Out there, there’s a trooper who didn’t have a name for the longest time. He went through training, through battles, through campaigns, but nothing ever stuck. One night, his battalion is refueling/debriefing on Coruscant, so he and his squad hit up 79’s. They have a grand old time all night and then stumble their way back toward the barracks in the wee hours of the Coruscant morning. On the way, our intrepid trooper tipsily stumbles into a civilian, and when he spins around to apologize, they brush him off with a scowl and a “watch it, pretty boy!” He blinks, long and slow, before grinning at the civvie (and their three friends) and drawling a coquettish, “You think I’m pretty…?” The trooper and his squad return to the barracks even later than they would have before, proudly sporting many more bruises and split lips than they had left with the previous night. When the wake-up call sounds, they fall out of their cots and fall in for roll call.
Smirking, the previously unnamed trooper glances at his squad before stepping forward and declaring, “Corporal Prettyboy, reporting for duty.”
I know this nose art is for the Bad Batch, but I can’t help but imagine another Clone Unit with a stronger claim on the Senator as a mascot. (And how much Anakin would FLIP THE FUCK OUT)
—
Morale Booster
“REX!”
… And it looks like the paneling repair will have to wait, as his General’s boots appear next to his head beside the transport’s landing gear. He pushes himself out from under the machine on a dolly, flat on his back.
“Sir?”
“What is THAT?!” his fearless leader yelps, pointing dramatically, emphatically upwards and towards the nose.
He scoots out farther, past General Skywalker’s legs, and props himself up on his elbows to take in the three-quarters-finished pinup Hardcase has been taking such pains with for the last four hours.
“Morale booster, sir. Couldn’t do something clever like the 104th and their Plo’s Bros or anything, so–”
“So you chose SENATOR AMIDALA?!” Did his voice just crack? It did.
He shrugs. “Sure. She’s been through enough hell and high water with us.”
“She’s a SENATOR!”
“And she’s a keen eye with that blaster,” he reasons, jerking his head up to the painting, and the flawlessly detailed replica of the Senator’s favored sidearm, primed to fire and held at a jaunty, confident angle. He even got the chipped paint over the trigger guard right.
“Got the looks for it too!” Hardcase yells down from where he’s shading in a long bare stretch of thigh, pausing to vigorously shake his can of spray paint. “We might finally be able to give the 327th a run for their money, with General Secura and all.”
“GENERAL SECURA is half naked on the nose of a transport?!”
“What? No!” Of course not, that’s just tasteless.
There’s a clatter from up above as Hardcase puts his paints down and leans over the scaffolding, a hand wobbling skeptically. “Well… Technically…”
“She’s in her usual outfit, y’know, with the–” Rex explains, and zig-zags a finger down from his head, mimicking the General’s lekku straps. “–and the leather pants.”
“It’s just a little leg, Anakin, I don’t see what you’re so upset about.”
Oh thank all the stars and little planets. Backup. General Kenobi steps up beside his former Padawan to admire the paint job himself. “Excellent work on her hair, Hardcase,” Kenobi continues, tilting his head.
“Thank you, sir. Run a probe with some white and a little metallic gold through the wet paint, gets it to streak so the shine looks real.”
General Skywalker is starting to do that thing where he puffs up like an angry coppi lizard and splutters furiously while he tries to think of something else to be upset about. He can hear Fives rolling his eyes from the opposite side of the transport. General. Honestly. If you’re trying to keep a relationship secret, openly displaying your klik-wide jealous streak is not how you do it.
“The 212’s is worse, anyway,” Kenobi muses idly, as Hardcase carefully adds the supposedly “very distinctive” freckle high on the Senator’s hip, just below the split in her modified favorite Council dress. Skywalker starts to go wide-eyed at that, because his sabacc face out of genuine combat is complete sleenshit, and startles when his master continues.
“She’s on the 212th transport too?!”
“Of course not, don’t be ridiculous. We can’t have duplicates, that defeats the purpose,” Kenobi says, in that too-reasonable tone he takes on when he’s deliberately fucking with his former Padawan.
“’Cept Master Ti,” Echo yells, from somewhere inside the paneling he and Rex had been working on.
“Except Master Ti, yes,” Kenobi agrees, and shrugs. “But that’s to be expected. Rather like how so many people have that arm tattoo of a heart with the ribbon that says ‘Mom’.”
Rex personally knew of at least eight other clones that had that exact tattoo, though the ribbon was usually striped like Master Ti’s headtails, and nods agreeably. That seems to have sufficiently diverted Skywalker, or at least confused him.
“Then how is it worse?” Skywalker asks, a little desperately, then his face lights up completely with slightly malicious anticipation. “Is it the Duchess?!”
Oh boy. Rex looks up at Hardcase, who is biting down on his paint-splattered fist to keep from laughing, as General Kenobi gets that look.
“Certainly not,” Kenobi says sternly, and waits a full beat to drop his bombshell. “It’s me.”
Skywalker just stares.
“Though I’m reasonably certain Duchess Kryze had something to do with it, given the way I’m half falling out of my robes.”
Now he looks vaguely green.
“Or it’s some perverse joke of Master Windu’s. It seems his style. Cody refuses to tell me.”
And before Skywalker can come up with anything else to protest, Kenobi adds:
“Besides, Senator Amidala loves it. Hers, I mean. I haven’t asked her about mine.”
Apparently even Jedi can choke on air when sufficiently surprised. But really, where did he think they’d gotten the preliminary sketches from?
Guarantee you there’s a trooper out there named Shark, not because he has any particular affinity or connection to the aquatic apex predator, but because he’s always putting weird shit that isn’t food into his mouth
One of which is probably a small animal that is poisonous to humans
I headcanon that Rex and a bunch of Shinies have had to deliver a baby before and the only one of them that isn’t freaking out is literally the woman in labor.
Woman: “Remain calm.”
Rex: IM CALM EVERYBODY SHUT THE FUCK UP
Woman: (in active labor) take deep breaths u should be fine
Pilots are widely regarded as the most absolutely batshit of all the GAR, except maybe the heavy gunners
They stare death by fire or the vacuum of space in the face every battle and say “not today motherfucker”
They’re adrenaline junkies at best
The ground troops joke about “too much zero g” scrambling their brains but goddamn if they don’t respect every last one of the crazy motherfuckers, because there is no better sight than a bunch of fighters coming through the smoke when you’re pinned under heavy fire
It’s an unofficial GAR rule that pilots are never allowed to mingle with the heavy gunners, unless you really want something to be on fire or blown up
Someone always has a story about a buddy’s batchmate’s squadron leader who flew a mission buck-ass naked.
All pilots have been explicitly banned from trying it
They try anyway
Pilots are shorter and slimmer than “standard” troopers, to control how much extra weight is in the fighters
That doesn’t mean they’re any less capable of fucking your shit up if you want to start a fight with them
Nobody talks about the ghost ships, don’t ask about them
Pilots are a very tight-knit group, and if general GAR gossip is rampant, the comm chatter from the pilots is wild
They work hard and play harder
If shenanigans are happening on leave, there’s an 85% chance there’s at least one pilot involved
They run in packs, and the amount of chaos caused is directly proportional to how many pilots are there at any given time
One last thing to consider before sleep consumes me: chubby!clones
Shinies who get assigned to the 501st/212th/104th/327th and are so confused. Why are their brothers are all so much bigger than they are? They can’t all be from command stock, can they? And then, oh gods above, their General hears them asking about it in the mess hall and basically tells them “Oh, yeah, you’ve been chronically underfed your entire lives.”
Like, what. What does that even mean? The Kaminoans all carefully monitor their rations to make sure they’re functioning at optimum levels, how can they be underfed?
So the medic has to take the shinies all aside and explain about caloric intake and metabolic rates and how human bodies store energy and oh! Is that why everyone in the mess looked like they were pulling double rations? They just figured it was a reward for something before they’d all arrived.
And the medic says, nope, that’s the new standard amount of rations, at least under this jetii who actually cares about the health of their brothers. Turns out the Longnecks’ definition of “optimal levels” is the rest of the galaxy’s definition of “just enough so they don’t keel over and die on the battlefield before the clankers get them.” Turns out fatty tissue is a good thing, health-wise, particularly so their bodies don’t immediately start to eat themselves if they get cut off from supply lines somewhere down the line.
The shinies are stunned. So… so their rations won’t get slashed if they start to get that layer of squishiness that happens when they eat more than they nee–more than the Longnecks say they need?
Of course not! Their jetii was shocked when they saw how little the brothers were given to eat, particularly for soldiers who use up so much more energy every day than the average civilian!
So the shinies just sort of stumble back to the mess hall in a daze and stare at their older brothers. It slowly starts to dawn on them how, how healthy they all look. Flushed cheeks, no tightness around their eyes, cheekbones and jawlines softened just a little more than what the shinies are used to seeing. They’re not command stock, they’re just well-fed. Damn, now that they understand, the shinies all look positively starved in comparison.
They all shuffle over into line and grab their rations. Pause. Look around quickly. Exchange furtive glances with each other. Grab another helping.
They move to find a table to sit down but their General, their jetii is suddenly right there, again, and this time they’re saying no, no, this just won’t do at all. The shinies all go pale, wondering how to explain that they weren’t trying to be disobedient–
And then the General is gently ushering them all back into the line to grab yet another portion, cheerfully babbling about the shinies needing to “catch up” with their older brothers, to “put some meat on their bones.”
They all look at one another helplessly until the bravest, or perhaps the dumbest, of them pipes up asking if the General was planning on eating them if supply lines got cut off somewhere down the line. Several identical voices try to cut him off, drown out his insubordination, but the General clearly hears the comment and. And laughs.
Well.
The brothers who all came back from the front to visit them on Kamino always did say that life was very different once you were assigned a General…
Bringin’ the chubby!clones back because I made myself sad and need to be cheered up
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