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The Kaminoans told the clones precious little about the ways of the Force. Bland descriptions of known Force abilities, yes, but little else. Anything else would be folly, wasted time better suited for training. But to those who would never experience fighting along those who bend the laws of the galaxy, they would never be able to fully understand.
The Force was more than a monotonous list of abilities and powers. The clones would come to understand this very quickly.
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Ponds never tells Mace that when they’re in battle, Ponds has to avert his eyes. How could he explain that Windu burns, brighter than any star? Power roils off the man in waves, flaming shields and blades that protect and scour.
On Dantooine, the High General didn’t have to touch any droid to melt through their circuitry, just direct his fire that both exists and doesn’t. Ponds isn’t even sure if the man is aware of the brightness he exudes. When he fights with a blade, the flames turn purple, biting in a way that makes Ponds shiver.
But Windu is on the defense just as much as he is on the offense, and the power he holds just as often provides cover as it does burn droids to scrap, so Ponds doesn’t complain. Never mentions it at all, but the heat of Windu’s belief sears into the insides of Ponds’ eyelids when he closes them.
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Gree noticed very early on in the war that his Jedi had access to abilities that the Longnecks failed to mention.
They didn’t deign to inform Gree that when Commander Offee is in trouble, the air in front of her shimmers and shakes, and General Unduli steps out of the shine, ready to defend at a moment’s notice. Distance doesn’t seem to matter, Unduli has appeared to save Offee from planets away.
The Kaminoans didn’t even give the words for half of what Gree observes, how Offee and Unduli will switch places on the battlefield with little more than a nod and a pop of sound before one is standing in place of another, performing the same task with a different approach that gets the job done.
The image of the two Miralans fighting in absolute perfect sync, not a step out of place, is just another observation that Gree has to file about the Jedi on his own.
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Monnk thought he got one of the normal Jedi. He had stories, from Ponds and Appo and Faie about Jedi who weren’t normal, who did things that weren’t right. Not that it surprised him. They were Jedi, for Force’s sake, that was their whole deal. Still, General Fisto seemed fairly normal. An accomplished fighter, certainly, with a penchant for cooking and losing all his clothes in fights, but on the whole… normal.
That changed on their first excursion to a desert planet. Why they thought sending a mostly aquatic squad with an amphibious Jedi to a world who hand't seen rain in five hundred years had seemed dumb even at the start, and only grew worse upon contact with the enemy.
They were caught in a deep canyon, surrounded on all sides, and troopers were scrambling to find cover as blasterfire rained down.
“I could really use some water right now!” Sage yelled, trying to cut the tension.
Fisto had many smiles, so many that Monnk was still working on categorizing them all, but he knew this one. This one meant that the Jedi Master was looking to cause trouble.
“There was water here, once. There will be again.” Mysterious, coy, Kit’s smile had fangs.
The air grew heavy, and static energy permeated the canyon. With a resounding boom, the skies opened up, billions of tiny raindrops falling from above. More than that, lightning, yellow, purple, crimson, started striking wildly, always managing to only hit the droids.
Within minutes, every droid was shorted out, and every trooper looked at their Jedi as the rain stopped, no clouds in the sky it could have come from, and no puddles on the ground to show where it landed.
“General, with all due respect, what the kriff?”
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Honestly, it was bound to happen sooner or later. Fox was in need of relief, so was Quinlan. Fox was in a position of power, ever removed from his peers. Quinlan felt that strain like few others. Quinlan was blindingly attractive, so was Fox. Add time, stress, and shake well, and you ended up with a fiery-quick romance that had the both of them sporting far more bruises than before.
During one of their impromptu make-out sessions, Fox asked why Quinlan never took off his gloves, even when they were… not on company time.
Completely serious, Quinlan had stopped sucking on Fox’s neck and looked him dead in the eye. “If I did that, I could see every memory of your entire life.”
Fox didn’t ask again.
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Kamino was a terrible place to grow up, Colt was under no illusions about that. The Kaminoans were cruel and unfeeling, and decommissioning was always an option for those who stepped out of line, who dared to be different.
When Shaak had first arrived planetside, Colt had been reluctant to tell her anything about how awful life could be. Whether because of some twisted loyalty to the place, or because he didn’t want to scare her off, Colt took awhile to open up.
Once he did, over a hefty bottle of Correllian ale, Shaak had promised she would fix it. Stop the killings, make Tipoca City an ever-so-little better place to live for the clones. Colt didn’t believe her. No one, not even a Jedi, could be everywhere at once.
Except, Shaak did seem to be everywhere at once. Wishing the littles goodnight, coaching the older cadets through unarmed combat, halting and deflecting leering Longnecks, finding time for sweet, loving nights with Colt.
At first, he had just thought she had incredible time management. One day, however, he and Shaak were walking down the halls, supposedly with the intent to discuss security, but mostly to just spend any amount of time together, when Blitz called.
“Hey Colt, I was wondering about instating some quarterstaff training for the command class, and wanted to ask you what you thought about the idea.”
“I think it’s a great idea, Blitz. Let me talk to the General about it.” He said, raising exaggerated eyebrows at Shaak, who smiled.
“No need, Commander, she’s just walking through the door. Talk to you later.”
Colt stopped in the hallway, and looked at Shaak, who was very much not walking into a room where Blitz might be, and was instead in a hallway with him.
“General?” Colt questioned, unbelieving.
Shaak simply winked.
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Things were going south, and quickly. A simple extraction on a neutral planet was turning out to be a full-fledged firefight. The Seps had been smart around, had separated Plo from the men, had appeared in overwhelming numbers, more than triple the amount of troopers had brought for this “simple” mission.
They were losing ground quickly, the General was several miles away, and Boost was on the ground, writhing in pain as Sinker tried desperately to drag him into cover. Worse, they had received news from Comet that several droid fighters had broken through and were headed straight for them.
Wolffe hadn’t felt this hopeless since Khorm. There were too many similarities, the cold weather, Koon too far away to help, Boost injured.
He heard the telltale whizzing that signified fighters were inbound, and made a decision. He would get to Sinker and Boost, now both injured, since Sinker took a shot meant for their younger brother, and drag them into cover. It was a hopeless plan, but Wolffe wasn’t about to lose his closest brothers.
As he readied to move, he heard Boost yell out, “Look! The General!”
Wolffe whipped his head around to see Plo between the two forces, taloned hands outstretched. Wolffe let out a scream, his General was completely defenseless… and swallowed his shout as a band of crackling energy expelled from the Jedi.
As the wave outstretched, droids crumpled, fighters fell out of the air, and turrets stopped firing. The wave carried towards them, as well, and made no distinction between friend and foe. Sinker’s gun stopped firing, and Wolffe’s cybernetic eye went dark.
He hated the sensation of being half-blind, but the discomfort paled in comparison to his relief at not being dead.
“My dear Wolffe, I apologize about your eye. There was little else I could do.”
“No worries, General. I appreciate the save.”
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Grey thought very little of the Force. That wasn’t to say that he disrespected it, or didn’t believe in it. No, he just didn’t pause to reflect on it. It was just another tool in his General’s toolbox, in his commander’s as well, that he didn’t have access to. It must be the Mandalorian in him.
But he saw it.
He saw it everyday, in the high jumps that Caleb performed to impress Styles. In the deep meditation that Depa managed to do everyday, even in a warzone. He saw it in battle, Depa managing finishing blows with a well-timed push, or Caleb using the Force to augment his strength to break a droid apart.
Of course, all that, Grey was prepared for. The Kaminoans had made sure to let their products know about the people they would serve under.
Grey wasn’t prepared for the ghost that followed Depa, looking very much like her, but older, with a different hair style, clad in a cobalt light, almost like a hologram. He wasn’t prepared for the way the ghost seemed to watch Depa’s flank, blocking and redirecting blaster fire Depa couldn’t catch.
As the war progressed, Grey found this ghost protecting Caleb as well, and sometimes even guarding Styles and the other men. Once, when Grey swung his head around fast enough, he saw the faint figure of this odd Chalactan covering his flank as well.
Unable to let an unknown ghost take so much responsibility in protecting his squad, he gathered up the courage to ask his General about it once.
She had laughed lightly, braids shaking beautifully in the setting sun. Grey resolutely ignored how stunning she looked, it was distracting.
“I’m surprised you can see her, Grey, most people cannot.”
Unable to fully process that, Grey pressed on. “Yes, but who is she?”
“Why, she’s my sister.”
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Rex couldn’t explain it, wasn’t sure he wanted to.
After all, how do you explain that your general’s mood swings are affecting the equipment? Rex had always known that Anakin was powerful, the “chosen one”. Hells, one look at the man and one could see that he had grown up with a lot of expectations.
None of that explained why when Anakin got angry, any tech near him seemed to stutter and short out. Or when he was happy, how datapads didn’t need to be charged, guns didn’t need to be cleaned, tech didn’t need to be fixed. How when he was feeling proud of Ahsoka, or Obi-Wan, or Padme, the ship seemed to run at 101% capacity, how R2 never complained.
Rex just chalked it up to the Force, and tried to keep his General and friend stable enough to keep the battalion from collapsing.
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Faie knew Zabraks were hard to kill, and didn't go down easily.
That being said, Agen Kolar must've been indestructible. No normal Zabrak would have taken a shot from a tank and shrugged it off like that. You could see a hole straight through the man, for Force’s sake. At least you could until Kolar looked down, huffed, and closed the wound with a wave of his hand.
Kriffing jedi.