MORE ITTY BITTY CLONES o/ This time with something resembling chronology. Don’t expect that to last, though; I’m having too much fun doing random vignettes and mix’n’matching who’s little or not.
MORE TINY CLONES. Now with 50% more disregard for consistency vis a vis who’s little and who’s not, and also for when this takes place. I like having them in tiny armor (hopefully on the right people this time…) but there’s also something to be said for the hilarity of them poofing down and leaving their clothes behind, hence the last one.
Shutout to blackhunter666 for reminding me that the shrinking trope exists and is amazing 😀
The fic itself is a bit much for me, but the basic premise of “Mini Clones” is a straight shot directly up my alley, because shrinking is actually my favorite fandom trope second only to de-aging :Dc
The armor is still pretty half-assed, but at least it’s half an ass better than nothing but phase I shinies. Edit: Aaaaand I put Fives in Echo’s armor. Smooth.
Rex is, at heart, a total little shit. He was one of those kids as a cadet, always messing with people and getting in trouble and sassing the trainers. When he was promoted in the field, he kind of had to shut all that down, especially since he was under Anakin, and SOMEONE had to be the adult around here. Especially at the beginning, he tried to be all Protocol and No Nonsense, but he’ll always be a little shit, deep down, and after he got comfortable with Anakin, the real Rex started to come back out. But now when he pulls pranks, they’re much more subtle, and never traced back to him. Or they look like something totally legit, with coincidental hilarious consequences. He learned how to mock and sass with a straight face, 100% compliant to protocol. When Fives finally figured out that the stick up Rex’s ass was actually Rex’s cover for being even worse than Fives, his respect for Rex skyrocketed. And he figured out how to rope Rex into his shenanigans without Rex having to break his Captain Face. Rex doesn’t hold Fives back, Rex EGGS HIM ON. Most of Torrent is aware that there are two Captain Rex’s: Captain Rex who’ll kick your ass for backtalking him like that and straighten your pauldron, trooper, and Captain Rex, who, if you see him “talking strategy” with ARC trooper Fives, you get the hell away from them both for as long as you can.
When Echo woke up, Fives was already awake, stepping out of the refresher with a towel around his waist, wet hair clinging to his forehead. He grinned at Echo.
“Rise and shine, vod!” Fives called cheerfully. “Today’s the day.”
Echo immediately snapped fully awake, jerking straight up in his bunk. “Kriff, am I late?”
“Not at all.” Fives answered smoothly, running his hands delicately across his brand-new ARC trooper armor, stacked proudly in the chair beside his bunk. “I couldn’t sleep, I was too excited.”
Echo chuckled, swinging out of his bunk and dropping to the floor, padding off to the refresher. “You sound like a cadet.”
Now it was Fives’s turn to laugh. “You know just as well as I do we’ve been dreaming about this day since we were cadets.” A brief pause. “Besides… think about how excited Hevy would’a been.”
Echo stopped, his blacks halfway peeled off, and turned to look at his brother. “Fives -.”
Fives waved off Echo’s delicate inquiry, shaking his head. “Sorry, shouldn’t’ve brought it up. What matters is you and I made it, and we’re going to beat this war.” He grinned at Echo. “Besides, you know how easy it is to pick up women and vode when you’ve got one of these?” He held up his pauldron triumphantly, giggling to himself. “I’ve wanted one of these babies ever since I saw Commander Colt with one on Kamino.”
Echo rolled his eyes, pulling his blacks off the rest of the way and stepped into the refresher.
When he came back out a few minutes later, Fives was nowhere to be seen. Echo stepped towards his own ARC armor, stacked carefully – albeit a little neater– next to where Fives’s armor had occupied minutes ago. He dressed quickly and efficiently, admiring the armor as he put each piece on. The handprint had been Fives’s idea – “Seems wrong not to have it, you know? After everything… that’s a part of you now, Echo.”– and Fives had been the one to carefully, painstakingly repaint it onto each new piece of armor they’d gotten since they were shinies. He smiled at the memory, carefully latching the last of his armor into place.
“Can you imagine walking into 79s with nothing but this?”
Fives’s voice carried from somewhere behind him, and Echo turned around, yelping a cry of outrage.
“Force, Fives, PUT YOUR CLOTHES ON!”
Fives stood in the middle of the room, admiring himself, completely naked save for his kama around his hips and his pauldron across his shoulders. He waggled his eyebrows suggestively at Echo. “I think it looks nice.”
“Doesn’t cover much.” Echo muttered back, lobbing Fives’s helmet at him. Fives caught it with ease, shaking his hips so the kama rippled around his thighs.
“Covers the back!”
“Doesn’t cover any of the front!” Echo frowned at him, shooed his brother back towards his armor. “Hurry up. You’re the one who said you were excited to get going.”
Fives snickered, picked up the rest of his armor and turned around.
5up based on an anon suggestion and this pose ref collection. This pose was proooobably meant to be a little more smutty, but I’m a big fluffball so I prefer giggly foreplay. Please imagine Fives is wiggling and whispering in ways that are 50% sexy and 50% intentionally ridiculous to make Tup laugh.
Oh, the pain!!! This hurt so much that it feels like the blaster had also gone right through my heart
Well, this might proof that I’m still salty about all this Anakin discourse that has been going on lately. But honestly? All the Anakin haters can fight me tbh.
I’ve seen many people complain saying that why Anakin didn’t put so much effort into helping Fives as he did with Ahsoka. But let’s check the facts. The Ahsoka thing probably took many days, since she was accused, and during all the time she spent escaping, which gave Anakin enough time to investigate and find the true guilty. Now, with Fives, it probably only took a few hours since he tried to kill Palpatine and Fives gave Kix the coordinates for Anakin to find him. There was no time to investigate, they needed to act quickly or Fives would have been captured by the Coruscant Guard.
When Anakin arrives, he’s only with Rex. He could have taken a clone squadron with them, but he didn’t, just as Fives had asked him. Then again, when Fives asks them to lower their weapons, he gives Rex the order to do it, only trusting Fives word about him being unarmed.
“We’re here to help you, Fives. Just come with us. Let us take you back to the temple” Anakin never intended to take Fives to prison or to whatever place they might have taken him. He wanted to take him to the Jedi temple, where he would have been safer.
When Fives tell them that he was framed, Anakin looks down, like he’s thinking about the whole situation. Then he asked for evidence. Here, we know that what Fives is saying is true, but they don’t, they believe that Fives is a dangerous man because he took out his chip, that’s what they have been told and they probably were certain of it because Fives tried to kill the “innocent” Chancellor. But Anakin says “Let’s get you some help first. Then we can review everything. It’ll be okay, Fives. We’ll sort this out”. Despite not believing in what Fives was saying, Anakin still wanted to help.
The only moment Anakin looses his patience is when Fives tell them that the Chancellor is involved in the plot. “The Chancellor is incapable of what you claim” he says. But let’s remember that Anakin has being manipulated by Palpatine, since he was a kid, into believing he’s a good man and a good friend of his.
Then the Coruscant Guard arrives and this is Anakin’s face when he sees them:
You can barely see it because the focus of the scene is in Fives. But he’s worried he’s scared for Fives. Then again, the scene focuses on Fives, but if you look at Anakin right before Fives tries to take Rex’s blasters, you see Anakin trying to stop him from doing it.
Then just see the gifs above to see how sad he was. And if you want more proof? Look at this:
You can’t convince me that he “didn’t care”
But then some people might say “why didn’t he investigate afterwards?”. He doesn’t because he trusts Palpatine. Palpatine tell them that it was a parasite and that it was the only cause of the “sickness” Fives and Tup had. Then Yoda and Mace say that the situation is over, so what else can we expect Anakin to do? The Jedi council stopped the investigation because Palpatine gave them the “solution”. There’s nothing else to do.
If we’re going to hate somebody, let’s hate Palpatine.
Anyway… after saying this, I’ll go back to keep crying about Fives because this scene hurt me too much.
@guineapigzwei yes they should have, but I think they didn’t bc, first, the plot was already established, order 66 had to happen. Second, the Jedi arrogance stop them from seeing the darkness behind all the situation. And third, the blind trust the Jedi order had in the Chancellor. They stopped investigating because Palpatine gave them the “solution” to the problem.
They were basically told “the cause was a parasite, but you don’t have to worry anymore because we’ve developed a vaccine for other clones so this won’t happen again” and they believed it. The Jedi needed the clone army to win the war and now that they know that the problem is “solved”, then why they should worry?
And the Jedi had more than one opportunity to stop order 66 from happening. I mean, Kix managed to discover the plot and he was just a one man! Imagine what the Jedi could have done if they had believed in Fives’ words!
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