The Battle of Ryloth

[5ame_heart]

The role of the 501st in the liberation of Ryloth has been mostly one of orbital support, but Captain Rex has his eye on the boys from Domino Squad.  He's assigned Echo and Fives to the 91st Mobile Reconnaissance Corps for the operation.

According to Rex, his reasoning is that as neither Fives or Echo can pilot worth a damn, they'd better make themselves useful in the ground assault. Echo is optimistically convinced this attachment to an elite Recon Unit is serving as field training for eventual promotion to ARC-Troopers. As Rex has been friendly with them since Rishi and has continually expressed his respect for them as soldiers, Fives doesn't have a reason to disagree.

A major difference between the 91st and the 501st is that the men of the 91st like and respect their Jedi General with the sort of fondness and respect that comes with reliable, understandable and well thought out plans - General Windu seems to like and respect them back, to the extent of their lives as equal to his own, and as highly as they value each other. Skywalker is the same, of course, but the 501st are generally of the opinion that a healthy culture of talking back is a key part of letting your General exactly what you think of showy recklessness.

But one way they match, of course, is that all plans are lucky if they last five minutes' contact with the enemy.

The 91st are engaged with the droid army in the approach to the capital city of Lessu. Ryloth is all mesas and gorges around here; it's hot, much drier than the jungles where they staged earlier engagements, and the ground has a bad habit of crumbling under one's feet - especially when hit by stray blaster bolts.

Fives is right by Echo's side one second, and the next he finds himself slipping perilously down a near vertical face into a gorge, sandy rocks racing past him to the sound of his name being yelled by his brother above. He shouts in annoyance and in shock, and then when his foot makes contact with a rock a few feet down, with pain. 

The rocky nature of this planet acts to his advantage, Fives realises. He's sliding rather than falling, and is able to holster his blaster in time to grab another rock, which jerks his shoulder violently but stops his descent before his fingers slip and he falls again. The Force obviously has plans for him because he's able to combine what purchase he can get with what obstructions there are to turn a death fall into a painful tumble into shadow.

Eventually Fives lands hard on his feet at the bottom of a crevasse deep enough that the fighting above is only distant flashes of light, and next to the less fortunate body of a trooper who turns out to be CT-89-2874 - Fives doesn't know him and so doesn't know what his name was.

He stands up slowly, his legs screaming from the landing, his headache informing him that he may have hit that part of him on the way down. His armor is more than scratched - some of his plates have broken in clear shards, and he's entirely lost one of his  He keys his wrist comm.

"Echo? Sarge? Anyone?"

But there's no signal. And there's no reason to come look for him either, so as far as Echo and the others is concerned, CT-27-5555 is one more casualty of the Battle for Ryloth.

He leans against the rocky wall, and considers his options. 

And that's when he hears something.

Comments

[for_everyone]

"I don't have any bacta," Hera says, though she stops, and opens the pouch at her hip. There's the handful of dry, wide green leaves she collected earlier, and down at the bottom, four slender bright blue leaves, and closes her fingers around one of these.

(Her blaster may also be visible as she maneuvers around it.)

"Chewing this helps with pain," she says, as she draws out the blue leaf. "It's for if I hurt myself and have to move fast. We give it to humans, too."

[5ame_heart]

Fives looks from the leaf to her face, never quite sure what to do when people treat him like - well, like just another person - and reaches out, hesitating just before he takes it.

"You're sure you don't need it?"

After making sure, he takes the leaf and squeezes it once between his fingers, just enough to give him something to smell before putting it in his mouth.

The bitterness catches on his tongue and he smacks it against his palatte once, but chews the leaf anyway.

"You know, it's still better than ready rations."

[for_everyone]

"I have a couple more," she says, as she closes her pouch again. "And I'm not hurt yet."

She watches him, a small smile crossing her face at his comment on ready rations, before her eyes flicker first to the streaks of light high above them, and then toward where the sun is in the sky.

"I can walk with you back out of the canyons, it's better than going alone."

Even if she may not always be good at following adults' advice, she can at least repeat it.

[5ame_heart]

Yet.

There's still fighting going on above them, and the occasional sound of things or people falling. Fives may not understand how normal people raise kids, but he wouldn't expect to see a cadet this close to battle on their own.

Leaving her could be as dangerous for her - blaster or no - as for him.

"That's good of you. Thanks, kid. Hang on, though - you mind holding this?"

He passes her his dented helmet while he squats down beside 2874, grabbing the powerpack from his blaster and checking quickly for personal effects. He doesn't find any, doesn't expect to, but sometimes a clone might carry something from his brothers, even one of the girls from 79s. On the rare occasion these can be returned, you try to do it.

"Okay," he says as he stands and reaches for his helmet again, "which way?"

[for_everyone]

Hera knows the trooper can take care of himself, even without her help out of the canyons. And truthfully she would have liked to have caught a few more lizards before she returned to camp. But a guest who does not thirst is still a guest, and must be offered water.

She takes the trooper's helmet, and then walks around him, for the first time looking at the body. She doesn't have anything to start a fire, and it's her first instinct to apologize, as otherwise it would be rude not to offer. Hera doesn't know whether the clones burn their dead like Twi'leks do, but either way, it's hard ingrained in her not to leave a body to the gutkurrs if she can help it.

But she can't. That's also a danger of going out alone.

So when the trooper speaks, she just nods, and hands him back the helmet, before nodding toward the way she'd came. She takes a step backward, toward it though still facing the trooper, and offers instead, "My name's Hera."

[5ame_heart]

There are no funerary rites for clones. No rituals, and no sentimentality beyond remembering his number so he can report back to the men of the 91st in case someone would want to know.

The men up on the main battlefield will be incinerated, if they win, to avoid polluting the world even further with corpses. But 2874 will most likely feed a gutkurr or two, and Fives doesn't care about that.

He's glad when she offers a name, as he hand't liked to ask. In his prepatory reading - SecUnit made him paranoid and he may have overdone the research - he read that Twi'lek children aquire their name at some point during childhood and he has no way of judging the age even of human children.

"Nice to meet you, Hera. You can call me Fives."

He pauses in his chewing to grin at her until his helmet is back on his head, freeing his hands up. The dent in the side has curved the painted eel in somewhat, giving it a slightly drunken aspect, but he can still see okay.

[for_everyone]

"All right, Fives."

She nods again, and turns to lead the way, first down a narrow turn among the canyons. It's a path that's largely shadowed from the sunlight, and even fight above sounds a little muffled. She tries to keep with Fives' pace as she they walk, at a couple steps ahead, while also listening for any more unexpected noises nearby.

Still, she also glances back to him as they move, her eyes flickering over his armor, his holster, and his dented helmet. When she speaks again, her question comes a little stilted, like she knows she might not be using the right words. "What do you do?"

[5ame_heart]

Fives makes an effort to keep his pace to something that doesn't tax her. It's not easy, and he feels self conscious doing it, having to continually make little corrections, but he focuses more on staying alert, just in case there are any dangers he needs to act on. They're still on the edge of a battlefield, after all.

The question seems strange, like it should be obvious what he is, and what he does. Maybe she isn't using the right words, but if so he's not what the real question is.

"I'm a soldier," he says, and jerks his head up to the fighting above them. "At the moment we're trying to get the Separatists out of the city for you."

[for_everyone]

"I mean, mmm..."

She turns her head up toward the sky as she tries to think of how to say it. "Do you - tell others what to do? Or go in first before them? Or - pilot, or um -"

Hera moves her hands as she speaks, as she pictures the weapons, "- shoot from a - turret? Or ... from a long distance?"

Her miming of a sniper rifle as she says this is pretty accurate.

[5ame_heart]

"Oh."

This makes more sense as a question, but if it's supposed to be unusual for civilian kids to know these things, Fives doesn't realise this. It's just a language barrier, he guesses.

"I'm one of the ones going in first." Which is true both in his current role as a infantryman and his training track as an ARC Trooper.

He taps the side of his helmet, just to the edge of his visor. "Soon I'll be going in long before everyone, doing the planning. Do you know the word 'recon?'"

[for_everyone]

Her eyes flicker to his helmet when he taps it, and after a moment, she repeats the word, "Recon" - and then "- reconnaissance."

The kind of fighters Hera's most been around tend to be looser in using military terms, and often speak among themselves in Twi'leki rather than Basic, but they've worked with Basic speakers enough that she can recognize the word once Fives says it.

She touches her head, mirroring how Fives touched his helmet, and asks, "Is that what it means? On your helmet?"

[5ame_heart]

"Huh?"

Fives had just meant to represent seeing things, so it takes him a second. His fingers walk along his helmet until, through the gloves, he feels the change in texture that represent the layer of paint.

"Oh, the eel?"

And off comes his helmet again so he can look at it, and then holds it down to show her.

"No, that's personal. Um, it's a cave eel from the Rishi moon."

It's not the only part of his armor that's painted - his right shoulder bears a more detailed painting of a cannon, with a caption in Aurebesh, but he's so used to it - like a tattoo - that he forgets its there.

[for_everyone]

"Oh," she says, and nods. "I thought maybe..."

She continues walking, turning a corner as she thinks, and as she lets the silence linger a little to check for any other sounds around them. "My - friend," that's the best Basic word she can think for it, anyway, "she has bird on her shoulder, a jart, when it hunts it flies really high and then it dives -"

She moves her hands again, miming a sharp, quick drop. "She has it because she um -"

Hera presses her memory harder for the word, and this time comes up with it. "- sniper."

[5ame_heart]

Fives is patient as she looks for the words, because half his attenton is on listening himself. His helmet returned to his head, he keeps his head high, an ear on specific fighting sounds.

"Some of the lads do that, yeah," he says, casting in his mind for examples. They're not as common as you'd think - clones' identity is already tied up in their function.

"But one of these eels killed my brother. I wear it to honour his sacrifice."

[for_everyone]

Hera stays quiet for a short time after this, as she keeps moving forward, turning into a wider canyon that's burning with sunlight, but keeping close to the canyon wall. Her head jerks a couple times as she walks, but she doesn't stray from her path.

Then, as she's still facing ahead, she says, "I'm sorry. My brother died, too."

[5ame_heart]

Fives pauses at the entrance to the canyon, looking around them for any signs of danger before he catches up with his guide.

"Sorry to hear that," he says quietly. He's used to death, naturally, but Cutup being killed by an eel while trying to secure the outpost, and a Twi'lek child, are worlds apart.

From behind her he reaches a hand towards her, almost like he's going to touch her on the shoulder, and thinks better of it - she wouldn't want sympathy from a random clone, after all.

[for_everyone]

Hera turns as he's reaching toward her, though he'll likely be withdrawing his hand by the time she sees it. She glances up to him, uncertain, at first assuming that he'd meant for her to slow down or stop. But then something makes her whole body snap forward again.

"Oh wait -" she hisses, before launching into a soft-footed dash along the canyon wall and then, suddenly, throwing herself down on the ground against it.

And then she's yanking something by its scaly tail out of a burrow at the base of the canyon wall.

[5ame_heart]

Fives starts forward, the command to 'wait' only giving him the faintest of pauses, and when she throws herself on the ground he does so too, his fingers already touching her ankle in the first motions towards grabbing her leg and pulling her under him so his armor can protect them both.

But when her hand disappears into the burrow he stops, and when she pulls out an animal, he feels like a full fledged idiot.

He pulls back until he's sitting against the canyon wall, and lets out a laugh.

"Let me guess - good eating?"

[for_everyone]

Hera doesn't speak or move in response to Fives, even when he touches her ankle, until after she's yanked out the lizard with a harsh tug, and then in a very quick motion, grabs its head with her free hand and twists. Her speed isn't for nothing, as the lizard's claws are sharp and carve deep into the ground, but it goes limp at once, and she lets out a breath.

"I'm sorry -" Her own voice is sheepish as she sits up and starts to stand, the now third dead lizard dangling from her hand. "They move so fast..."

Hera relaxes at his laugh, even smiling briefly before she answers. "I can't get the bigger ones by myself, but it helps."

Even a small gruuvan lizard means a day she doesn't have to take from the fighters' food, after all.

[5ame_heart]

Fives shakes his head, and stands slowly - there are bruises and tender spots he's just aggravated and wishes he hadn't been so quick to dive to protect her.

But he absolutely will do it again, and he knows it.

"Nice reflexes though," he allows. "Could have taken you for a Jedi for a second."

[for_everyone]

Hera looks down to tie the lizard next to the others at her waist.

"Because Jedi are fast?"

She's seen a few, even one pretty close up, but the only other thing Hera really knows about Jedi is that they lead the clone troops and carry those shiny 'lightsabers.' Everything else is secondhand or old stories, about other Twi'leks being taken from Ryloth to join them, or warriors who could move mountains with their hands.

[5ame_heart]

"Super fast," Fives says. "Crazy magic fast. Faster than a blaster bolt, if you're lucky enough to be standing behind one."

[for_everyone]

Hera nods, conscientiously taking in this information before she says, "I'm not that fast." In case there was any confusion on that point.

She slips back along the canyon wall, briefly glancing back up at the sky.

"I won't do it again," she says, as she looks back down. "Three is good, especially if the droids, um -

With another glance back at him, "- if you make them leave."

[5ame_heart]

"We'll make them leave."

He says this with not the slightest doubt. It's what they do, after all. "With help from your people, of course."

He says not a word about her clarification, except to remind himself that perhaps hyperbole is just for clones.

He slips back behind her, following her carefully, but frequently glancing up, as the canyon is wider now, and there's more fighting to catch a glimpse of.

And it looks like it's getting closer to the edge.

"I don't like this," he muses out loud. "Feel exposed."

[for_everyone]

It does occur to Hera now that Fives is both bigger than her, and more what a droid would be looking out for than she is. She presses her lips together, then lifts an arm, pointing ahead to a narrower canyon that branches from the wide one, about 100 meters ahead.

"It's that one next, I don't know about trying the others..."

There are several other canyon paths, narrow and wide, that branch off, but Hera doesn't know them all, and doesn't want to turn down one and then have to turn back.