Heyo, human beings from outer space!
It's been a hot minute and a half, but I'm here now, yaaaaaayyy!
Annnnd it's almost Christmas, so if you celebrate it, have a great Christmas! I'm almost on holiday break, so I might be able to do something Christmasy for our favorite Jedi and clones :)
Anyways, please enjoy like 2,000 words of Ahsoka being called a Baby Jedi!
Read on if you dare.
"What did you say this group of clones was called, again?" Ahsoka asked, swinging her legs around the table to face Rex.
Lately, the Council and Chansolar had taken a particular interest in Ahsoka's performance and they decided to give her a sort of test to challenge her abilities. It so happened that this test was taking a particular squadron of four different clones on a special mission. And from what she'd heard about them, these clones were as reckless, wild, and disobedient as clones came.
Rex hummed, poking his head up from where he'd been looking through some supplies. "They're Clone Force 99, and they call themselves the Bad Batch."
"Right," Ahsoka said. What a name.
Needless to say, Ahsoka's nerves were starting to get to her.
"Are you ready?" Rex asked suddenly, joining her on the table with a datapad.
"Hmm?" Ahsoka asked, raising her eye markings.
"Are you ready for your mission?" Rex clarified.
"I was born ready," Ahsoka said, even though she was starting to feel quite the opposite. "Why?"
Rex chuckled. "'cause they're about to pull in."
"Oh!" Ahsoka squawked, hopping down from the table and rushing outside. Rex strode after her quickly as she bounced along, her stomach twisting with nervousness.
Ahsoka pushed outside just in time to see a modified attack shuttle rambunctiously zipping down from the sky. Clones yelped and dove away to stop it from plowing them over. The shuttle came to a screeching halt only meters away from crashing into the barracks before tipping forward and then falling back to place with a grinding rattle.
"You drive like a maniac!" one of the clones, probably Jesse, shouted from across the dust-ridden camp.
"Yeah, no different from Anakin," Ahsoka mumbled with an eye roll.
Rex chuckled and patted her back. "At least Skywalker knows how to stick a landing."
"He always ends up crashing, though," Ahsoka said.
Rex opened his mouth to reply, but just then, the ramp of the shuttle lowered and a ginormous clone came barrelling down.
"Rex!" the clone shouted, scooping rex into a strangling hug. "It's good to see ya!"
"Yeah, nice to see you too, Wrecker," Rex forced out, though Ahsoka swore his eyeballs were bulging.
"Let the man down before he dies," a lean clone growled, making his way down the ramp. Two other clones followed, one with a bandana and one working busily at his datapad.
"Aw, don't be a party-pooper, Cross!" whined the huge clone, presumably Wrecker, though he dropped Rex and let him breathe.
"Captain," the clone with the bandana stepped forward to help Rex up and shake his hand. "Glad to see you're doing well."
"Thank you, and the same for you and your squad, Sargent," Rex said.
"Where's our Jedi?" Wrecker boomed. "And what's that baby doing right there?" He gestured obnoxiously to Ahsoka.
Ahsoka scowled, about to quip back, but Rex beat her to it.
"That, Wrecker," Rex said, "is your Jedi."
"What?" gasped Wrecker dramatically. "That's a Jedi? But it's just like a baby tooka!"
"Hey!" Ahsoka snapped. "I'm not a baby or a tooka! I'm practically a Jedi Knight and I'm a Togruta."
Wrecker laughed. "Look, it's talking! That is such a cute little baby!"
"Wrecker," the clone with the bandanna elbowed the larger clone. "That's our Jedi."
Wreaker gasped even more dramatically before and Ahsoka swore his pupils formed into heart shapes. "That's our Jedi?!! We get such a cute, baby Jedi?!!"
Ahsoka nearly exploded. "I'm NOT a baby!"
"Look at her!" Wrecker squealed.
"Stand down, Soldier," the clone with the bandanna chided, and Wrecker silenced with a little pout. "Rex?"
"Men," Rex stepped forward, stiff and straight as ever, "this is Commander Ahsoka Tano, padawan of Jedi General Anakin Skywalker. Commander Tano, this is Clone Force 99, Sargent Hunter, Crosshair, Wrecker, and Tech."
Most of the clones nodded curtly out of respect, but Tech, the one with the datapad, never let his eyes leave the screen and instead offered a lazy wave. Ahsoka frowned. This clone Force was certainly rough around the edges.
Hunter turned to Rex, subtly watching Ahsoka out of the corner of his eye. Then as if he thought Ahsoka couldn't hear him, he mumbled, "Rex, are you sure about this?"
Rex nodded over to Ahsoka. "Why don't you show her around on board? Hunter and I are going to have a quick word, catch up and all."
Ahsoka knew Rex just didn't want her to hear him. She masterfully hid her hurt expression and followed Wrecker up the ramp of the ship. But she stopped just around the corner to listen in.
"Baby Jedi!" Wrecker blabbed suddenly, nearly bursting her montrals. "This is our ship and we call it the Havoc Marauder! Come on, I want to show you our barracks!!"
Ahsoka let out a startled yelp as Wrecker snatched her up and dragged her through the ship. He kept chattering along the way, spewing some random nonsense about the ship and where everything was.
He proceeded to give her a full tour of the barracks, his bunk especially, and blab on and on and on about anything and everything he could.
Hunter finally came onboard to rescue Ahsoka from him and drag her down to the cockpit. The rest of them were in there, Tech guiding them from the ground towards the atmosphere to jump to hyperspace.
"Have you been briefed yet, kid?" Hunter asked in his husky voice.
"Somewhat," Ahsoka said. "I know what we're doing, but Rex said that we'd have to make a plan."
"Right. And you're going to help with that," Hunter said, guiding her to a chair so they could sit and debrief.
The two of them quickly formulated a route to get where they needed to go without being seen, a way to get there efficiently, and an escape route.
The mission was to recover Republic information some clankers had before anything bad happened, shoot out some droids, and head back after wiping out the Separatist forces. A simple mission, but a risky one with such a small group.
So the plan was to ride in on speeders and the escape route was the roundabout way through the forest where the droids would have a harder time tracking them down.
"We're set," Hunter said.
"What?" Ahsoka frowned. "That's not even half a plan. Rex would never let me do something like that without a plan!"
"Well we're not Rex and we're not like most clones, either," Hunter said. "We usually get there and improvise. It's the way we roll."
"You going to have a problem with that, knee-high?" Crosshair growled from the seat over.
Ahsoka let out an annoyed huff at the name and scowled with determination. "Never. I'm ready for anything."
🪐🪐🪐
Crosshair did not like the new little rat Hunter had idiotically agreed to take on their mission. She was a child, a very small child, cocky, obnoxious, and everything in between that.
She was going to get in the way of the mission and get herself shot and have to be hauled like the burden she undoubtedly was back to the Marauder and back to Coruscant.
It may be a horrible thing for him to think, but Crosshair wished that maybe a blaster would accidentally be left free of the safety and unintentionally dropped on the floor to which it went off and just happened to shoot the little rat. Not to kill her, no. He wasn't that bad of a sport. Just to immobilize her and put her out for the mission.
The thought almost made him want to smile. But that creeping smile washed away as soon as he remembered that Hunter would know exactly what happened and therefore a bigger problem would arise.
Oh well.
Maybe she could get in his way and get shot during the mission?
Nope, Hunter would uncase that one, too.
Fine. He'd deal with it.
Crosshair sat back in his seat and closed his eyes, trying to pretend that the little rat didn't exist. But it was near impossible to do that when she was jabbering nonsense behind him. Knocking his rifle over to shoot her in the leg became very tempting at the moment.
But since that was out of the question, for the time being, he did the only other logical thing: He listened in on the conversation.
It turned out that Crosshair couldn't understand a single word she was saying. Not because she spoke unclearly or in an unfamiliar dialect, but because she was talking about the nerdy science garbage with the biggest nerd in existence, also known as his brother, Tech.
Whoah. Tech had finally found a pal to chat nonstop with. And it sounded like he was very much enjoying it.
Oh well. If she was satisfying Tech at the moment, the blaster shot through her leg could appropriately wait.
By the time they dropped out of hyperspace, Rat had made friends with both Wrecker and Tech. Tech was impressed by her knowledge and Wrecker was just happy that she played a game of Dejarik with him.
Tech guided the ship gently to the surface of the planet and Hunter and Wrecker got the speeders ready while Crosshair readied his weapon.
"Are you ready to try and keep up with us?" Wrecker boomed to Little Rat. "We move fast."
"Fast is the only way I know," Little Rat replied cockily.
They would have to see about that.
Wrecker let out one of his roaring laughs and not-so-quietly whispered to Crosshair, "I like that baby Jedi."
Little Rat beamed in a way that made Crosshair once again want to "accidentally" drop his rifle.
The five of them set out on speeders, zooming over the rough terrain as fast as they could. At some point, Crosshair split from the group to ride up to his vantage point. There he perched himself and readied his rifle. He could already see the clankers coming.
The battle commenced shortly. It was short with rapid fire and they managed to clear out the droids quickly, so then came the second wave.
The second wave was near twice the size of the first, but still nothing they couldn't handle. No other droids came, so they moved on.
Crosshair had to admit that he was mildly surprised at how well the little rat fought.
The third wave of droids took them by surprise while they were still on their speeders.
Tech went down right away, falling on the ground as dead weight. Crosshair felt a stab of frantic fear in his side and he had to work hard not to jump up to rescue his brother.
The others yanked their speeders to a stop and dove behind them for cover. Hunter started making hand signals to Wrecker, but the little rat suddenly leaped over the speeder to stand in front of Tech, deflecting every blaster shot sent his way.
Crosshair did a double take at the sight. He had to be seeing things.
But no, the scene in front of him was very much real. She stood over Tech, her lightsaber twirling wildly through the air so that it was just a blur.
Crosshair froze to watch as a sort of engrossment he'd never experienced before filled his chest.
That's when a bullet slipped past her defenses and slammed into her arm, leaving a charred, smoking circle.
Crosshair snapped out of his trance, aimed, and began firing at the droids to help provide cover. The little rat never stopped whirling her lightsaber, even as one of her arms hung at her side.
All the droids were destroyed within the minute and Hunter and Wrecker were instantly at Tech's side.
🪐🪐🪐
Tech was okay. A bit sore, but okay. He reclined in his seat, tapping rapidly at his datapad keys, doing this or that. Crosshair sat in the seat nearest to him. He didn't like to admit that he was jostled, that he was weak enough to be attached to one of his brothers, but he couldn't help it. Tech had always been the soft one who needed protection, and Crosshair had made the habit of being the protector.
The little rat sat across from Tech and Crosshair, putting pressure on her own wound. Surprisingly, she hadn't complained at all about the charred flesh on her arm. No one had coddled her, either. She simply went off on her own, without any help or concern from the others, and took care of herself. Honestly, everyone had forgotten she existed for a moment.
But only a moment.
After the chaos of putting Tech back together died down, Wrecker started using her as a teddy bear, Hunter had to make sure she wasn't about to die from being smothered by Wrecker, and she'd just now been able to slip away and sit in the cockpit with Tech and Crosshair.
Crosshair looked from her to Tech a few times. Perhaps if she hadn't been there at the time, Tech wouldn't have made it out of the mission alive. No, that was impossible. No one could get rid of Tech that easily.
But Crosshair still feared the fact that the mission could've ended with everyone packing up and leaving without Tech.
That didn't happen. Tech was safe and the mission was successfully completed.
Tech asked Little Rat a question, something sciency, and she chirped back brightly, even if Crosshair could see the dimmed look in her eyes. Interesting, truly.
A few minutes of the two conversating passed and Tech excused himself to go clamber around with his next projects. Crosshair got up to follow him, in case he decided to do something stupid that would hurt him more, but he paused. Little Rat sank back into her seat, curling into herself and watching hyperspace fly by as she nursed her wound.
Crosshair hesitated. What an odd little thing she was.
"Thank you," he growled out and then disappeared from the cockpit. He almost regretted it. Soon, she'd be blabbering all over the place about it, so surprised that he could say such a thing.
But she never did.
By the time they dropped out of hyperspace and landed the ship to drop Little Rat off, Wrecker was crying real tears, Hunter nodded respect to her, Tech looked up from his datapad for half a second, and she simply just offered Crosshair a tiny smile as she departed.
"You're welcome."
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Word Count: 2,515
Published: December 22, 2022
Yaaaaaaayy I really miss writing this kind of stuff when I don't get to write it for a while and this was super fun to write.
Requests are open, feel free to message me or make a comment if you have any ideas!
Bye, peoples!