Hey Sister

Chapter 7

SUMMARY:

The truth  is revealed

--------------------------
“So let me get this straight, you two found an injured cadet stranded in the wreckage of the city, and instead of reporting him missing from his batchmates or dropping him off at a medical wing, you deemed it necessary to kidnap said cadet, stow him away on board still injured, hide him, and do all of this while failing to mention any of this to you commanding officers.”

Fives and Echo just got back from the medical wing and Rex was tearing them a new one about “lack of communication” and “being irresponsible.” As much as they wanted to tell their side of the story, to clear up this situation once and for all, they feared talking over their captain would only make him angrier, so they opted to wait for him to finish. Hardcase and Jesse were also in the room, witnessing the whole scene play out in front of them, but chose to stay silent not wanting the captain's wrath to land on them.     

“Well Sir, when you put it like that you make us sound carless.”

“Watch your tone, you're on thin ice Fives,” Rex said sternly, looking at the twins who were fidgeting in front of him, doing everything in their power to not look the captain in the eyes. Despite being Arc Troopers, all Rex sees before him are the two scared yet determined shines he recused from the Rishi Moon Outpost. Ever since they were transferred to the 501st and integrated into Torrent Company, he couldn’t stop himself from taking them under his wing, similar to how Wolffe practically adopted Boost and Sinker, after the Malevolence attack.   

It was nothing unusual, older clones were always taking in stray shines. Cadets graduate around the age of eighteen, and are immediately assigned to a legion then shipped off. Once the shines arrive at their designated legion, the older cadets have a field day showing them the ropes, adopting them into their groups and teasing them about their baby faces, despite most of the older clones being about one or two years their senior.  

The Kaminoans gave the clones accelerated aging during their younger years, but once they hit the age of eighteen they begin to age normally, due to the Kaminoans wanting to “preserve” their youthful strength, which would only proceed to grow stronger with coming years, instead of having the accelerated ageing boosting them up to thirty only to experience muscle age and decay within two years of battle. So shines tend to get really flustered when older cadets tease them about their fresh faces, despite only being a year younger than the rest of the legion. Despite all the teasing older cadets can’t wait to adopt their younger brothers into their group, it's become a heartfelt tradition with all the clones. 

How was it that the two shines Rex managed to adopt just happened to be the two most chaotic stress inducing clones in the entire GAR? It was just Rex’s luck, as if being captain to Master Skywalker and Commander Tano wasn’t stress inducing enough. Of course he loved them both dearly, and held them in the highest respect, but seeing his Jedi comrades jumping right into the heart of battle (or off a bridge) with nothing more than a half baked plan, never fails to put him on the brink of a heart attack. Although he is stubborn to admit it, Rex knows he doesn’t really have the right to judge other people's impulsive personalities, Rex was the exact same when he was a young cadet. He can’t count all the times he had given Cody a scare for his “outlandish” tactics used during training on Kamino. Rex has matured and wizened up over the years, but every now and then his impulsive roots come out during a battle or two.      

Rex chuckled to himself, Impulsive nature must be a 501st thing he thought.

While Five and Echo acted impulsively, they aren’t stupid. They were brave fighters, and more importantly had reasoning behind their impulsive actions. Yet Rex can’t seem to find any reasoning as to why they would deem it acceptable to more or less kidnap a cadet off of Kamino