#oc: marai djo-solo

[rai-knightshade-art]

Young Jedi Knights!! Or, ok more accurately they're old enough to be New Jedi Order/Fate of the Jedi/etc etc era but I'm ignoring, like, all of that. So.

@lizartgurl you know that scene we low-key talked about? I drew it 😅 nothing like a good set of parallels in your star wars fan art!

And I'm also of the opinion that Zekk's dynamic with the twins when they were younger is basically 50% Off Makoto and Nagisa, so i present Zekk, explaining one of his many adventures to a pair of kids that i will explain below the cut because their story is... Complicated, and started literally a decade ago 😅

More details and closeups below the cut, image IDs in Alt Text as always!

So i don't think I'm gonna get into the full "story" for these kids on this post, I'll do it on the next one, but I'll give you the lowdown on the kids themselves and the inciting incident:

Roughly 10-ish years after the Shadow Academy incident, a raid on a cloning facility by Zekk, Anakin Solo and a handful of other Jedi goes spectacularly sideways when the "theoretical" genetics experiments they were expecting turned out to be four very real younglings with a startling resemblance to certain key Jedi Knights. It'd been run in secret by Brakiss (who totally survived the destruction of the Shadow Academy don't even worry about it) as a way to revive his Dark Jedi efforts. He "procured" the DNA needed while the Shadow Academy was active from successful (and nonsuccessful) Dark Jedi, and decided if he couldn't kidnap his way to having his Dark Jedi, he'd make them instead, starting by combining the DNA of his Darkest Knight and that pesky Solo girl (she was annoying but extremely powerful, a perfect candidate for the project). The project continued in secret for 10 years before Master Skywalker caught wind of it and sent in a Jedi task force to take it down. Imagine their surprise when they find four kids in amongst the scientists and stormtroopers!

Starting from oldest to youngest, they find:

Ani: 14 (physically, 10 chronologically), eldest of the "test tube" kids, the biological son of Jaina and Zekk; he inherited their love of mechanics and all things spaceflight and wants to be a pilot when he grows up. The defacto leader of the group by virtue of being oldest. Dotes on his baby sister like nothing else, but is otherwise very standoffish and closed off, hiding behind sarcasm and rude quips in order to protect himself and his little family. Had a force vision when he was 5 of a dark haired woman calling for someone named Ani, and decided that that would be his name (rather than the number he was given).

Bail: 10 (physically,6 chronologically), biological son of Jacen and Tenel Ka, very quiet and studious. He read as many holobooks as the scientists would let him have (and snuck as many as they wouldn't), and is a regular fountain of knowledge if you can get him to open up. He's particularly interested in the histories of the Jedi from long, long ago. Named himself after an old politician he read about from the Old Republic, said to be a friend of the Jedi.

Marai: 8 (physically, 4 chronologically), biological daughter of Jacen and Tenel Ka, she's a regular chatterbox, asking as many questions as she can get away with from anyone who will listen. The only time she seems to quiet down is when she's gardening; she has an affinity for plants, able to sense them and help them grow. She has a particular fondness for carnivorous plants, a fact which the other kids find a bit unnerving but she swears they're harmless to humans! ...probably. None of the others know quite why she decided to call herself Marai.

Jasa: 5 (physically, 1 chronologically), biological daughter of Jaina and Zekk, the baby of this rag tag little group. She's a bright ball of sunshine and cheer and boundless energy, able to cheer up even the most dower of her stormtrooper guards. She sees the good in everything, not fully realizing the extent of what's happening around her but also keeping hope alive in the older children, especially Ani. Similarly to her older brother, Jasa also had a Force vision when she was 5, hearing someone call for a Jasa and taking the name for herself.

Of note: the kids' growth was programmed to be faster than normal up until age 5, when it slowed back down to normal; they reached the equivalent of age 5 within about a year of their "births". As such, their apparent ages and their chronological ages are off by about 4 years

The concept for these kids was started about 10 years ago, when i was 14 and had just started reading the Young Jedi Knights books that I'd gotten from my dad. I really loved seeing fankids at that time, so I'd decided to create my own for my favorite ships! But, of course, i was 14 and "edgy" and I'd been reading the Maximum Ride books too, so i decided, Regular-ass fan babies? Nah. Secret lab-grown fan babies? Yeah. And the original 6 Test Tube Babies were born! (Yes, i said 6, not 4; i originally included a pair of Anakin/Tahiri kids with the Jaina/Zekk and Jacen/Tenel Ka kids. I took them out for this iteration though cause a) I'm not even really sure I ship them now, and b) i don't remember how the kids came to be initially but with this backstory using Brakiss, idk how he would have Anakin and Tahiri's DNA, so. Rip to Zeke and Bekka you will be missed.) I might share the og designs for the kids in another post some time, but for now, here ya go! (And if you've read through this entire explanation, thank you and kudos, but also my condolences. 😅)