-2224: …What about them?

L: Do they afford you the same level of trust?

CC-2224: That’s… [pause] Yes, I am trusted. My decisions and conduct are respected as any Commander’s wound be.

[Audio file is silent for 6 seconds]

CC-2224: There are those for whom it takes more for us clones to prove our competence. I don’t allow that to impact my performance. My record speaks for itself.

L: Must get frustrating, though. The pressure to demonstrate your worth. Probably leaves you without much time to let your guard down.

CC-2224: It’s our job. We do it with pride.

L: Surely you can’t keep that up all the time, though? It’s only human to want to have a little fun.

CC-2224: [clearing throat] I maintain a respectable bearing at all times, as do my men. We were trained from birth to uphold the highest standards of professional conduct and I take pride in the reputation of the 212th Battalion as highly proficient, honourable, and—”

[Sound on audio file is briefing room door opening]

CT-2534 (“Waxer”): Hey, Cody…? Remember that thing you said not to do? Uhm, Boil’s in medbay and Fox says you gotta go bail Wooley out before—oh. Uh, hello.

CC-2224: [heavy sigh]

CT-2534 (“Waxer”): Is… this being recorded?

[Recording stop] [Recording start]

L: Thank you for moving our appointment up, Troopers. The Commander had to leave on some… unexpected business.

ARC-5555: Ha! Guess Waxer wasn’t bluffing after all.

ARC-1409: You owe me five credits.

L: May I refer to you as ARC Troopers, or do you prefer—

ARC-5555: Fives, please.

ARC-1409: Echo.

L: Great. So, the two of you serve under General Skywalker?

ARC-5555: Didn’t start off that way, but now we do, yeah.

ARC-1409: Captain Rex picked us personally to join the 501st as ARC troopers. We joined for him. But serving under General Skywalker is an honour, too.

L: Do you feel he respects your input as clones?

ARC-5555: You kidding? He’d be dead ten times over without us, and he knows it!

ARC-1409: Some of General Skywalker’s strategies are… hit or miss. But we owe him our lives as much as he owes us his.

ARC-5555: Nah. It’s 23-19 in our favour. I’ve counted.

ARC-1409: 23? You’re counting the Naboo thing?

ARC-5555: Far as I’m concerned, that’s the closest the General’s come to karking it.

L: Can you elaborate? What happened on Naboo?

[ARC-5555 begins to speak but is silenced by ARC-1409. Sound on audio file is ARC-1409 hitting ARC-5555 on the back of the head]

ARC-1409: Sorry. Sworn to secrecy. ARC Trooper’s honour.

L: Seems like you’re pretty close with your General. Can you tell me—

ARC-5555: So you’re a student, right? Coruscant University? What’s it like?

L: What’s… Uhm, it’s an excellent school. Good facilities, knowledgeable professors, the courses are highly-regarded. Now, if we could get back to—

ARC-1409: So –sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt, I just– you can study anything you want? You just get to pick?

L: …Yes, that’s how it works.

ARC-1409: What if you don’t like what you pick?

L: You can change your course. Back on topic, we were discussing—

ARC-5555: You can change your course? You’re allowed to do that? Whenever you want?

L: Yup.

ARC-1409: Did you ever do that?

L: I’m starting to wish I had.

ARC-5555: Wish we could’ve done that. I’d have been a Naval Officer. Way better uniform.

ARC-1409: [chuckling] The navs would hate you! They’d have you decomm’ed on the first day for unruly behaviour.

ARC-5555: The navs wish they had the honour of my unruly behaviour.

L: Can we get back on topic. Please?

ARC-1409: What was the topic, again?

L: [heavy sigh]

ARC-5555: Hey… the 501st is on shore leave for the next two days. What are you doing tonight?

L: …Uh.

ARC-1409: We could…. continue the interview over a couple drinks at 79’s?

L: I… hm.

[Recording stop] [Recording start]

L: As a member of the Coruscant Guard, you’ve seen more than most other clones of the galaxy’s capital and its senate. Commander Fox, has this given you any opinions you feel are different to other clones about the war?

CC-1010: No.

L: Nothing? You don’t think being able to witness the senate debates has given you any sort of insight into the politics at play here?

CC-1010: Nope.

[Sound on audio file is CC-1010 sipping from a mug of caf for approximately 9 seconds]

L: Uhm. Well. There aren’t many people, clone or otherwise, who get such a close audience with Chancellor Palpatine. Are you and the other Coruscant Guard troopers close with him?

CC-1010: Hm. No.

L: …Thank you for your time.

[Recording stop] [Recording start]

L:  Captain Rex. I appreciate your willingness to, uh, actually speak to me. Have you given much thought to what might happen once the war is over?

CT-7567: Of course. All of us have. But you tend to stop thinking about that pretty early on in your service.

L: Oh? Why is that, do you think?

CT-7567: There’s just not much of a point to it, really. We’ve got too much on our mind every day trying to keep our heads up and keep ourselves and our brothers alive. The end of the war, it’s just not really a factor for us.

L: Right. You’ve been fighting for years now. That must take a toll.

CT-7567: I suppose, but in a sense, it’s just our way of life. We’ve never known anything besides war. How can we imagine a life after it? To a clone, the galaxy has always been, and will always be, at war. I don’t think I would know any other way to navigate the world.

L: That’s… actually very insightful.

CT-7567: You sound surprised?

L: Never mind. Does—does it frighten you, then? Not knowing what might come after?

CT-7567: Not at all. The future might be an unknown, but whatever happens, I know—

[Sound on audio file is the briefing room door opening]

CC-2224: Your boys are at it again.

CT-7567: [groan] Which ones?

CC-2224: All of them. They’re in the quad, Wooley said something about a stolen speeder.

CT-7567: So it’s your boys, then. Your boys who just got bailed out of Corrie holding this morning?

[Sound on audio file is CT-7567 standing]

L: Wait, no, we were just getting somewhere, don’t—

CC-2224: My men stepped in to control the situation.

CT-7567: Face it, your troops kriff around and blame mine when the osik hits the filtration system.

[Sound on audio file is CT-7567 and CC-2224 bumping the microphone as they move toward the door]

L: Captain? Commander? Please, if we could at least finish what we—

CC-2224: All I’m saying is, this wouldn’t be the first time the 212th have had to step in to clean up the 501st’s mess.

CT-7567: Mhmm. Is that what happened on Naboo, too?

CC-2224: That’s different and you know it.

[Sound on audio file is briefing room door closing. Following sound is approximately fifteen seconds of Lila groaning increasingly loudly]

[Recording stop] [Recording start]

L: [long sigh, followed by approximately 7 seconds of silence] It is currently… 1743 hours. I’m still in Briefing Room B, I’ve deleted more useless material than I’ve kept, and I am questioning… every choice I’ve made in my academic career. So. Commander Bly. Can you tell me a little about your relationship with your Jedi General?

CC-5052: No comment.

L: Oh, kark this.

[sound on audio file is Lila removing her lapel mic]

L: …Do you know how to get to 79’s from here?

[Recording stop]

[lord-squiggletits]

Had a long voice chat about Pen Pals AU last night in which some really nice clarifications/revelations were had such as:

It's a post-war/rebuilding society fic where I want to get into the actual rebuilding and not solely focus on the romance. How to do that? Use Pharma's position as CMO who's basically functioning as a public health administrator dealing with the public health issues that come from reestablishing infrastructure and making sure a whole city(ies) of people stays healthy

Ex: energon shortages/rationing, part and transplant shortages, disease/epidemic management ("the C in COVID stands for Cybertron"), medical personnel/hospital shortage in comparison to the increasing population, substance abuse among the veteran population, discrimination in treatment of medical professionals (CC/forged, Bot/Con, etc)

Tarn and Pharma interact at work not knowing they're each other's pen pal, and it happens in the context of Tarn (as newly minted Decepticon activist/political figure) coming to Pharma with equity-related issues in public healthcare. They like each other as coworkers bc they're actually of similar minds when it comes to dealing with these problems. Tarn is pleasantly surprised by an Autobot willing to admit fault with the system. Pharma is happy to have someone competent on his side who also happens to be very imposing. Also they're supposed to be promoting cross-faction cooperation so this coworker relationship makes them feel like they're upholding their promises to their faction

Pharma deals with a lot of social bullshit and interpersonal expectations as CMO because people keep comparing him to Ratchet, or in the case of neutrals, their impression of him is based on his pre-war "famous for being forged" thing.

Realizing that without even intending to, the way I'm writing Tarn in this AU is a dead ringer for post-traumatic OCD/trauma-related OCD. Doesn't really change how I'm going to write him, but having an actual name/label and knowledge that this is an Actual Thing does help a lot (I didn't know you could develop OCD from trauma, I thought it was just an innate disorder that triggered due to genes/environment/etc and Tarn as I'm writing him in PPAU only had PTSD)

[celticcrossanon]

CC- “Royal Family had the British media to help turn Harry’s PR image from a drug using frat boy into a “war hero” as Harry is anything but a genuine war hero– and uses disabled veterans from IG in order to make himself look good.”

 Just think of mega money in 100s of millions wasted on PR to make that  brat look good! All that money should have gone to important things like those who perform valuable jobs in public service instead of money flushed down the toilet. God only knows how much Chuck spent on rehab Cam’s reputation. What ever happened to all those mottoes? “Keep calm, carry on. Never complain never explain. How ‘bout "show up do good” dumbarton’s latest image campaign/rehab. lol fools and their money.

*

Hi Nonny,

It was a terrible waste of money. Then again, we only know that something is PR once it has failed, so I am sure that there are other people who invest similar amounts in PR to cover up their true nature. I’d rather that everyone was just their authentic selves and all the PR money was spent on other good causes, but I know that is an unrealistic view of things.

I am peeved about Queen Camilla’s PR. She had a reasonable public image and then she ruined it with all her petty articles before and after the coronation. Talk about a waste of effort. With all the time and money spent oh rehabilitating her, the least she could have done is kept it going. 

Harry and Meghan’s PR irritates me because it is not true, we can all see that it is not true, and they keep doing it. I don’t know what they expect to achieve with it, but what they are achieving is to make everyone heartily sick of the sight of them, which seems like an own goal imo.

[lets-try-some-writing]

Your CC Warfare fic legit had me stressing out so bad I thought I was feeling a genuinely new emotion, lol. That whole thing was like a really bad car crash: it's terrible what happened, but you can't look away. If Strongarm had just said nothing, she would've avoided putting her foot in her mouth and getting in trouble. With how tense everything was, I see no reason why she would jump in. I understand she was trying to help Sideswipe out of that situation, but she did it in like the complete opposite direction! She should've reared him in, not back him up. She said it herself that they were war veterans. Though, I suppose that's easier said. Strongarm may be intelligible of the war records and Autobot law, but truthfully, plain intelligence pales in the face of wisdom and actual experience. Intelligence says: this war could've easily been won because of xyz. Wisdom and experience say completely otherwise. And I guess that is one of the points Optimus is trying to make: that Strongarm and Sideswipe do not have the wisdom or experience to understand exactly why things played out the way they did. I have the feeling the two simply looked at the war records itself and not any history that came before, especially Optimus' involvement with Megatron's revolution. I don't know if that would make much of a difference for Sideswipe tbh but I think Strongarm would be able to see just a little why Optimus couldn't outright kill Megatron in the beginning like Sideswipe said he should've. Even so, going back to the records itself , it won't contain legitimately every single thing that happened. It probably only recorded decisive battles and notable events. Billions of people were involved, and with that many variables, it would be impossible to say that the war could've been won if only Optimus did something sooner. WHICH BY THE WAY MAKES THIS SO MUCH WORSE. Sideswipe (and by extension Strongarm) is basically saying that Optimus is personally responsible for dragging on an intergalactic war just because he didn't off one guy as if the most wicked bots in the face of existence werent out there making lives worse on purpose under the cover of the war and would help stretch it to continue their sick actions. As if there weren't a hundred other Megatrons ready to continue the war themselves the moment Megatron died. If I could write an essay on every reason why the war dragged on, I'll be writing until I die and never come close to finishing. Even within the small game Optimus planned there are obvious reasons why it wouldn't be a quick or easy victory if they even win: limited number of fighters (no guarantee they'd hit the max min bc rallying people to fight is difficult), no details until they got to Helex (you're not always going to know what your goal is when being sent out to fight), no resources from the state (war is expensive and getting funding is difficult). So imagine that plus way more reasons plus on a planetary scale. The scope is simply unfathomable. Anyways, I think this comment has gone on long enough lol. Excellent work as always and I'm excited but also incredibly nervous to see how this all plays out. Take care!

YOU ARE PICKING UP WHAT I AM LAYING DOWN!!!

This whole fic is one giant show. Optimus wants the idiots under Bee's control to LEARN. You've already picked up the logical reasoning behind the rules he's laid down so far. And let me tell you, its only going to get more complicated. War is a difficult and unpredictable thing. Optimus is going to make that as real as possible in this non-lethal scenario.

Is it overkill? Maybe. But if even those serving under Bumblebee don't have the barest inkling of the truth? It hints at a FAR larger problem. I am going to have so much fun writing this thing. I want to get a few chapters stockpiled and then I will post them on Ao3 and continue there :3

Thank you for enjoying my writing and giving this lovely analysis. This sort of things makes my dad and encourages me to write more.

[loganloggins]

HEADCANON TIME CUZ I HAVENT POSTED IN A WHILE!!

All q! Characters, I just can’t be bothered writing the q!. So no CC mention at ALL.

— — —

Phil and Etoiles were brothers in the same way you’d call a long time friend. They met, and they clicked instantly like a missing piece to a puzzle. If Phil was upset, Etoiles was usually the first to notice and vice versa. They had even joked that they were twins because they could never pinpoint who would be the older brother out of the two of them. Phil’s relationship with Etoiles, while similar to his relationship with Fit, was nothing if not ‘Veterans who went through war together coping in their own ways together’. They were the epitome of found family in its purest form.

— — —

I’m pushing my Twins! code breakers agenda. I know they look nothing alike but LET ME LIVE THEIR DYNAMIC IS TOTALLY ADULT SIBLINGS <- as someone who has a sibling I can tell you this is exactly what me and my sibling will be like.

[lamaenthel]

Tivaevae | Chapter Five: Basting

Still struggling to emotionally recover from Master Obi-Wan's deception, Ahsoka discovers in the aftermath that twelve-year-old Boba Fett has been locked up among adults in the Republic Judiciary Central Detention Center. After convincing Chancellor Palpatine to grant him a pardon, she manages to secure his release on the condition that she serve as his legal guardian. Now, with the help of Master Plo and the Wolfpack, she vows to help him track down what family he has left.

| AO3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |

Fandom: Star Wars Characters: Ahsoka Tano, Boba Fett, Plo Koon, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Mace Windu, Kanan Jarrus, Sheev Palpatine | Darth Sidious, CT-27-5555 | ARC-5555 | Fives, CC-1119 | Appo, Dexter Jettster, FLO | WA-7 (Star Wars), Shaak Ti, ARC Commander Blitz (Star Wars), CT-6922 | Dogma, Original Clone Trooper Character(s) (Star Wars), CC-3636 | Wolffe, Clone Trooper Sinker (Star Wars), Clone Trooper Comet (Star Wars), CC-2224 | Cody, CT-5597 | Jesse, CT-4860 | Boost, Aurra Sing, Tobias Beckett, Null-11 | Ordo Skirata, Kal Skirata, Original Mandalorian Characters (Star Wars), Original Droid Characters (Star Wars), Original Jedi Character(s) (Star Wars) Total Word Count: 123,000 Chapter Word Count: 8,154 Chapter Summary: Boba has a hard time on Kamino, and Ahsoka gets a bad feeling about the storm keeping them there.

Comet, alongside Koon at the helm, set the ship down on the landing pad. It was raining hard; Boba had almost forgotten just how fast the rain came down on Kamino.

"This will hopefully be a short trip," Koon said, initiating the lockdown sequence. "However, we will be leaving with a new man in tow. The Wolfpack has long had need of a medic, and we have found him."

"Really, Sir?" Wolffe asked, his eyebrows up. "Is he shiny?"

"He is a veteran of New Bornalex, actually." Koon gestured at Boba and Tano to follow him to the airlock. "Formerly attached to the 21st Nova Corps, Mangle is a skilled Marine medic who sustained a rather devastating injury but is finally ready to return to duty."

"Not surprised Bacara transferred him out, then," Wolffe muttered.

"Boba, you didn't happen to bring any crayons with you from prison, did you?" Sinker snickered.

Boba raised an eyebrow. "You think there's crayons in prison?"

"We'll have to stop by the nursery and see if the tubies have any– hey!" Sinker rubbed where Boost had elbowed him in the gut.

Koon sighed like a long-suffering father. He sort of was, Boba had come to realize. He spent all of his money on snacks for his soldiers and he was pretty sure that he had caught Wolffe mouthing buir more than once. He almost reminded him of Kal, if Kal wasn't a complete fucking shitstain cunt. The Wolfpack, as they called themselves, seemed to all adore him.

The ramp lowered and the group hurried down, jogging together to the entrance while squinting at the ground. They spread out once inside, shaking themselves like wet massiffs. Boba felt a sort of malicious glee seeing the gray water all over the sterile white floor.

"So, is there a bell that we ring or something?" Tano asked, rolling her left arm and wincing like she'd just gotten punched. She had done that earlier, too, after they'd been dancing for almost an hour straight and she had accidentally smacked her arm on the bunk ladder.

"No need," Koon said mildly, then gestured down the hall.

Nala Se, flanked by Commander Blitz and a tall, red-skinned Togruta woman with a lightsaber were approaching. Boba could just barely see the stock of a shotgun poking over the back of Blitz's shoulder, and he had a hand on one of his two DC-17s.

"Master Jedi." Nala Se bowed to Koon. "I am pleased to welcome you to Tipoca City. And I am glad to see that you did not perish on Geonosis alongside your father, Boba."

Boba stared at the ground and suddenly wished that he hadn't left Robert on the ship. He really didn't want to be back here. Tano placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder and squeezed. He felt a little better with her hand there, much to his annoyance.

"Boozhoo, Ahsoka." The tall Togruta Jedi that was stationed at Tipoca City pulled her away from him and into a hug. His shoulder felt cold where her hand had been. "It's been too long, ogichidaakwe."

"It has, Master Shaak-Ti." Tano rubbed her left lek on the older woman's face and let her cheek be rubbed in return. They both purred like sleeping tookas. He didn't mind tookas, but the one time Dad had let him hold one he'd had a sneezing fit that lasted hours.

"Boba, you appear to be injured. May I offer the services of our medical center?" Nala Se tilted her head at him. "We are capable of…"

His heart pounded in his ears, drowning out the longneck's voice. He didn't want to go to that medical center. He already knew what they'd do, he remembered the way Dad would limp for days after the longnecks drilled into his hip to take his marrow. That's all he'd be, just a fucking bag of DNA for the rest of his life, tied down to a table with needles in his bones and those souless fucking demagolkase peering down at him calling him 'it' and he'd never see the sun again, just hear rain pounding against the roof and the thunder shaking the walls–

Before he could say anything Tano had stepped out of the other Tog's embrace and put herself in between him and Nala Se.

"No," Tano said in a voice that made the hair on Boba's neck stand up. "He doesn't go anywhere without me." She stepped behind Boba and put both of her hands on his shoulders.

Nala Se blinked her big black eyes at Tano. "It will take but a moment."

"I said no." Tano squeezed his shoulders and– was she growling? "We did not come here for medical attention. His injuries have been treated already. Nothing but time is required."

Nala Se nodded. "Please let me know if there is anything else I can do to aid you."

"Have Jango's quarters unlocked for us." Tano glanced skyward as an unexpected crack! of thunder shook the ceiling. The storm was picking up. "And I want to see Corporal Dogma."

"That will not be possible," Nala Se said, bowing her head apologetically. "It is a matter of your safety, Padawan. CT-6922 killed a Jedi. He must not be allowed near one ever again."

Boba nearly choked. A clone had killed a Jedi? Fucking hell, that was a sentence he'd never expected to hear. They were programmed from birth to worship the bastards, how could he have ever raised a weapon to one?

"I want to see Dogma," Tano said, stressing the name. "I accept the risk. You will not be liable for anything that happens to me."

"Ahsoka," Koon chided her without any real heat.

"I apologize, but the answer is still no," Nala Se said.

Tano's hands tightened on his shoulders. "Is he armed?" she asked harshly.

"No, of course not."

"Does he possess the Force?"

Nala Se looked offended. "I do not understand your line of questioning."

"I dueled Pre Viszla," she said sharply. "I fought Asajj Ventress, faced General Grievous twice, and I killed the scion of a Mandalorian clan along with over a dozen of his vassals without my lightsabers and walked away victorious from every single fight. What is Dogma capable of that makes him so deadly that my safety is at risk?"

Boba's jaw dropped to his chest, barely able to comprehend what she'd just rattled off so casually. "Holy shit," he said faintly, and the other Togruta Jedi covered her mouth and laughed softly.

Ahsoka winked at him.

Nala Se's right eyelid twitched. "ARC-2485 will escort you." Beside her, Blitz shifted his weight. "You may visit with CT-6922 for one minute, no longer."

Tano smiled wide enough for her fangs to show. "Thank you, Doctor," she said pleasantly. "I'll tell Dogma that you said hello."

Nala Se bowed her head and turned to sway gently down the hallway. Boba wondered if Tano knew what it looked like when a longneck got pissed, because the stoic, bug-eyed bitch was giving a great demonstration.

"Well done," Shaak-Ti said, her eyes twinkling. She rubbed her lek on Tano and made that rumbling noise again.

"Nobody is going to touch you, Boba, I swear," Tano said quietly in his ear. "Ni ven'kyramu ad'kebbur."

Boba nodded. After that speech, he believed her. And he was pretty sure she'd enjoy it. He was beginning to see why Tiarek liked her so much. Dad would have liked her, too, he realized. She had mandokar, the fighting spirit. He just… hadn't expected it in a Jedi.

"Come on." She clapped him on the shoulders. "Master Plo, after we see Dogma we're going to Boba's old quarters to look for anything that Jango may have left behind about the Cuy'val Dar."

Koon nodded at them, and although it was hard to tell, it looked like he was smiling. "I will accompany Master Shaak-Ti. Wolffe, Sinker, please go with Ahsoka, Boba, and Blitz. Boost, Comet, with me."

"I believe that we will be able to find information on the Mandalorians you speak of in the Kaminoan archives," Shaak-Ti added. "I know your time is limited, but I will see you again before you depart, dear girl." She winked at him. "And it was lovely to meet you, Boba."

"You too," Boba mumbled, looking at the ground.

"Alright, let's get going." Blitz jerked his head and took off in the opposite direction of Koon.

Tano kept her hand on his shoulder as they followed Blitz to a part of the facility that he'd never been to. He didn't even know they had a detention center. When he'd been growing up, if a clone didn't meet the longnecks' standards then they'd get an appointment with the incinerator, not locked up.

Maybe the Kaminoans were just that desperate for the clones they'd made when they still had access to Dad's marrow.

The Kaminoan detention center wasn't exactly impressive. It was a circular chamber with eight locked doors. Blitz led them through the first one on the left and they crowded into what was barely bigger than a closet; there was a door on the far right side which opened to yet another door where the prisoner was kept, and most of the room was taken up by a desk under an observation window.

"Nala Se said one minute, so you get one minute," Blitz said as he undid a series of electronic locks. "No touching the prisoner, no secret messages, no sneaking him any objects. Behave or I'll yank you out."

Tano smirked. Boba had a feeling that she wanted to see him try. "Stay here," she told him. "I'll just be a minute."

"If you aren't, Blitz is coming after you," Wolffe said wryly.

"Be right back." Tano gave him a wink and walked through the heavy door Blitz was holding open for her.

Wolffe pushed Boba over to the observation window overlooking the tiny room. There was a clone laying on his side in bed with a beard, shaggy hair and a hollow expression. He had a stylized V tattooed across his face and he was as thin as a wheat stalk. Dad's clones were altered to put on muscle easier than breathing; for him to be as thin as he was, he couldn't have been eating anything at all.

"Let's see how quick it takes her to break the 'no touching' rule," Wolffe mumbled, smirking at Sinker.

"I give her fifteen seconds," Sinker whispered.

"Generous," Wolffe quipped back.

"If he killed a Jedi, why does Tano want to see him so bad?" Boba asked Wolffe.

Wolffe glanced at Sinker. "It's a long story," he said quietly. "We'll talk about it once we leave."

"On program," Blitz ordered through the microphone sitting on the desk.

Dogma didn't move.

"I said on program, Corporal. Now."

Dogma dragged himself to his feet and stood, swaying slightly, and placed his hands on the back of his head. His arms were like twigs and his ribs jutted out through the gap between the top and bottom of his red fatigues.

Boba didn't know how to feel about it.

Blitz turned up the audio so they could hear their conversation, then crossed his arms.

"Dogma!" Tano charged through the final door once it unlocked and immediately embraced the emaciated man.

"Told you," Wolffe snickered.

"Commander?" Dogma's eyes went wide and after a second of shock he returned her hug. He buried his face in the crook of her neck and broke down into tears. "Commander, I'm… I'm so sorry, I'm so, so sorry."

"Don't touch the prisoner, Commander Tano!" Blitz bellowed into the microphone. He was too loud, the speaker shrieked from the feedback.

"Ke'shabi nebat," Tano snarled over her shoulder, then pulled back and cupped Dogma's face. "Ke'sushi, Dogma," she said rapidly in Mando'a, so quiet that Boba could barely hear it over the speaker. "Gar cuy cin'kar'ta. Gar cuy jat'verd. Gar ru'cabuor Republika. Ni partayli. Gar vode partayli. Ni ven'akaani akay gar cuy yaim. Ne noy'ganar manda. Mhi ne'nibra."

"Now, Commander!" Blitz yelled again. He stomped away from the desk and unlocked the second door.

"Do you understand? I won't stop, Dogma." Tano smoothed his overgrown hair out of his face.

"On program!"

"Commander, please don't leave me here," Dogma sobbed.

She was crying now, too. She pulled him into another hug. "I'm sorry, Dogma."

"On fucking program now, prisoner!" Blitz ripped the third door open and jerked her out of Dogma's arms with one strong hand.

"Don't touch her!" Dogma screeched, grabbing at Blitz; Boba could do nothing but stare as he saw the clone go for Blitz's sidearm in a panic, trying to protect his Jedi.

"Shab," Wolffe snarled. He stepped away from the window and tried the door, but it was locked and keyed for the Kamino guard alone.

Tano brought her arms up hard like wings, freeing herself from the wampa hold, and at the same time she dropped down to one knee. She locked her ankle around Blitz's and then used his own body weight to flip him over her head and onto his back. She spun over him, still kneeling, and pinned him to the ground with a knee on his throat. "Stand down, Corporal!" she ordered Dogma.

Dogma retreated to the wall and stood at attention, suddenly every inch a soldier again. "Sir, yes Sir!" he barked. There was a spark of life in his eyes where there hadn't been a minute earlier.

"Well I'll be damned," Sinker mumbled to himself.

Boba blew out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding. That was fucking wizard.

"That was for your safety," Tano said quietly to Blitz. "I'm going to let you up now, Commander. No hard feelings, 'lek?" She released him and stood, keeping herself between Blitz and Dogma.

Blitz was on his feet in less than a second and shaking with anger. "Out," he seethed. "Now."

"Alright, alright." Tano held her hands up, smiled at Dogma one last time, then let Blitz shove her out.

Boba could barely comprehend what he'd just seen. Tano had flipped a fucking ARC twice her size like he was a sack of tatos, and she'd done it using an Echani throw. Since when did the Jedi learn Echani?

"Everyone, move," Blitz snapped, marching Tano forward with a heavy hand latched around her rear lek. The three scuffled to get through the door behind Blitz and Tano before they got too far. He walked her out of the circular antechamber and back out into the hall.

"You were given specific instructions–"

"By Nala Se, yes," Tano said with a smirk. She smacked his hand away from her lek. "I am under no obligation to follow her orders."

"And by me–"

"You don't outrank me." She actually fucking giggled. Was she insane?

"Listen here, you insubordinate little shit–" Blitz yanked her back by the shoulder and slammed her against the wall with his arm across her chest.

Wolffe and Sinker immediately lunged forward to intercept the furious ARC, but not before Boba had snatched Sinker's deece out of its holster. "Let her go," he said calmly, pointing it at Blitz.

The amused little tooka-like smirk dropped off of Tano's face and was replaced with fear. "Boba, no!" she gasped.

"Calm down, it's on stun." Boba double checked then flipped a switch. "Okay, now it's on stun."

Blitz lowered his arm and backed off, and Boba was pretty sure that he had turned purple under his bucket.

"Boba, put the blaster down," Tano ordered.

Boba immediately flipped the safety on then handed it back to Sinker by the barrel.

"I think we can find our way from here, Commander," Tano said calmly, stepping away from the wall and in front of Boba.

Blitz snorted. "Have fun. Prime's old quarters are on the sixth floor, section Tau, all the way at the end of the hall. Doubt you'll find anything, though, they emptied it the day after he bit it."

Boba's heart stopped. "What? What did they do with all of our stuff?" Boba asked faintly.

"Incinerator, probably." Blitz spun on his heel and charged away, his kama flapping angrily with every step.

"Incin–" Boba said to himself in disbelief. No, they couldn't have just thrown it in the incinerator.

"Boba, look at me." Tano leaned down until she was at eye level with him. "Take a deep breath. It's going to be okay."

"They– he was just being mean, right?" Boba nearly whispered.

"I don't know," she said quietly, then put her hands on his shoulders. "Just breathe for a few seconds with me."

He squeezed his eyes shut. It couldn't be gone. Blitz was just being a dickhead because he was mad at Tano for flipping him. It wasn't gone. "We have to go see!" he said urgently, then bolted.

"Boba, wait!" Tano called after him.

He was already halfway down the hall. He slid around the corner and found the staircase, the one with the squeaky step on the third level that sounded exactly like an aiwha screeching, and he made it up faster than ever now that his ribs weren't on fire. He heard shouting behind him from Tano and the Wolfpack but he didn't care, they knew where he was going.

He had to see. He had to.

He burst onto the sixth floor and made a beeline for his quarters. Everything looked the same, even at this speed, and it almost made him dizzy with the memories that came flooding back.

"Come on, Bo'ika, it's time for bed. You can watch them practice tomorrow."

"Boba, look, I did it! Dad, I did the knot just like you showed me!"

"Smile big for Mama! Cassus, don't pull Tiarek's hair–"

"Boba, what did I tell you about dropping Reks'ika's tooka doll down the vent?"

"You're leaving again, aren't you?"

"Look Boba, we twins!"

"Mama loves you so much, my Bo'ika."

"Daddy, you hurt him! Wexika!"

"Pack your things. We're leaving."

Boba reached his home and slid the door open, fully expecting his father to be sitting on the couch with his mouth hanging open and snoring, dead asleep halfway through another holo.

It was empty. Completely empty. Even the furniture was gone. The couch that had a bite mark on the leg from Mird chewing on it, their round meal table with the paint stains, the holoprojector that went as big as the whole wall, the height markings that Dad had proudly recorded on his birthday every year in the kitchen, Dad's quetarra; all gone. He rushed into Dad's room and climbed the closet shelves like he'd done a hundred times before.

Boba's eyes burned. It was gone. Everything was gone. It was like they'd never even existed. He dropped from the shelves and sank down to his knees. He felt exactly like the home he'd grown up in.

Empty.

"Boba? No, you guys stay out. Just stay out, okay? I've got it." Tano placed a hesitant hand on his back. "Boba?"

"It's gone," Boba whispered. "It's…" His eyes hurt so badly, why did they hurt? He couldn't breathe through his nose, either. "He's gone."

There was no pretending anymore. Dad was gone. The Slave I was gone. Now, even the last things he had of his dead mother and brother were gone.

"Ahsoka," he cried, and curled up on himself. "It's gone."

"Boba, oh vod'ika–" she pulled him backwards into her lap and hugged him tightly. "I'm so sorry."

The dam opened. He couldn't stop it anymore. It was gone, everything was gone, it had all changed and it was never going to be good again. Dad was dead. Mama and Cas were dead. Tiarek barely knew who he was. Everyone was gone and they were never coming back. Nobody loved him anymore. The only people who remembered his dad just wanted to use him. It hurt so bad every single day and it just never stopped.

"Ke'duumi, Boba," Ahsoka whispered, rocking him. She was doing that rumbly purr thing. It felt good, like a hug inside of his chest. "Don't fight it. Just let it all out."

"I miss him," he bawled. "I want my da-a-ad." He cried like a fucking baby, and he hated himself for it.

"Of course you do, vod'ika, of course you miss your dad." She rubbed her lek on his cheek. It was softer than he expected and smelled spicy, like corn pollen. "He loved you so much. I know you love him too. That's why it hurts. You have all that love and nowhere for it to go."

"Why did he have to die?" Boba sobbed. "Why didn't he fly away?"

"I don't know. I wish I did." Her rumbles got louder.

"I see it all the time," Boba cried. "I see his… his head…"

Ahsoka kissed his forehead. "I hate that you saw that, vod'ika."

"It's my fault," he sobbed. "I forgot it and they burned it."

"What did they burn?" Ahsoka's hands were so gentle that it almost hurt.

"The bo-o-ox," he bawled. "I forgot to pack it but we were going to come back and get it after… after Geonosis…"

"I'm sorry." Ahsoka whispered. "I'm so sorry."

"I didn't bury him," Boba wept. "He– he's still there. They stripped his beskar'gam, I know they did, they probably melted it down and s-s-sold it."

"I'll find out. I promise, Boba, I'll find out. It's okay. Keep getting it out, Bo'ika, it's okay."

He cried into Ahsoka's warm, squishy lek until he was so exhausted that he could barely draw breath. Her hands, soft in a way Aurra's never were, rubbed soothing circles on his back and scratched his scalp until his whole head tingled. Eventually he ran out of tears and just sat hiccupping and shaking, still unable to really stop.

Ahsoka wiped his eyes with her thumbs then smiled at him, her own eyes swollen and wet. "Your dad would be so proud of you, Boba. You've survived so much. Gar ijaati kaysh. Every step you take forward in this life is because of how well he taught you."

He almost started crying again.

"Plo's outside, so we're gonna wash our faces and let him in now, okay?" She kissed his forehead again. "I bet he's got some good news. I don't know about you, but I am very ready to get out of this shithole."

Boba laughed, a little shocked at a curse word coming out of her mouth. She was so proper, it was just wrong.

After a quick splash on their faces with water from the fresher, Ahsoka let in Plo, Shaak-Ti and the Wolfpack. There was a new clone with them that had to be Mangle. He had a prosthetic jaw made of plastoid and a wild look in his eyes. His hair was shaved on the sides and a little longer than regulation on top, showing his curls.

"Koh-to-yah, Boba," Plo said gently. "I am sorry to see that your father's things are gone."

"Yeah," Boba sniffed.

Ahsoka pulled him towards her until he was flush against her chest and hugged him from behind. "Were you successful, Master?" she asked, swaying gently from side to side and still purring.

Plo's face relaxed from its squinch. "Unfortunately, no. It seems as though the records were all wiped and overwritten."

"The archivists know that it existed, and after analyzing the hard drives they believe that the records were tampered with some time around the First Battle of Geonosis," Shaak-Ti added. "I am sorry, dear girl, but there is no lead to be found on Kamino."

Ahsoka's arms tightened around him. "What about Jango's armor?" she asked, and Boba's heart skipped a beat. "His remains were never recovered from Geonosis. Do you think that there's a possibility that he kept a backup of his records with him?"

"It is possible." Plo and Shaak-Ti exchanged a look. "Going to Geonosis to find out, however… The search may take months, assuming it is still there, and with the war…"

"A few days are perfectly reasonable, though, right, Master?"

It sounded perfectly reasonable to Boba. He blinked at the Kel Dor, afraid of his response.

"It would be an incredible intelligence asset," Ahsoka added in the pregnant silence. "We may find out information on the formation of the CIS. Maybe even find out who the Sith Lord is."

Plo tilted his head. "I cannot disagree on that front, little 'Soka."

"Really?" Boba breathed. "Y-you… you'll help find my dad's beskar'gam?"

"It sounds, as Ahsoka said, perfectly reasonable." Plo's face squinched up again. Boba realized he was grinning.

"Well then, it's settled." Ahsoka squeezed Boba. "Ready to leave?" she asked softly.

"Boba, what did I tell you about dropping Reks'ika's tooka doll down the vent?"

"Wait!" Boba gasped, suddenly remembering. He bolted to his room and got down on his belly in the corner, peering down the intake vent.

It was there. It was there. The longnecks missed it. "Here!" he said excitedly to Ahsoka. "Down there, can you reach it?"

She squeezed in and looked with one big eye. "Uh, yeah, let me just–" Her eyes closed and her fingers moved gently, then the tooka doll floated out of the vent like a feather on an updraft.

Boba snatched it out of the air and grinned at it. It was just like he remembered, crocheted with silver and blue yarn and stuffed with the shreds of one of Dad's worn-out undershirts. There was still a tiny hole between the ears and a loop of string wrapped around its waist. The black button eyes stared back. It was a little dusty, but not nearly as much as he would have expected from being in the vent for six years.

"What was he doing down there?" Ahsoka asked.

Boba flushed. "I used to pretend he was going on secret spy missions. That's why he had the string, so he could rappel out."

He looked up at Ahsoka, feeling stupid, but she was beaming at him.

She held her hand out. "Now are you ready?" she asked.

He hugged the dusty tooka doll, looked one last time around the place he'd grown up in, then took Ahsoka's hand. "Let's get out of this shithole," he said decisively.

"Geonosis?" Anakin's hologram wrinkled its nose. "Ahsoka, are you sure about this?"

"Well, I can't think of anywhere else to find a lead." Ahsoka sat in the commhub chair with her knees tucked below her chin. She picked at a loose thread hanging from her linen sleeping shorts.

"What about that Kal Skirto guy that you mentioned?" Anakin asked.

Ahsoka bit down a giggle. "Skirata. Rex told me about that panyapako, he allowed his crazy Null squad to abuse Boba. I'm not bringing him anywhere near Skirata until I've exhausted every other option, and I doubt I'll get any help from him anyway. Boba filled me in on his priorities."

Anakin nodded, looking unhappy. "If you say so."

"I do," Ahsoka said firmly. "Someone scrubbed the archives on Kamino. I have to assume it was one of the Cuy'val Dar. For all I know, it was Skirata. Unless one of the others decides to come forward, Geonosis is it. Whoever did it wanted to make sure the odds of finding them were next to nothing."

"Well, impossible odds have never stopped you before." Anakin's smile faltered. "How's the arm?" he asked quietly.

Her right hand went up automatically to touch her bicep. "It's fine," she said with a smile. "I'm fine, Master. I'm just a little sore."

"I'm so sorry." Anakin looked away. "Ahsoka…"

"It was my fault," she assured him. "I shouldn't have pushed you that far."

Anakin closed his eyes. "I should never have–"

"I forgive you, Master," she interrupted. "I forgave you the moment it happened. You weren't in your right mind." Thunder cracked so loudly that the walls of the ship vibrated. They were still on Kamino, waiting for the unforeseen hurricane to calm down before leaving.

"Thank you, Snips." Anakin finally met her eyes. "You're a better Padawan than I deserve."

Ahsoka ducked her head and smiled. "And you're a better Jedi than you think, Skyguy."

"I guess we both have our moments," Anakin chuckled.

Beyond the commhub door she heard the sound of footsteps approaching. They were so light footed, it had to be Boba. "Mwana akubwera," she warned him in a casual tone, hoping that her little eavesdropper didn't speak Toydarian.

"Inde." Anakin gave her a wry smile.

"So how's my replacement doing?"

"Your–" Anakin threw his head back and laughed. "You mean Taarak? How'd you hear about him?"

"Rex. Apparently you dropped a teething Togruta toddler off at the barracks instead of taking him straight to the Temple? Rex sent me about twenty messages in a panic because he bit Cody and he didn't know how to tell if he had venom glands or not. I told him that it doesn't come in until we're at least four years old, but still." Ahsoka raised a brow marking.

Anakin bit his lip. "They were, uh, on the way?"

Ahsoka snorted. "Sure."

"Fine, I wanted them to meet him before he went to the crèche. But then Obi-Wan wouldn't leave me alone when I landed, and I told him to drive me to the barracks but he's an idiot and he took me to the 212th's."

Ahsoka snorted. "And why'd you dump the baby on them, again?"

"I'll have you know that I was the one who was being considerate of the baby."

Ahsoka laughed. "So you dropped him off so you could yell at Master Kenobi, then?"

"He wouldn't shut up about your 'foul attitude.' " Anakin rolled his eyes. "And no matter how many times I told him I wasn't talking to him, he just ignored me and kept going. You're going to have to take one for the team here, Snips, or I'm going to throw him off the roof."

"That's a respectful 'hell no' from me, Master."

"I'll give you fifty credits."

"Nope."

"I'll take you to a Gungan shaak roast."

Ahsoka paused. "No."

"Please?"

"Just go give him your new little angel, distract him with some porg eyes," Ahsoka said bitterly. "Works every time."

"Someone's jealous," Anakin snickered.

"Wh– jealous?" Ahsoka sputtered. "I'm not jealous. What would I even be jealous about?"

"I don't know, you sound pretty jealous."

"I am not jealous," Ahsoka sniffed. "He's more than welcome to trick some other gullible kid into trusting him. He'll learn the truth eventually."

Her Master's face fell. "Ahsoka, don't say that."

"It's true."

Anakin sighed. "I'll let you go. Just be careful on Geonosis. I know it's been secured, but those tunnels are endless. I don't know how safe they will be."

"I'll have Plo and the Wolfpack to watch my back. Plus, Boba's a pretty good shot from what I remember."

Anakin's brows went up. "Don't tell me you're going to give him a blaster," he said, alarmed.

"You're right," Ahsoka said, nodding solemnly. "He needs more protection than that. A shotgun would be better."

Anakin's eyes bugged out.

"I think I can find a disintegration module for it too–"

"Ahsoka!" Anakin exclaimed, dismayed. "Don't you dare!"

Ahsoka laughed. "Fine. You're no fun."

Anakin rolled his eyes. "Be safe," he said, then ended the call.

Ahsoka stretched, yawned loudly, and made sure the chair squeaked before she got up. She heard the rapid pitter-patter of footsteps scampering away from the commhub door and chuckled.

Boba was wrapped in a blanket on the couch, pretending to be asleep by the time she made it out to the salon pod. Robert's nose poked out from the edge of the blanket along with the ears of the tooka doll. Ahsoka took a seat two cushions away from him and tucked her legs underneath her.

Boba let out an unconvincing yawn and blinked at her. "Hi."

"Hey." Ahsoka smiled at him. "Why're you sleeping out here?"

"Storm was louder in the cabin." He sat up and let the blanket fall to his waist. Plo had bought him a very nice set of red pajamas that he now wore, though they were a little big on him. His aura was vibrantly green in a way that she couldn't have imagined just the day before, but it was crawling with residual yellow humiliation.

"Do you want to talk about today?" she asked gently.

"I already made enough of a fool of myself, I think," he mumbled. The yellow intensified.

"You didn't make a fool of yourself." She scooched a little bit closer to him. "We cry when we're sad for a reason, Boba."

"Babies cry," he muttered, worrying at Robert's felted claws. "I'm too old to cry like that."

"You're never too old to mourn."

Boba's aura went violet with grief-regret. Ahsoka reached out with a tendril of copper affection and waited for him to speak. "Aurra didn't like it when I cried," he admitted. "I only did it once, after I broke my ankle. She slapped me and told me my dad would be ashamed of me for being such a little bitch."

The red-hot rage that rose up inside of Ahsoka nearly blinded her. She controlled her breathing, centered herself, and controlled its release into the Force. Boba didn't need her anger right now, he needed nurturing and reassurance.

"Ti– Rex, he said Dad would have skinned her slow for what she did," Boba continued. He stared at the tooka doll. "I thought she cared about me. She acted like she did, but I don't…" he glanced at her and then looked away, his aura suddenly going a deep, painful yellow with shame. "I heard Bossk tell her once that she shouldn't be doing that with me. I wasn't ready yet. She told him to mind his own business."

"She never should have done that to you," Ahsoka whispered. "Never, Boba. I'm so sorry that nobody was there to protect you."

Boba's shoulders slumped and he nodded. His aura was leeching green again, going dull and gray. She waited for him to continue, if he wanted to, but he stayed silent and started to stew.

"What was your dad like?" Ahsoka asked, gently changing the subject. He liked when people talked about his dad, she'd noticed. "I admit, I don't know a lot about him. Just bits and pieces."

"Probably nothing good, either." Boba turned the tooka doll over in his hands and Ahsoka took the opportunity to scooch a little closer. "He wasn't just a bounty hunter or the template. He was funny. He played quetarra and sang for us– for me, I mean."

Ahsoka desperately wanted to ask if he was including Rex, but let him keep talking.

"He liked action holos, but even when the volume was up really loud he'd fall asleep before the end." Boba's lips twitched in a half-smile. "And he could draw really, really well. He didn't do it a lot, but he used to when I was little. He could make a drawing out of pencil that looked like it was a holopic." Boba's aura slowly lightened from that bruised, painful, dark violet grief into a desperate lavender longing. "He took me on a few jobs with him. He wanted me to learn. He taught me how to shoot, and three different ways to slice and how to pilot, and, and…" he trailed off and swallowed hard. His eyes were shiny again. "He told me he loved me every day. Even when he was mad at me because I'd done something stupid or messed up, he still always told me he loved me." Boba sniffed. "I miss him."

Ahsoka smiled sadly. "He sounds pretty awesome."

"He was." He hugged Robert tightly. "Do you remember your parents?"

"Yeah." Ahsoka leaned back against the couch and tilted her head so that her lek was barely touching Boba's head. "Not much, but I do remember them. I was three when Plo found me."

"Why'd they give you up?" Boba asked, then flushed. "I mean, why'd they let him? Didn't they… didn't they want you?"

"My dad was actually the one who contacted the Temple," Ahsoka said quietly. "But my mom was having second thoughts. I remember her arguing with him over it."

"She didn't want you to go?"

"No. She thought I'd be fine. She said her mother could use the Force, too." Ahsoka shrugged. "There's a word for it in Binishii, I just can't remember it. Mew- something. My dad wanted me to go, though. He was sure it was my destiny. But, um…"

Boba tilted his head. "What?"

Ahsoka bit her lip. "He died. He drowned. It was about a month before Plo came for me. We were fishing, and he slipped and hit his forehead on some rocks." Ahsoka smiled sadly. "The one place we don't have extra padding, right? But he went under the water and I wasn't strong enough to pull him out. I tried, and tried, and finally I used the Force, even though I didn't even know what the Force was yet. I got him out but it was too late, he'd been under for… well, I don't know how long. It felt like hours. After that, my mom wanted to honor his last wish for me."

Ahsoka blinked away the tears that threatened to fall. She hadn't thought about her father in forever; not before Obi-Wan's funeral, at least. It was just one of those things that had happened to her. It was sad and she missed him, but Crèchemaster Veirexim had helped her release her frustration over her inability to save her father to the Force ages ago.

It wasn't guilt that haunted her. She had done everything she could, she knew that, it was the helplessness over not being able to do more. She hated feeling helpless more than anything. Master Kenobi had made her feel helpless, too, when he made her find his bleeding corpse in a filthy alley. It had been his real blood, too, she could still smell it in her nose. He had to have withdrawn it and kept it on ice in preparation. For all of the talk about Anakin's reaction being the selling point, he'd certainly gone out of his way to personally fool her at every turn.

"At least you tried to save your dad," Boba said bitterly, distracting her from her spiral of self-pity. His aura was flooded with violet grief-regret again. "I just watched. I saw Windu going for him and I just… watched."

"You couldn't have stopped it," Ahsoka said sympathetically, and reached for his hand. "Even if you'd been standing next to him, you couldn't have stopped it."

"I know," Boba said, and his aura flared green with bitterness. "I wasn't good enough."

"That's not why, Bo'ika, the only one who could have stopped it was your dad. He made the choice to confront Master Windu. He could have surrendered."

Boba snorted. "He was a Mandalorian. He never surrendered." He looked away and his aura darkened back into violet grief. "I wish he had, though."

"I wish he had too, for your sake." Ahsoka wiped her eyes and sniffed.

"Hey, don't cry," Boba said awkwardly. "You couldn't have done anything either."

"I know," she said, half-laughing. "It was a long time ago. I don't know why I'm crying about it."

"Well, you said we cry when we're sad for a reason." Boba nudged her with his shoulder. "I think you're sad, Tano."

Ahsoka did laugh at that. "Guess I am." She gave him a watery smile. "I've never told anyone that before, you know. About my father."

Boba watched her sniffle for a few seconds, then sighed. "You need a hug?" he asked, sounding for all the world like it was an imposition, but his aura shimmered with pale green hope.

Ahsoka nodded and opened her arms. He slipped right in and rested his head on her chest like he'd done it a million times before. "Dad told me Togs are needy as hell," Boba said quietly. "If they don't get hugs everyday they go insane, or something."

Ahsoka laughed softly and rubbed her lek against his velvety stubble. It was an accurate, if crude, summary of a Togruta's high haptic needs. "Yeah. Pretty much. Thanks, vod'ika."

He didn't answer at first. "You're welcome, ori'vod," he finally said in a voice so quiet that she wondered if he'd actually thought the words instead of speaking them.

Thunder boomed and startled them both. "This is a bad one," Boba said, the white flare of alarm in his aura quickly disappearing. "I'm surprised they haven't turned the weather matrix on yet."

"They have one of those?" Ahsoka asked.

"Yeah. These buildings can survive almost anything, but they still don't usually let it get this bad."

Ahsoka frowned. "Weird." It was more than weird. She'd checked the weather for Plo an hour before their descent, and while it had been storming, she hadn't seen anything with rotation on radar. Not long after they'd landed, though, the storm had intensified into a full on Grade II hurricane.

She suddenly had a bad feeling that the weather matrix was already on.

"We should go." Ahsoka patted Boba on the back for him to scoot and popped up once he released her. "Come to the cockpit with me."

"We shouldn't take off with winds this strong," Boba said, jogging to keep up with her long stride. "You should comm the control tower–"

"No," Ahsoka said shortly. Her heartbeat echoed in her montrals and there was a lump of dread in her belly. "We need to be in the air, now." She slid the cockpit doors open with the Force. It was empty except for Plo's astromech. "Chart a course for Geonosis and start charging the hyperdrive," she ordered Arseven, then took a seat. "I want to jump the second we break atmo."

"What's wrong?" Boba asked. His aura had gone staticky white with fear-anxiety.

Ahsoka considered lying to him, but decided he could handle it. "This storm wasn't supposed to be this bad," she said grimly. "I think they're delaying us on purpose."

Boba's eyes went wide and his aura went a deep gray with determination-focus. He sat in the co-pilot's seat and started to strap in.

"No," Ahsoka said firmly, booting up the surface-level navigation hologram. "Go man the cannon."

She would have laughed at the familiar look of manic glee on his face if she wasn't trying to run seven different programs at the same time. It reminded her of Hardcase. "Really?" he breathed.

"Yep." She handed him a headset. "Wait for my mark."

Boba slipped through the doors and nearly ran into Plo. He watched Boba leave with a teal aura of confusion-concern. "Ahsoka, what is going on? What are you doing?"

"We need to leave now, Master," Ahsoka said grimly. "They're worsening the storm so we can't leave. They're delaying us on purpose, and I don't want to stay and find out why."

"How do you know this?"

Ahsoka fired up the engines then looked at Plo with pleading eyes. "Master, please, you're a Baran Do Sage. Can't you feel that this storm is unnatural?"

Plo closed his eyes, then stilled. Ahsoka watched his aura fluctuate with bleach-beige unease and he took the co-pilot's seat. "You are correct. We should leave."

The entire ship shuddered as the Kaminoan docking clamp locked down their landing gear.

"Consular Cruiser Babasta, this is Tower, do you copy?" A clone's voice came through the comms in the dashboard.

"Karabast," Ahsoka growled. "Babasta, copy."

"You are not cleared to take off, Babasta, please turn off your engines and wait for clearance."

"Negative, Tower. We're leaving now." Ahsoka slapped on the exhaust exchange switches above her head.

"Nobody is leaving until the storm is over, Babasta. The atmosphere is too–"

A crack of thunder that felt like a concussion grenade split the air directly overhead. Ahsoka spied the weather matrix tower on a platform a few miles to the east, active and glowing, and toggled to the internal comms.

"Cannon, check."

"Cannon, copy."

"Boba, charge the cannon and aim at coordinates oh-seven-oh-eight-eight, ten degrees above the horizon." she ordered. "Do not fire until I give the command."

"Sir, yes Sir," Boba snickered over the comm.

"Ahsoka–" Plo warned.

"Please trust me, Master," Ahsoka replied through gritted teeth. She toggled back the comms. "Tower, you will release the docking clamp and allow us to leave immediately." Ahsoka listened to the mechanical whine of the turbolaser cannon powering up.

"I'm sorry, Commander, but all flight traffic is locked down until the storm passes."

"Boba, raise five degrees and fire a warning shot," Ahsoka said calmly.

"Copy that."

The sky lit up with green as Boba loosed a turbolaser bolt towards the weather matrix and Ahsoka heard him cackle over the comm. It sailed harmlessly over the tower and disappeared into the clouds.

"Commander Tano, what are you doing?" the clone in the tower asked frantically.

"The next one takes out the weather matrix," Ahsoka said coldly. "Release my ship, now."

"Commander, I have orders!"

"You have five seconds to comply." Ahsoka gripped the yoke. "Five."

"Please, Sir, let me get my CO!"

"Four." Ahsoka flushed the coolant. She was going to need it nice and icy for the thrusters if she had to break the clamp. Consulars weren't known for their efficient energy distribution.

"Commander, I can't just disobey a direct order, you know that!"

"Three. Boba, lower five degrees and prepare to fire." She felt bad for whichever poor vod was on the other end, but there was no way she was going to risk her vod'ika by staying a second longer.

"Fuck yeah!" The cannon whined as Boba aimed it directly at the weather matrix.

She tried not to shake from the adrenaline.

"I am with you, Ahsoka," Plo reassured her.

Her breathing steadied. "Two," Ahsoka narrowed her eyes. This was not a bluff the kaminiise wanted to call.

The docking clamp released their landing gear with a thunk. "You are clear for takeoff, Babasta." The clone sounded disgusted.

"Stand down, Boba."

"Awww!"

Ahsoka laughed. "Tell Nala Se goodbye for me, Tower. Over and out."

"What's happening?" Wolffe appeared in the cockpit with his kit on and a deece at the ready. "Are we under attack?"

"Take us up, little 'Soka," Plo said serenely. "Wolffe, we are leaving. I shall debrief the pack once we are in hyperspace."

Wolffe swallowed. "Yes, General."

Ahsoka punched up and navigated through the dangerous winds. A Consular Cruiser really wasn't built for an environment as hostile as a hurricane. Lightning struck directly beside them and Ahsoka's montrals rang like a bell.

"Little 'Soka?" Plo asked. She could barely hear him over the ringing.

"I'm fine," she said through gritted teeth. She pinched her nose shut with one hand and blew, keeping the other on the yoke.

By the time they broke atmo, her resonance chambers had reinflated and her hearing was normal again. Arseven beeped and the blue lights of hyperspace streaked across the cockpit.

Ahsoka sat back and sighed.

Plo undid his seat belt. "With me, Commander. Ahsoka, join us as soon as you can."

"Be right there, Master." Ahsoka glanced at Boba, who had strapped into the navigator's seat and was watching her with a look of awe.

"Ni ven'kyramu ad'kebbur," she said quietly. "I promise, vod'ika."

Boba smiled. "I trust you, ori'vod."

Notes:

MANDO'A TRANSLATIONS Ni ven'kyramu ad'kebbur: I will kill anyone who tries Kaminiise: Kaminoans Vod/vod'ika/ori'vod: sibling/lil sib/big sib Ke'shebi nebat: fuck off Ke'sushi, Dogma. Gar cuy cin'kar'ta. Gar cuy jat'verd. Gar ru'cabuor Republika. Ni partayli. Gar vode partayli. Ni ven'akaani akay gar cuy yaim. Ne noy'ganar manda. Mhi ne'nibra: Listen, Dogma. You are pure hearted. You are a good soldier. You protected the Republic. I remember. Your brothers remember. I will fight until you are home. Don't lose spirit. We won't fail. gar ijaati kaysh: You honor him TOYDARIAN TRANSLATIONS Mwana akubwera: Kid is coming Inde: Yes Panyapako: Asshole TOGRUTI TRANSLATIONS (BINISHII DIALECT) boozhoo: hello ogichidaakwe: female warrior OTHER NOTES Echani: special forces martial arts, the fighting style that the clones learned. I don't actually know if it's Mando specific, wookieepedia doesn't say, but let's pretend it is Fáng Shìlóng: Jedi martial art style. It doesn't have a name so I'm naming it lmao. I'm imagining it as a blend of Wushu and Tai Chi There are two canon (Legends canon, anyway) Mando'a terms for the Republic: Jetiise (Literally plural for Jedi which is dumb to use as an official term) and Tsad Droten (Technically Senate, not the Republic in general). I hate them both so we're using Republika lol I do what I want!!!!!

Taglist: @starwarsficnetwork, @soliloquy-of-nemo Dividers: @saradika-graphics

[nikomedes]

i said i wouldnt make a rook until i got into CC but im cooked and ive made three. this will be my first playthrough, though, i think!

Ethelfred Thorne (aka Rook, Freddie)

no that name is not a joke. she wishes it was

pretty typical parentage story—human noble sleeps with elven servant—but her orlesian father gave her to his wife to cosset like a baby doll and dismissed her mother with a glowing recommendation as compensation

when her noble father and second mother unexpectedly had their own child later in life, she was shuffled back to servants quarters as a teenager. her taste of luxury and understanding of the trappings of nobility left her unwilling to just disappear there, though

she stole a shitload of silver and ran to the free marches to reinvent herself. she became an accomplished liar and far traveler, gradually escalating her grifts as her experience and successes grew. she went to great pains to hide her elven ancestry and was working towards marrying into wealth when a grift went wrong

she was conscripted into the wardens and intensely pissy about it for the first five years. gradually she accepted her fate and began to befriend people, find meaning in the work, and distinguish herself. she’ll never get all the fine things she wanted, but who gets anything they want in this world? at this point she’ll settle for having a little fun while swindling people to supply her outpost

becoming rook and the events of veilguard are a strange chance to change her fate, and become the troublesome dame to neve gallus’ seasoned detective

doesn’t “have legs up to here” because she’s short

uncannily good at accents and impressions

can will and MUST slap solas’s bald head

and because i am who i am as a person i. kinda wrote a pre-canon intro story. i may revise it once i see the opening material, but until then…

*** “—as I was saying, things were going great. Admittedly, the gown not having a back was an issue, but only if I turned around or took it off, and this mark wasn’t worth that.”

The new recruits are respectively wide-eyed, incredulous, and grinning. Warden Thorne’s usual traveling companion, Warden Hume, has heard this story too often to react outwardly to its more ridiculous beats.

“Now, bear in mind I still had my hair back then—” Thorne says, scrubbing her free hand through the brown scruff atop her head. 

“—and were ten years younger and hadn’t been used as a genlock’s scratching post,” Hume adds.

“And that,” Thorne allows. “I was a dainty little rosebud with hair piled to the heavens and lips as plush as my cu—”

Hume cuts in with a sharp, “No.”

“Lips as plush as overpainting near up my nose could make them look,” Thorne says. “I was the picture of innocence. So I say to him, I say—” With absolutely no pause in cadence or apparent effort, Thorne drops her Marcher accent and continues in an impeccable Orlesian lilt. “‘Messere, the implications! Why, if someone were to present themselves at Court with my father’s signet, they could petition the Council of Heralds for a lost barony!’”

The recruits start at the sudden, seamless voice change, but one recovers enough to ask, “Wait, do Orlesians just… lose baronies? Where do they go?”

“Orlais is too old and too chaotic for its own good,” Thorne explains in her normal voice. “Between Exalted Marches, civil wars, and the Game shuffling players off the board left and right, there are dozens of titles technically up for grabs, but they stay that way because trying to claim one is a pain in the ass. Huge burden of proof.”

“That’s what you offered,” the youngest recruit surmises.

Thorne winks at him. For all that her face is slashed with old scars and starting to show lines at the mouth and eyes, a trace of the ingénue lingers in the veteran. “It’s called the Magister’s Tiara. Old grift, real classic, but it stays in the playbook because grasping for power is eternal. So yeah, I cast and he bites— perfect. Plays it stoic, just tilts back his chin and sticks out his hand, and I whimper and I simper and I reeeach into my bodice and take out the silk handkerchief.”

She really doesn’t need to illustrate this part, but the person who can stop Warden Thorne from flashing tit unprovoked has yet to be found. She whips her current and much less glamorous cotton hankie out of her tunic and waves it at the recruits. 

“And I unwrap it, and he shouts—” Her voice goes Orlesian again but drops an octave, low and murderous. “‘You lying harlot! This is no noble signet! This is the club ring of the Barded Asses, a social society I was a member of at the University of Orlais!’” She pauses to knock back the dregs of her wine while the recruits gasp and laugh. “I know! What are the damned odds? First off, that what I’d taken for a warhorse device was a donkey in drag, and second, that I’d found the one mark at the party who could show me a matching one like it was something to be proud of!”

Her eyes, as they always do at this point in the story, go distant. Hume studies her. Thorne tells the story with raucous energy, but she still seems to feel the coin flip of fate in the moment she describes acutely. Heads, she makes a fortune grand enough to buy something like nobility in the Free Marches. Tails…

Warden Thorne waves at the barmaid and waggles her empty bottle of wine. The barmaid scowls; Thorne may’ve convinced the inn’s proprietor that the Grey Warden treaties entitle them to free lodging and vittles, but she isn’t getting it past this woman. That, or the woman takes offense to serving an obvious half-elf. Thorne rolls her eyes and sets the bottle down.

“Anyway,” she continues, “pretty typical story after that. Someone heard the shouting and the mark turned me in. I hadn’t actually done any harm yet, but I think I shook the partygoers with how I blended.” She produces a vulpine grin. “They had the town guards make an example of me— hair shorn, parentage declared, left in the stocks for the masses to practice their aim on with rotten turnips. My mark was ginning up something worse, to hear the guards tell it, trying to track me back to other victims and see me clapped in irons for good… Then some asshole in blue and silver turned up and said, ‘Dibs on the liar.’”

The voice she imitates at the end has a peculiar accent the recruits clearly can’t place. Hume hears Orzammar in the vowels and drinks against homesickness. 

“And now you’re a hero,” the quietest of the recruits murmurs, awed.

Warden Thorne grimaces, though she covers that fast and well, crossing her muddy boots at the ankles and batting her eyelashes. “Oh, I’m nothing next to Hume, you’ll see. All this to say— doesn’t matter how you got here, everybody starts over in the Wardens. But don’t be hasty giving up the skills you took from how you lived before! We need all kinds.”

Later, when they’ve put the kids to bed and Hume’s lowered himself to paying for Thorne’s second bottle of wine, the inn is quiet, and the somber mood that’s dogged their heels for miles catches up. It’s not hard to conjure a somber mood among Wardens. When the action slows and they piss out the booze, the pain creeps in, and the dark nights, and the vise grip of slow death in their blood. Hume looks at Thorne and tries to imagine her pretty. Not that she isn’t striking now, but he met her after she got her scars, and it’s hard to picture her unmarred and soft-bodied. Destined to be a charming menace, whether to Marcher viscounts or Antivan merchant princes. Dancing the Allemande under the glow of crystal chandeliers.

“What is it?” Thorne asks, happily drunk and swaying a little in her seat.

“You don’t have to go,” Hume says. “Whatever the commanders think, our numbers are still recovering from Adamant and you’re too good a blade to put on the shelf like this.”

“But I want to see the Imperium!” she protests. Her smile doesn’t touch her eyes. “Think of the beautiful vistas, and all the beautiful people who haven’t heard my stories or my lies! I might even conscript.” She laughs as she tops up her cup. “Wouldn’t that be a lark? While you train up these duckies, I go find a gosling. Someone really weird. They might even survive the Joining— has to be some substance to the ‘Vints, with how long they’ve held back the horde.”

Hume nods and drinks his ale. Listens to the fire crackle. Lets Thorne settle back into the mellowness of her wine before he murmurs, “You could run.”

“Don’t,” she says.

“You could. Maybe only you.”

“Don’t.”

“Others are too obvious. They have tells, look hunted.” Hume shrugs. “You wouldn’t. A wig, some makeup…”

“I had my shot,” Thorne says. She’s still smiling, but her lips are pressed into a thin, bloodless line. “I played the ass. This is what I am now– and if I run, I’ll still be this, with no compelling reason not to walk into the Waking Sea.”

“There are reasons out there,” Hume insists. “There are… are reasons surfacers exist, even though every exile thinks they’re nothing after the Shapers carve them out of history. You could find a new reason.”

“You don’t know what it’s like,” Thorne mutters, apparently at the end of her good humor and teetering on the edge of wine-fueled venom. “You never could.”

“I’m wearing the blue and silver right next to you,” Hume points out.

“You never dreamed!”

The barmaid stops wiping the counter and pins them with another cold look. Hume stares at Thorne. Thorne flashes an apologetic smile at the one other lingering patron, disturbed by her shout.

“You never dreamed,” she repeats, softly, as she pours the last of her second bottle into her cup. “I did. Great big beautiful dreams, of perfume and corsets and good food to eat, dreams so real I’d wake up sighing, breath caught like I was in whalebone. Big, beautiful houses and soft, loving hands.” She stares down at the still surface of her wine. “There’s nowhere I could go and nothing I could take, to get those beautiful dreams back now.”

Hume says nothing, not about the petulant melancholy she’s indulging or the fact she’s never known the deep peace of surrender to nothing, of waking with a hale body and untroubled mind just a blink after laying down. He watches her slump into the table and trace lazy circles through spilled liquor with the tip of a callused finger.

“It’s not all bad, you know.”

“How’s that?” he asks. 

“It’s a relief, I guess,” Thorne slurs, and conjures a last, tired smile for him, “to know exactly what your future holds. How far you’ll go… and exactly why you’ll stop.”

[cosmicjoke]

Last week someone created Twitter acc called " midvi midackerman" the whole acc is slandering Levi character with most disgusting ableist jokes " paralysed, ugly impotent, flop wheelchairman "

Going to every Levi's fanarts and spamming it with slande for the artist filling levi stans cc with slander, ... It's awful and pathetic tho

This acc is eren & Mikasa stan

Well, that's sickening. But it really tells us all we need to know about what sorts of people hate Levi, doesn't it? They're the lowest of the low. Anyone who would say those sorts of things, making fun of someone for being disabled, calling them such childish names as "ugly" or "wheelchairman" can only possess the intellect of a dense block of wood and the character of a spineless ameba. I mean, how much do you have to hate yourself and how insecure do you have to be to attack someone for being disabled? It's easy to make fun of someone for those things, isn't it? It's what a coward would do. Going after the easy target, making fun of someone for struggling in any way. So that's what these people are, cowards, and they hate Levi because he's the opposite of that. He's everything they wish they could be, but never will be. They don't have the strength of character to be anything but frightened little weaklings, consoling themselves behind their computer screens and telling themselves they're bad-asses for pointing and laughing at a war veteran who gave his whole life for a good cause.

And knowing they're into Eren and Mikasa just drives my point home, that they can't cope with the fact that Levi is more popular than both of them, and with Eren especially, they can't cope with the reality that he ended up being the villain of the piece. They want to blame everyone else for Eren's failures and atrocities, but sad to say, it was all on Eren, in the end. And I'm positive it's a reflection of their own plight in life. They want to blame everyone else for their own failures and worthless existence, rather than take any accountability for themselves.

So the best they can come up with to try and drag Levi down is to make fun of him for being in a wheelchair and having a scarred face? I mean, it would be funny if it weren't such a testament to the true ugliness and cruelty of these people's personalities. It says nothing about Levi, and everything about them. They're bad people, and Levi's character seems to offend them by confronting them with their own wretchedness and ugliness. They could never conceive of being like that. Being a genuinely selfless, heroic person. So rather than face the hard truth about themselves, they choose to attack him and anyone who connects with him. It's typical projection. They loath themselves deep down for being what they are, and go around pretending it's everyone else' fault.

Well, fuck 'em, I say. They can continue to drown in their own misery and delusions, telling themselves lies to comfort them at night. Levi will continue to be the most popular character from AoT, and really, the most popular character period in manga/anime. People like him because he's a true hero and a genuinely kind-hearted, good person. These haters can only ever dream.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

All the books I reviewed in 2022 (Part V: Next year)

NEXT YEAR:

Before I go, I’ll note here that I have two books scheduled for 2023:

I. Red Team Blues (Tor/Head of Zeus, April 2023)

A grabby next-Tuesday thriller about cryptocurrency shenanigans that will awaken you to how the world really works. Martin Hench is 67 years old, single, and successful in a career stretching back to the beginnings of Silicon Valley. He’s a — contain your excitement — self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerilla war between people who want to hide money, and people who want to find it. Now he’s been roped into a job that’s more dangerous than anything he’s ever agreed to before — and it will take every ounce of his skill to get out alive.

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865847/red-team-blues

II. The Internet Con: Seize the Means of Computation (Verso, Sept 2023)

This isn’t a book for people who want to fix Big Tech. It’s a detailed disassembly manual for people who want to dismantle it. Interoperability is how we *seize the means of computation*, putting control over tech into tech users’ hands. Enshrining new protections for reverse-engineers, tinkerers, co-ops, nonprofits and startups will fundamentally alter the politics and economics of tech monopolies, weakening them and hastening the day that regulators break them up so they no longer present a threat to society.

https://www.versobooks.com/books/4165-the-internet-con

Image: Matthew Petroff https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:George-peabody-library.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[Image ID: Interior of the George Peabody Library in Baltimore.]

[jackbatchelor3]

The way some Twitter stans overpraise CC you would think he was a war veteran. Like I said last night, there's still a few issues with EastEnders that need fixing but are being overshadowed by nostalgia porn.

[ao3feed-obikin]

The Resolute Theater Presents

read it on the AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/46564216 by SendPseuds Veteran Broadway star Obi-Wan Kenobi has a strict No Fans policy, but his new co-star and self-proclaimed "biggest fan", Anakin Skywalker might just break him. A story of two extremely dramatic boys being extremely dramatic.   Fourteen chapters updating Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Words: 3801, Chapters: 1/14, Language: English Fandoms: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: F/M, M/M Characters: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, CC-2224 | Cody, CT-7567 | Rex, Ahsoka Tano, Satine Kryze Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Satine Kryze Additional Tags: alternate universe - broadway, Actors, Crushes, Pining, Getting Together, Slow Burn, Fluff and Angst, Explicit Sexual Content, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Other Ships To Be Added, trying not to spoil too much, Les Misérables References, other character to be added read it on the AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/46564216

[cyberphuck]

Hoo boy. Here is a SAMPLING (this is not everyone) of people from or who lived in my hometown: Amazon Eve, the tallest model in the world at 6 ft 8 in (2.03 m)

Black Flag, the hardcore punk band, is from Redondo, Manhattan and Hermosa Beach.

Michael Burns (born 1947), actor on Wagon Train, It's a Man's World, and numerous films; historian, horse breeder; lived in Redondo Beach in 1970s

Cameron Crowe, author, gathered research at a public school Redondo Beach for the basis of his novel Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Charles Lindbergh attended Redondo Union High School

Christian "CC" Coma (born Christopher Mora, 1985), musician, Black Veil Brides drummer; resident.

Chyna (born Joan Marie Laurer; 1969–2016), professional female wrestler, entertainer, body builder, reality TV star, and adult film actress.

Demi Moore (born 1962), actress; attended Redondo Union High School for a year

Edwin Mattison McMillan (1907–91), atomic scientist and Nobel Prize winner; born in Redondo Beach

Henry Rollins (born 1961), musician, actor, writer, television and radio host, comedian, Black Flag member; former resident.

Hisaye Yamamoto (born 1921), Japanese-American writer; born in Redondo Beach.

Jonas Neubauer, Professional Tetris player; resident

Jereme Rogers, professional skateboarder; resident

Jesse Heiman, TV personality and actor

Judith Resnik, second American woman in space, killed in the Challenger disaster

Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, former member of the Manson Family, attempted assassin of President Gerald Ford; former resident, Redondo Union High School alumna.

Patrick Kearney (born 1940), serial murderer

Ron Artest, professional basketball player; resident

Ron Kovic (born 1946), anti-war activist, veteran and writer who was paralyzed in the Vietnam War; best known as the author of his memoir Born on the Fourth of July; resident

The Smothers Brothers (Tom, born 1937; Dick, born 1939), musicians and actors; grew up in Redondo Beach and graduated from Redondo Union High School

Traci Lords (born 1968), adult-film actress; attended Redondo Union High School also Vince Neil killed someone while driving drunk

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