#and so glad i was able to find a prosthetic arm cc - so i could actually make her properly!

[daydreamxsimmer]

"So how about this? You let me go. Nothing explodes. And I'll send your regards to Angel when I catch up with her."

Isabella Reyes - Kapoor (she/her) - a straight A student turned master thief and now secret agent. She wears many faces, does she even know who she really is anymore?

[my mc from @scribble-games 's 180 Files: The Aegis Project ]

[colehasapen]

(ONE SHOT) fit two people under your skin  STAR WARS

Febuwhump Day 1 - Brainwashing

A03

Alpha-17 doesn’t believe in monsters.

He’s lived through too much in his life to believe in the creatures under the bed, or those that creep through the dark hallways and eat unsuspecting cadets. He’s seen real monsters, he’s seen cruelty and violence. He’s seen real life, and nothing can scare him more than that, but he comforts himself with the knowledge that everything dies, that he can fight to the death if he has to. He knows the pain of being taken apart piece by piece, of being tortured past his limits, of watching so many vode marching off to the death. He knows the pain of losing good men that he trained personally, the pain of losing those he raised himself from childhood.

He knows the pain that comes from not having done enough.

Millions of vode are dead, millions more will die, and Alpha is almost numb to it. He’s lost enough that it no longer surprises him.

But he’s never had anyone come  back from the dead, and yet, here he is.

Months ago, Alpha had been brought back to the warfront by the death of his little brother, one of the boys he had trained and raised from childhood to be one of the best. He had been on Kamino when news had reached him that Marshal Commander Cody had died in the line of duty, and he had immediately felt the world drop out from beneath him. Cody -  Kote  - the youngest and smallest of Squad 17, his  vod’ika  ,  his ad’ika ; his pride and joy. Cody had been one of his, he had watched him grow into the man he was, and Alpha had thought, had hoped, that out of any of them, that Cody would make it to the end of this Manda-forsaken War. Cody had been a leader, a viciously competent warrior that put even other A-classers to shame. He may have only been a CC, but Alpha would bet anything that he’d be able to beat even a Null into the ground if given the chance.

He had never imagined Cody being just another name on a KIA list.

Cody could have been their leader, had the spirit needed to be Mand’alor. He had a natural charisma that made people  want to follow him, a strength to his soul that shone like fire in his eyes. He could be beaten, but he’d never break.

But he’d still died. He had died and left his 212th without a Commander.

Eventually, Alpha had managed to hunt down the troopers that had survived the mission that had killed one of his boys. Had tracked them down during shore leave and demanded to know what had happened. They couldn’t tell him much, because of the confidential status of the mission, but eventually a pale-faced and haunted Echo had spoken up, staring down at his alcohol like it could take the nightmares away.

“It should have been me.” The young ARC Trooper had whispered, looking close to tears, and Fives had gripped his brother’s hand like a lifeline. “I had gone for the shuttle - Cody - he saw what was about to happen before any of us. He saved me. He threw me out of the way and took the blast instead.”

Alpha had volunteered as soon as he could, had hunted General Kenobi down and put his name forward as his next Commander. He knew what his  ad’ika  would have wanted; he’d want Alpha to teach and protect his men where he couldn’t, to lead his Ghosts and 7th Sky. He’d trust Alpha-17 to watch his  Jetii’s back, to be at his side when he couldn’t, because Alpha wasn’t blind - he knew what his Kot’ika thought of General Kenobi, knew what he’d felt for him. He had seen the way Cody had looked at Kenobi, had known that they’d work well together when he’d suggested Cody as the Commander for Kenobi’s Battalion, even if he’d never imagined his little brother actually falling in love with the man.

Despite how much it hurt to stand in his place, Alpha had put himself forward, had painted his armour gold, and taken the title of Commander. It fits like an ill-fitting body glove, but Alpha wears it, because it’s what Cody would have wanted. He could keep up with Kenobi better than any shiny commander could, could call the Jedi out on his bullshit and keep him and his men safe. He knows it hurts Kenobi too. He knows that sometimes Kenobi turns to him expecting Cody to be there to a witty quip or a sarcastic smirk, and he sees the way he falters when it’s Alpha there instead.

The troopers are the same. Alpha knows they respect him, that they look up to him, but he’s not Cody, and they all know it. Over the months though, they’d learned how to work together; he’s glad it was him who had taken over for Cody, because he recognizes a lot of the signs of his own training in the way the 212th troopers move, no doubt passed on by Cody. They don’t move the way CTs are expected to move, instead Alpha can see his own personalized ARC training shining through in them, and he knows that any other commander wouldn’t have been able to keep up. As the months pass, he whips them into shape, distracts them from their grief, and keeps them moving.

And then rumours of the Seperatists’ newest asset reaches them. Until Umbara, no one sees it, but they hear the rumours spread by the small numbers of survivors left behind. Some sort of new droid made to look like a clone in black armour, that never speaks, never hesitates, and always wins. Until Umbara, its nothing more than a ghost story, a monster in the night, but Alpha had never believed in monsters, it was just another clanker that he’d destroy if he faced it on the field.

It was called many things; monster, assassin, dark trooper, but Alpha would know it as another target.

And then Umbara happened. The asset had killed Krell, had saved the lives of the 501st troopers that the  dar’jetii  was tormenting. It had killed  only  Krell, had torn the Besalisk apart, and then walked away; it hadn’t even  touched the clones, had barely even looked at them before leaving. Rex had come to him afterwards, baring footage of the fight between the asset and the General, an odd look on his face.

“It fights like a vod, Alpha.” Rex had said, sounding confused and lost as they’d watched the footage over and over again, looking to learn the clanker’s fighting style to better combat it in battle. “It fights like  you do.”

Watching the figure in black and gold armour, styled mockingly after his own, a kama swinging around it’s waist and a gold pauldron on it’s shoulder, Alpha couldn’t help but agree. It did fight like a clone; specifically, it fought like one of the cadets Alpha had trained personally. It was reckless, throwing itself into battle without a care, twisting into powerful kicks and using its blaster like a club in ways that Alpha specifically remembers one of his cadets doing, something that had driven Alpha to a frothing rage.

Cody.

It fights like  Cody.

He hadn’t voiced it at the time, had stewed in his rage at the insult aimed towards his dead  vod’ika. A droid that fought like Cody, a droid that had the exact same shade of orange-gold as his  vod’ika had chosen for his Battalion. It was an insult and an affront on everything Alpha stood for. He’d held on to that anger, had let it burn hot and harsh in his gut, knowing that the moment he faced the clanker on the battlefield, that he’d  destroy it.

He would tear it apart for the insult it symbolized. To know that the Seperatists were perverting his brother’s memory in such a way lights a fire in him that refuses to burn out.

And then he gets the chance to fight the asset. He fights it one on one, intent to destroy it and avenge his little brother, when the bucket comes off and Alpha’s heart stops. All he can think of, is that that’s a face glaring up at him, a familiar face with a familiar scar. He barely remembers the chaos that had followed.

Cody.

Somehow, the asset is Cody.

Somehow, they’d managed to get the asset -  Cody, his Kote - sedated and transferred onto the  Negotiator. It had hurt all of them to need to restrain him, to strip away black plastoid to reveal prosthetics and burns. They’d gotten him back to the ship, into the medbay and under the medics’ hands, and they’d found a  chip in his head.

And now, Alpha is staring down at the limp body strapped down to the biobed, ankles, hips, chest, and arms pinned to the bed by unforgiving metal, to make sure he wouldn’t attack again when he woke up. It’s still Cody. He’s missing both his legs at the thighs, there’s metal drilled into his spine and up the back of his skull. There’s a blinking monitor embedded into his chest, scarred skin growing around it, flashing with his heartbeat. They’d shaved him, put a cybernetic implant on the side of his head, over where his ear should be and stretching around his temple to interrupt the curving, hooked scar that had become his little brother’s visual marker of individuality, the one Alpha personally remembers tending to, right before pulling Cody into ARC training to ensure that Priest and Reau wouldn’t get their hands on him again. He’s covered in twisting, healing burn scars, left from the explosion they had all believed to have killed him, and there’s dark bruises standing stark against brown skin.

Bruises that Alpha had put there, when he’d nearly broken his brother’s neck while fighting him. When he had thought that Cody was a droid programmed to fight like him.

He'd nearly killed his little brother, the boy he'd raised, and he never would have known if he hadn't accidentally knocked his helmet off.

“Manda.” He breathes harshly, nostrils flaring, and he drops down into the chair Pace had put next to Cody’s bed. He ignores the medic’s eyes drilling into the side of his head, instead reaching out to gently squeeze Cody’s limp hand like he had when Cody had been a too-small child enduring too-cruel punishments in the place of more replaceable brothers. “What can you tell about the chip?”

Pace scowls, “It only showed up on a level five atomic scan.” He says, “We only found it because we were trying to find out the cause of the strange brain activity we were picking up - it showed up as a tumour, but once we removed it -” he gestures to the petri-dish next to the biobed, “- we found  that.”  ‘That’ being an ugly scrap of what looked like flesh, pink and pocketed and flecked with old blood. “Removing it from the frontal lobe stopped the strange brain signals we were picking up, and his waves went back to baseline - what you could expect from a regular clone.” Alpha tears his eyes away from Cody’s peaceful face to glower at the strange object. “We don’t have any proof, won’t until we can see how he acts when he wakes up, but Crys thinks it could have been controlling him.”

Alpha lets out a harsh curse, “Fucking seppies.”

“Yeah.” Pace murmurs, then shifts. “Commander,” he says slowly, enough of something odd in his tone that it makes Alpha look up to meet his gaze, to see them dark with anger, “whatever it is - that chip? It wasn’t made by the Seps.”

“What?” Alpha’s eyes narrow dangerously, and Pace nods, glowering at nothing as he rubs a hand aggressively against the gray fabric of his uniform.

“It gives off a different signal than the… prosthetics -” he says the words with furious contempt, like the sentence is rotten on his tongue, “- they drilled into him.”

Alpha snarls, baring his teeth like a cornered animal as he grips Cody’s clammy hand protectively, like he could destroy whatever did this to him with his will alone. “Who  do I need to kill for what they did to him?”

“Sir.” Pace’s voice is just as dangerous, “Whatever it is? It’s  Kaminoan.”

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