A/N: GOSH DARN IT CUBE YOUR LOVE LETTER MADE ME WANT TO WRITE

Hi.

I'm a snail.

This fic might take years to finish, but by golly will it finish. I swear to you, even when some of you reviewers think this thing is abandoned, that I'm conquering my real-life challenges in order to prepare the next chapter for publishing. It just doesn't help that I write non-linearly. Also, I can't claim to portraying political exchanges well, so fair warning that as eloquent as I know Leia and Palps to be, I might not do them justice. Thanks for your patience and warm reviews!

When Darkness stretches across the Sky and You are Lost in the Rocks or Dry Seas, follow the Brightest Star Home, for the Brightest Star can Never be Lost so it may Guide the Lost. And should Home Join the Stars or Slip Away into the Dark, Justice and Vengeance will Rise from the Horizon and Scatter Darkness. In the Worst of Times, They will Hatch and Fulfill Their Namesake as Dragons upon the Vile and Hollow….

X

X

Even conflict offers small blessings. Tripping into the Hutt equivalent of an internal dispute botched Anakin and Obi-Wan's recon mission, but if they hadn't quickly relocated to a GRS Wanderer parked in the edges of Mid-Rim space, they wouldn't have attended a regular scan by the ship's high-resolution visible-light cameras at areas of academic interest. Results are most of the time interesting for researchers but not for soldiers, and the few shots not of dead space or cold systems capture Separatist litter that suggests movement trajectories. Those shots are bounced off satellites to a GAR database for clones to find useful information from and forward to the relevant offices.

The images themselves rarely travel straight from the cameras to Jedi without passing through a multitude of filtering due to essentially amounting to microinformation, but Anakin has grown familiar enough with Separatist egos to recognise a shipwreck for Dooku happening to overly-ambitious or unlucky pirates.

Wherever the aristocrat moves, the Separatist Council expects a number of firepower to accompany him no matter how banal the errand. In the corner of a single recent shot among dozens, the tail-end of scattered battle droid parts and a transport ship mark minor Separatist presence - in the Outer Rim, of all places - and what Separatist has the influence to send a small squad of droids through militarily useless space? Unless Dooku plans to participate in academic research, the squad that left behind litter must have been escorting the aristocrat as he traced the Outer-Mid boundary for a destination Anakin has yet to divine. Dooku might even be settled somewhere in the Outer Rim to take a breath from front-line and restrategise.

However, though considered recent, the shot actually belongs to a sequence that dates back to the same time Anakin, Obi-Wan, and two Hutt forces crossed paths. Any information that Anakin can draw from suspended droid parts might be outdated, which is why the filtering process exists, but he can't shake his mind off of the breadcrumbs.

Or, if he's being honest with himself, Obi-Wan.

Next to him pouring over textual raw data, Anakin's friend, partner, and tempering counterpart sits with an ankle over a knee and his arms hidden in voluminous sleeves. Anakin's lips twitch at the new cloak, and he deftly slides his gaze back to megapixeled images before Obi-Wan's sixth sense with staring acts up. Barring Force-sensitivity, Obi-Wan can mysteriously sniff out Holo reporters and abandon any fearless heroes on hand to them.

Anakin knows when an artefact captures Obi-Wan's attention, because the latter isn't thoughtfully rubbing his beard. This marble statue perfectly balanced in his chair is the Jedi master who mediates and negotiates in a Council room or the middle of a battlefield, not an inch of him moving like the tipping point into action caught in time. He's riveted to his screen.

Anakin loses track of which files he's opened before he finally prods. "Obi-Wan?"

A hum.

"What are you thinking about?"

The intense focus that was on the screen falls on Anakin. In the blank-minded way that has had Anakin firing his starfighter the same time Obi-Wan is pulling up, Anakin knows the answer before Obi-Wan breathes. "You."

Anakin wants to know what Obi-Wan saw in his vision. He's not sure Obi-Wan himself knows, or remembers all of it.

"Back in the Hutt ship," Obi-Wan asks non sequitur, "what were you doing when the firefight locked you in a closet with your incapacitated partner?"

Anakin blinks and half-heartedly opens and closes another file. He shares his account of the mission in similar fashion, like having his teeth pulled and nothing at all like typing up a dry mission report. Obi-Wan patiently listens, and Anakin wants to pour everything out as if to the Force, but he hesitates to give away incriminating details of his attachments.

It's difficult. Obi-Wan's one of them.

Anakin reaches the tale passed down to him through his mother, and his throat constricts. "Vile and Hollow…. Honestly, Master, it's desert speak. All that follows is more stretched-out hours of holding a sweaty man and not being able to see my hand in front of my face."

"I suppose you saved my life." Obi-Wan thanks dryly.

"We're thirty to twenty, now."

"Cato Nemoidia," Obi-Wan deadpans, and they chuckle together. "And what does it mean?"

"I...Master?"

"In other words," Obi-Wan spins together, "when night falls and you're lost, follow a polar star and you'll end up somewhere familiar. If you fail to find such a place before dawn, the suns' light will make your surroundings clearer so that you may better navigate your way home. Beware the height of noon, when the twin suns are swelteringly hot. Or is it a warning that the binary stars will explode into a supernova at the end of their lives?"

Aside, Anakin's camera scans are forgotten. "There are many interpretations," he expands, mostly failing to curb his eagerness to share. "Another says that if you face negative circumstances without a clue on how to improve or tolerate them, you mustn't lose sight of what is good lest you behave poorly and learn to prefer negative circumstances. Remember the positive influences in your life. If your home - the good people in your life - dies, is taken from you, or betrays you, then it is the ripe time for justice or vengeance to lead your actions. When your world truly crashes around you, don't hold back.

"A third interpretation proposes that the sky is your heart. If you become unrecognizable to yourself, especially in a negative way, commit to the most positive part of your character and you will find yourself. If good actions fail to produce results, justice and vengeance are acceptable alternatives. Worst case scenario, they become your modus operandi."

Obi-Wan strokes his beard. He's thinking like a human. Warm. "How can justice and vengeance stand equally next to each other?"

Anakin doesn't feel judged. He feels trusted. Obi-Wan wants to understand Tatooine because her song was what grounded Anakin in one of the loneliest experiences a man could experience.

Sometimes, Anakin tells himself not to be attached to Obi-Wan.

He's always pleased to fail.

"When your home is destroyed, your life is ruined by others, and everyone you love is dead, you won't care if vengeance does not mean justice or vice versa. Sometimes what Tatooine's people need is closure. For children, it's the assurance that they will be rescued or avenged by the two most powerful forces of Tatooine: the suns."

X

X

Half the asteroid station explodes between one heartbeat of trooper RT-2141's and the next.

He rises out of slumber not in the gentle curve of consciousness, but in a spike of adrenaline that lights up his nerves when he races down white corridors with a standard rifle in his hands and his mind still stumbling out of his cot. RT runs over one brother, then two, before he realises that he forgot his helmet, that he is one of ten living souls in the halls, and that he must be more tired than expected. The rest of the troopers must still be rising from their sleep, but RT is a captain even in the dead hour of night, so he is obligated to lose his mind.

The unholy caterwauling of blasterfire and the quaking of his brain knocking about in his skull must have been a Separatist invasion or so help RT when he gets his hands on the shinies who deactivated the grav-locks of the station's entire collection of industrial freighters at the same time. At least, RT feels like a freighter is constantly being dropped on his head.

Sooty boot marks and streaks of hurried armoured limbs immediately snap RT out of his irritation upon their sight, however, and the captain quickens his pace for the epicenter of an invasion. RT wonders if he is still dreaming. The blaster noise and earthquake that roused him from bed are likely the battlefield trailing its ghostly fingers through RT's dreams again, and the flickering red-pink glow against the white of corridors and armour is RT's nonexistent imagination. He sometimes wonders what it means to be colour blind, since clones are designed to be perfectly functional. Only the white by the viewports are pink, though.

The station is startlingly quiet.

RT glances out a viewport and physically catches a brother in passing. "Is that a red ray shield?" he asks the trooper.

"No, sir."

The trooper struggles against RT's grip in a rush to – carry on duties, possibly, make sense of something amazing and indescribable that RT has yet to grasp – and RT lets the brother go.

The captain passes identical troopers running through flimsies as if the endless texts hold the secret to creating sense out of insanity. The station's ventilation system kicks in like a breath, and RT is briefly convinced that the air must be alive. He finally spots the wide, tall mouth of an entryway to the landing pad along his left, and he approaches – at the entryway's side – the several troopers forming the audience of a tall, greying man laying down order where there should be chaos. Separatist droid parts are everywhere, and bouncing off the floor and walls echo tense, indecipherable words in the same pitch as RT's voice and a lower, smoother pitch of age and aristocracy. Above all of them persistently drones the heavy presence of industrial-sized Separatist droid ships hovering just beyond the landing pad and out of RT's sight.

Startlingly quiet.

Both sides are at a draw. Somehow, and attained fast enough for RT to almost believe he had imagined the noise and quake of an invasion. The captain glances at the tall, old man running RT's men without resistance, and searches for identification. He finds it in the slim ornament hanging from the stranger's waist, and concedes to the chain of command. All Jedi are generals until instructed otherwise.

"Brief me in, sir?"

The greying man turns an analysing gaze to RT, who straightens up. A few troopers murmur RT's rank with eyes resolutely not straying to a spectacle beyond the entryway's frame. RT is suddenly tempted to peek. His men are emitting more reverence for the Jedi than given by upbringing or battlefield experience, and RT wishes to understand why.

"Several Separatist droid ships discovered this station and engaged your men in battle," the Jedi informs like he's a shiny reading through a shipment list. He describes the explosive but brief engagement –– we'll need more toilet paper, Captain Artie –– summarises his accidental but convenient arrival –– two shipments, if possible –– but refrains from explaining how an invasion of an asteroid space station can conclude to a draw within the span of a slumbering heartbeat. RT passes the Jedi and rounds the entryway's corner for an answer. What he sees…is not a ray shield.

It's the brilliant, crimson sight of countless blaster bolts suspended in air.

The lasers are so crowded together that at first glance, they are all one quivering body, or an artificial sunset, because the asteroid RT has grown familiar with doesn't retain a rich enough atmosphere for a deep dusk beyond burnt orange and ash grey. The reality of the situation startles a soft gasp from RT despite himself, despite his training, and he finally zeroes in on the droid ships floating beyond the wall of blaster bolts, waiting. RT counts two or three; in the dark of night, he can only guess. RT retreats back inside by his men and the Jedi. Only then does he notice the dark outline of a hooded figure standing at the edge of the landing pad, just a stone's throw away from the suspended blasterfire.

"My colleague," the Jedi identifies, more interested, "he's keeping the droid ships at bay."

RT is mistaken.

This isn't a draw.

X

X

While a backwater system's revolution matters little to the CIS, the event that was eclipsed by Tatooine's acquirement of an outspoken seat in the Chamber now draws both the Republic's and CIS's shocked attention.

Clone outposts vanish from communications. Droid military ships smear the space between planets as trails of durasteel dust as if following the swing of a massive hand. Silence guards planets once beset by CIS forces, and the swift and stealthy eradication of the Separatists' droids finds evidence in the planets' such thorough peace that both the Republic and the CIS are too spooked to send another ship over.

When the question pops up on live Holo before Leia, the senator merely laughs.

No one asks the question again.

An unseen, unquestionably real creature lurks in the dark of space passing from star to star, and where its claws sink or its wings flap, so change finds a way. The shapeless entity of nightmares and vivid imagination has no obligation to heed other planets, but a star system sometimes finds its cries for help mysteriously answered with the disappearance of both a droid threat and the clone base that was established to address the threat in the first place. The inexplicable and hair-raising phenomenon inspires a question that quickly gains momentum when the public grows aware of the full background behind the Republic's exclusive military force, which only adds to the credibility of the most widely-considered yet hushed hypothesis regarding the odd events. After all, the production, shipment, and assignment of clones imitates sentient trafficking and slavery, and the opinions of common sentients apparently matter nil to a dragon.

The Republic once cared little when righteousness hatched in the Outer Rim.

Now, Justice stalks the galaxy.

What is a war to nature itself? Tidal waves and volcanic eruptions have disturbed campaigns before, and the faceless creature sourced from Tatooine behaves much as if nature's impatience with allkind's greed has grown potent enough to take physical form and bulldoze its way through mortal efforts again, this time more straightforwardly and consequentially unmistakable. Justice cares not for agendas. If clones cleanly vanish for freedom like slaves of past, and wrongdoers whether Separatist or not vanish not as cleanly, Justice's stance is clear.

Change your rules of war, or Justice will change you.

The creature of myth appears to act sporadically, but only those curious and resourceful enough to study its activity will find a pattern heading for the Core itself. The less law-abiding of the galaxy seem to grasp this, at first, and not a few among them seek to leave the long-complacent Republican officials in the dark. While an idiot without innocence would test a convincing image of nature, a quick-witted sentient without obligations would sit back and watch the drama unfold. Others among them participate in the underground work favouring Justice, if not out of a generous corner of their hearts, then out of a desire to claim even a second-hand connection to the beast low-key riling up the Holo, Republic, and CIS.

Once the oppressed and once-afraid catch wind of the unspoken hypothesis, this unseen beast, the idea grips their hearts so suddenly and fiercely - in a manner that metal can't comprehend - that rebellions sprout across planetary faces against Separatist abusers. Warm bodies trample thousands of droids and blasterfire in solid waves, righteous shouts and fists pierce smokey air, and fire fills the bellies of the angry. Their cries echo across the galaxy.

No more.

Their lives will not be unjust for even another day.

The passion that lights star systems frightens evil-doers more than a rebellion, because sentients can be killed and profits sacrificed.

Yet what is a mortal to an idea?

X

Across the Chamber, Palpatine side-eyes Leia. In a transcendent dance, the two of them negotiate stars into alignment one pod at a time, while pretending that immortal persuasions aren't unsheathed at their sides. They both belong outside politics, but in such an arena, they war, and oh does one wisely avoid them, or be unwillingly sucked in.

A Sith Lord is comparable to a black hole, advancing darkness through destruction.

And an avenger? She is one who repays an end with an end.

When Leia witnessed her world destroyed, she made sure to witness the Death Stars destroyed. As well as the Empire, just to make sure. Such evil would not hurt anyone again.

Palpatine hasn't sensed her seriousness yet. He commands the senators in the chamber like a spider does stars in a galaxy, while Leia works her weights thrown in his web. They clash - in gazes, mostly, and rarely words. Too alike, they know better than to confront one another before the podium and in the language of subterfuge.

Should one of them attack seriously, the other will know. They'll have a blade coming for the jugular.

The likelihood of this from Leia still escapes Palpatine, however. Destruction, he may be, but he understands the clever power of politics, and has made a point to thrive in it. He shouldn't expect to be surprised by anything. Indeed, he still dances Leia on a string, despite her charisma and careful words.

"The temptation to dismiss bills unrelated to our own system are only as strong as we allow it to be."

"And you believe this, Senator Leia?" Palpatine gently chides. "Fellow Republicans, we the Senate have our hands full with the war, and dividing our attention might allow the Separatists based around the Trade Federation an opportunity to win the war and destroy the Republic, wherein systems, especially Outer Rim ones, will most certainly not see help. The sacrifices people and soldiers have made thus far would become pointless."

As a fellow reptile, he knows when "and you believe this" stops tumbling around in Leia's mental angry box. Her face smoothens out like paint over wood. "The Senate might care about soldiers' sacrifices, but this is the same Senate that ignored the Outer Rim in times of peace. What excuse have we for allowing the worst side of the galaxy - gangsters, pirates, the Hutts - to find refuge in Republican systems? The Outer Rim has suffered for longer than the Mid Rim and Inner Core have dealt with war, and now Separatists build bases in sight of the Outer Rim to strengthen their position against the Republic. We're shooting ourselves in the foot. Passing a bill won't see instant change, but we must give it its chance."

"The Senate functions as it has for centuries, and during the period where the Republic was able to grasp peace." Palpatine determinedly segues into, "More than ever, we must retain the status quo in our performance that has reliably seen the Republic rise above civil war before we must do anything. This is a consensus I believe we've all reached to be standing at this point, and I would be most disappointed and concerned if a senator rebelled against the very structure of democracy."

"Oh, Chancellor." Leia's voice smiles, but her face doesn't. Palpatine is pushing it, he's pushing it. "You don't want to see a rebellion, period."

This isn't a blade at the jugular. Leia's pointed yet outwardly gentle words merely express intent, but it is the truth in them that has Palpatine's usual deliberations slowly numb.

He halfheartedly notes the session ending. Palpatine's feet absentmindedly swallow the carpet between the apartment lobby and his suite a hundred floors above as his thoughts churn slowly, as if stunted by the unexpected echo of reality. Senator Leia isn't afraid of opposing the Republic. A dark, powerful voice from the bottomless chasm in Palpatine's chest –– usually a source of inspiration in sith endeavours –– whispers a more honest thought softly into Palpatine's ear.

She isn't afraid of opposing you.

X

X

"How efficient. Identification of complex scenarios and pre-informed instructions on how to optimally correct them have been compacted into one-hundred-fifty verbal codes."

Ruoldi leans on the chair that has Hack's rusty posterior in it. "All the clones memorised them?"

"Affirmative." Hack ignores Ruoldi's exaggerated weight and fading bounce. Boop, boop. "As the common meatbag has been modified from his original model into theoretically reliable obedience and compliance, only the ARC troopers and Commandos — who have been afforded the resourcefulness and flexibility required of their position — possess a fifteen-percent or above probability of reinterpreting or rejecting the codes."

"Which code has the highest likelihood of receiving disobedience?" Ruoldi needs a grasp of the clones' behaviour, because he has yet to observe independent thinking much less a personality from any of them.

With speed and power possible only with metal, Hack abruptly jerks his seat so that even Ruoldi's reflexes can't save him from a sharp hit to the arm from the backrest. Ruoldi pauses and leans back on the chair, but adds no extra bounce. Hack silently files a note in microseconds. Beep boop motherkriffer.

Ruoldi doesn't have to plug into Hack's system to guess what his family by association is thinking. He wonders how the two of them have lasted this long unsupervised without destroying something.

"Order 66," Hack neutrally replies, pulling the verbal code up to the main monitor. "It is among the thirty-percent of the codes which are not actively exercised as military brevity and which only the sitting Chancellor may dictate. As Jedi have to run orders through the ARC troopers and Commandos, interaction between the three groups sums up to several times longer in duration than between the Jedi and the rest of the meatbags. Hence the high risk of disobedience."

"Alright, but what does Order 66 mean?" Droids and their curtness. Ruoldi is a genius, but he isn't wireless data-sharing compatible. "You're also going to have to pass on the endearing nicknames and stick with races from here on, Eitch-Kay Fifty. The Princess did warn you that 'meatbag' is too generic."

Hack ignores the last comment. "Order 66: the entirety of the Jedi has been discovered to have conspired with the CIS into weakening the Republic with the resource-draining war. As a long-established military force trained into obedience since their earliest years — similar to the clones except for the Jedi's loyalty exclusively to a doctrine and not to the Republic — it is not a leap to reason that every individual directly associated with the Temple, regardless of rank or age, is united in their overarching mission. Optimal solution: execute every individual directly associated with the Temple."

"So, kill all the traitorous Jedi?" Ruoldi summarises. "The clones' purchaser really left no scenario uncovered."

"Essentially." Hack scrolls through several files of text inhumanly fast. "The meatbag…." Ruoldi smirks, interpreting the hitch as the droid's default label finally failing him. "…The golden boy qualifies as a Jedi, according to the codes."

Ruoldi's smirk slides off his face.

"There's an editing option," Hack informs.

"With a passcode?" Ruoldi leans over.

Hack types very quickly. "Not anymore."

Common sense dictates that assassination droids with psychopathic speech habits should not have access to custom commands over the mightiest military force in the galaxy. After being denied his daily nap or a glass of blood-spiked alcohol, Ruoldi is in the mood to dismiss common sense.

"Delete all the Chancellor-exclusive orders."

"Deleted. Shall I include already-stationed clones in the code update transmission?"

"Naturally."

On a mission to gather evidence of the Chancellor trying to erase Tatooine from the Senate, Ruoldi and Hack found themselves on the mostly-forgotten planet Kamino with its long-necked cloners quickly drugged and shipped to the planet's mainland for a different path in life, a company of two-hundred clones blinking at their kidnappers while awaiting orders, and an unexpected breadth and depth to their anti-Chancellor conspiracy dropped on their laps.

Let it not be said that Leia and Luke entertain small ambitions, although if the two insist on working on their own in secret, Ruoldi can't be denied offering peripheral assistance.

Besides, according to the twelve-hundredth Republican amendment, section this-or-that, paragraph yadda yadda—

The Republican justice department can't touch Tatooine – and best of all Ruoldi – for the kidnapping of as many clones as possible. Hack as a vintage droid decades out of production can't be scrapped for what must be the actions of faulty but easily correctable code, and Ruoldi as the responsible Tatoo government official chasing after Hack can't be held accountable for cleaning up the mess Hack leaves in his trail while attempting to catch the runaway droid. As for moving large numbers of people and finding places where they may settle, well…

The underground slave routes have dodged governments for millennium. After all, pirates just steal what they want, and though the Republic is busy with war, which system is willing to send their authorities at their own cost to engage in a goose chase after ruffians from the Outer and Mid Rims? Even if the stolen "product" is clones, the fortunate paradox the Republican systems find themselves in is that they have to hire third-party help to procure the clones if they don't want to send their own people on grunt work, yet at the same time the third-party help is likely to hail from the same circles as the pirates responsible for the theft in the first place. As if Republican work doesn't have enough corruption as it is.

Undoubtedly, clones and slaves from places Luke has touched have found themselves moved through the system to wherever they disappear. The likeliest explanation reasons that Luke is abusing his Jedi status to move the clones, and using his golden touch to convince them to exercise a more human doctrine. The faceless sentients engaged in certain trails and destinations have no reason to not follow up on Luke's work.

Corruption, right. Ruoldi nearly forgot his original purpose.

"Eitch-Kay Fifty, the Kaminoans' tech supports fairly unique and effective hacking means, correct?"

The bipedal droid turns Ruoldi's way almost accusingly.

"Of course you could wipe out a planet of senators if you wanted to, hacking or no," Ruoldi acknowledges the droid designed as a serial killer, "but with the Princess's orders, the best alternative against the Chancellor, at least with our resources now, is harmless Holo junk mail. Maybe a package deal for raunchy home videos or two."

"If the chain of Holo mail is long enough," Hack entertains, "the Chancellor's device will crash. He might have to purchase a new one."

"And explain why he's buying it."

"Every time his current one mysteriously fails."

Ruoldi fights a grin. The Chancellor is going to face perpetual near-death experiences, one way or another.

Even if they're a social sort of death.

…Anyway, it isn't like the old man isn't receiving enough of it from Leia in the Chamber, and Luke from the sidelines.

As Hack works before an array of controls and wireless commands, Ruoldi turns around to face countless eyes that blink back.

"Your orders?" one clone asks.

Ruoldi wants a spiked drink. "All of you have to decide from now on who to take orders from. Welcome to the world of free thought." Ruoldi never claims to being a good speaker. Or particularly knowledgeable about healthy psychology. The clones and him even had a verbal toss up earlier concerning handing the smaller ones a blaster, since the Kaminoan policy had been that departure from their planet was graduation into the life of a soldier. Ruoldi and Hack couldn't find a diplomatic way of explaining to the clones that they were being kidnapped, and settled for allowing the younglings to at the most don the innermost layer of trooper armour.

"We're programmed to obey the chain of command," another clone corrects.

"Right. You are not programmed to do anything."

"But our brothers are in the war effort!"

"There is no war," Ruoldi immediately refutes while noting the first half of the sentence. How many clones are not kidnapped yet? The Arcona decides he and Hack need a bigger ship. Or a straight-up fleet. "There is no war among ruffians who have no obligation to the Republic, and that is what you are now. Not troopers."

"What are ruffians?"

Ruoldi reflexively looks at Hack to point, before halting. His straightening finger wavers to his face before the Arcona wants to pinch his nose bridge – what is he thinking, two former killing machines are far from proper role models for impressionable people – and clenches a fist to instead cough into it. What would Luke do?

"Ruffians are those who follow a code," Ruoldi decides. "Not all who follow a code are ruffians, but all ruffians follow a code. I follow the best one – Tatooine's." Obviously.

"Is that where we're headed?" a clone asks.

"It's my final destination, but it won't be yours if you decide it. There are still many other stops we have to make."

A/N: Some reviewers brought this up, but the clones here don't have chips implanted in them. As I've said before, I'm writing with only movie canon in mind, though I admit that what I know of the clones also extends to the old Battlefront games.

The impression of the creators and the gamers then was that the clones' lack of personal experiences or exposure to Jedi contributed to the "success" of Order 66. Jedi were quickly pulled out of command over campaigns for other theatres, or clone squads were rotated out for fresher squads so that the veteran clones could advance to heavier combat. Anyone who bonded with Jedi essentially didn't have the luxury of staying by their side except the higher-ups like the ARC troopers and Commander Cody, who often acted as Jedi's personal communicators with the rest of their portion of the GAR. It's what contributed to the tragedy of the Order's fall, where the clones who did bond with Jedi thought they were broken or alone in their sorrow.

Mate, I don't know how to explain this any better than the 501st journal in BF2. That's a real tear-jerker. *candle emoji intensifies*

As always, I adore reviews, even simple quotes of the chapter or a string of hearts!