Intuition - Book 1 - Captain Rex

[Chapter 2 - Disruptive]

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When Lenora and Rex woke up it was far past lights out in the barracks. The pair decided to make use of the rare moment of peace and head down to the training rooms to get in some combat practice one-on-one.

"Oh you are SO going down." Lenora said cockily as she reached for a training blaster, setting it to the lowest power setting- a safety precaution- neither of them wanted to end up in the infirmary on their time off.

"Am I now?" Rex reached for a pair of training blasters similar to his own, also setting them to the lowest setting.

"Yep, I've been practicing my blaster skills since last time."

"Good, taking you hand-to-hand is getting old."

Rex and Lenora were a pretty even match. Rex had been trained as a soldier from the moment he was born, meaning that he had an extremely refined set of skills, but not much outside of that. Lenora however, had been trained in as many combat styles as the Kaminoans could think of before they had even considered letting her out in the field, but because of how many there were, her skills weren't as refined.

The two stood at opposite ends of the room, waiting for the other to fire.

Lenora shot first.

Rex was quick to dodge her attack, moving forward while shooting a few shots here and there. Lenora leaped gracefully across the room taking a few shots at Rex, one of them knocking a blaster from his hand.

"Yes!" Lenora threw her arms up in celebration, but this was cut short by Rex shooting the blaster out of her hand.

"Don't celebrate too soon!"

Lenora huffed indignantly and ran towards him, opting for a hand-to-hand approach- much to Rex's dismay. She quickly swept his legs out from beneath him, forcing him to drop his blaster to break his fall. Taking advantage of his vulnerability she raced over to pin him to the floor, but as she was about to he flipped the two of them over, landing on top and raising a fist as if to take the final blow.

"Nice job, but you missed something."

"What?"

Lenora moved the hand that was not pinned down, and grabbed the abandoned blaster on the floor, bringing it to Rex's face.

"Well you've got me there." he raised his hands in mock surrender.

"Told you you were going down."

The pair turned as they heard a wolf whistle from behind them.

Fives.

"Wow, I didn't take you pair for the type to-"

"Can it Fives! This may be a training blaster but it can still pack a punch." Lenora threatened as Rex politely offered his hand to help her up.

"Alright, alright." he said raising his hands- "Why are you up this late?"

"We could ask the same of you!" Lenora approached the cheeky clone.

"I asked first." he stood his ground.

"Fine, we took a nap and slept for too long, so we figured we'd be productive. What's your excuse?" Lenora raised an eyebrow.

"'We'? 'Nap'?"

"Yes Fives. A nap. That's all. Now out with it- why are you up." Rex placed his hands firmly on his hips.

Fives' expression changed- "I- couldn't sleep."

"Trouble on your latest mission?" Rex inquired.

"No... I think I'm just struggling to get used to being on The Resolute without Echo here..."

"Oh Fives..." Lenora wrapped her arms around him and held him tight. There were no tears shed, but she knew he was being completely eaten up inside.

"I'll be alright, I'm headed out on my next mission tomorrow- just a quick one, I'll be back before the general gets back."

"Good luck, don't do anything stupid." Lenora squeezed his shoulder affectionately.

"I'll see you guys around." he turned to leave, but then decided to add one last thing- "Oh and captain?"

"Yes?" Rex replied with his hands on landing on his hips again.

"Nothing, bye!" Fives ran off before Rex could reach the back of his head to slap him.

"I hate it when he does that."

"I mean it is a little funny..."

"Maker- you're as bad as the rest of them."

"And yet you still keep me around..." Lenora swept past, planting a teasing kiss on his nose before heading off (with Rex in tow) to the med-bay to see if Kix needed any help.

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The next few days were spent preparing for the next mission. Rex was still being weighed down by the sheer amount of work he had, but he persevered. Eventually he did finish it, but at that point they were receiving their next mission in only a few hours.

"Where do you guys think we'll be deployed next?" Fives had returned from his mission, and was sat in one of the training rooms with Lenora, Calliope, and a few of his brothers.

"I dunno, but wherever it is it better be a quick mission because we're running very low on parts." Calliope mused, ever concerned about the mechanical side of things.

"I think I might know." Lenora said grimly- "You guys ever heard of Umbara?"

"You mean the shadow planet?" Jesse piped up.

"I heard some of the 212th talking about it, apparently they've been causing the Republic some trouble lately, so my guess is that's where we're headed." Lenora looked around with a dark expression on her face, she didn't have much reason to be afraid, they'd dealt with far more dangerous battles than what this was looking to be, but she couldn't shake the feeling that something was different this time.

"The general and captain want us in the hangar for a debrief." Dogma poked his head in.

"Party pooper." Calliope muttered. "I guess I'll see you guys when you get back?"

"See you then Calli." the group got up and walked out to the hangar.

Lenora made her way to the hangar in a fuzzy state- unable to quite put her finger on why she felt so uncertain about their upcoming mission. She shrugged it off and headed into the debrief.

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I do have to apologize for kind of jumping straight into such a depressing arc- but I promise it'll be worth it- anyway hope you're enjoying it so far, peace and love <3