There was already a small covert base set up in the shell of what seemed to have once been a major landing pad for whatever people had settled on Zeffo once upon a time. When we arrived, it looked like it was barely getting used, and judging by the way the few pad workers watched us with nervous eyes, I figured that was likely the case. Small cargo skiffs were making quick runs to and fro as we hurried off the main pad and into a small building that once seemed to have functioned as something like a customs house. It was the new nerve center, it seemed. Republic officers and soldiers of varying backgrounds ranging from Clones to Quarrens moved around the room exchanging information and passing off maps before departing. This was more than a simple scouting mission. It was a full-blown operation, and Talen was in charge of it.

"Master Kolar sent me here with a small detachment of volunteers. They're mostly Seku's group along with some tagalongs from the Republic Strategic Information Service and some of Master Kolar's Clone detachment," several of the Clones waved at Talen as we passed and he returned them in kind before we found ourselves in front of a massive holoprojector that had a huge map of the entire area spread out, showing terrain and with several areas marked with indicators that spoke of hidden entrances found by sharp eyes. Talen turned to us with a smile, "I have a special job for you bunch. I need your rather interesting experience in close quarters destruction."

"Do we get some of your newfound lightsaber expertise?" Red asked as he gestured to the silver saber clipped to Talen's hip.

All Talen did was grin as I watched one of the Twi'leks move up and draw his attention away from us. She spoke is quick sharp Ryl with a tone of urgency that made Talen's smile fall away as he quickly chirped out a response and looked back at us, "I have to go for a moment. Get acquainted with the crew around here and stock up on munitions and supplies. When I get back, we'll discuss what we need to do."

We set down what things we brought and made our way back out into the main hangar room to see Hipshot and Wings gathered with some of the other Clones around. They all seemed relatively happy despite the circumstances as they chatted away and laughed. We figured it would be a good idea to get to know our brothers on the ground first, and as we approached they turned to us, jovial smiles slowly falling when they recognized the armor. Hipshot noted the change in the mood first and laughed, "Come on, boys! These fun police are Padawan Jall certified!"

The revelation made the others relax, and some even smiled at us. Shocking, all things considered. "I take it you're Master Kolar's Clones then?"

"Eighty-Second Legion, freshly dubbed Jent Squadron - more informally known as the "Padawan Protectors"," their Captain declared proudly and extended a hand. "Captain Trill's the name. You already know Wings and Hipshot."

"Rather proud of your posting," I replied as I shook his hand. "I'm Captain Kando. This here is Red, Grek, and Tor. Breaker Squad, Coruscant Guard."

"Padawan Jall has talked about you a lot. Boys were getting a bit jealous," Trill laughed and gestured to the other Clones behind him. "Meet the rest." He jerked his thumb back at them, still maintaining his smile, "Cobalt and Umbra, our ARCs." The two ARCs pulled their helmets off and nodded at us. "This guy here is Vex," Trill nodded at another Clone, who looked up from cleaning his sniper long enough to give a half-hearted wave. "That's Cube," he thumbed at another Clone resting on a nearby crate who briefly looked over and smiled, "and... Huh. The others are running errands for Jall, I guess."

"As for being proud," Cobalt cut in, with a frown, "Padawan Jall is our responsibility, but he's also our commander - by choice."

"Yep," Umbra nodded, "entirely voluntary."

"Figured you just went wherever they told you to," Grek crossed his arms on the handle of his gun as Cobalt frowned at him.

"Master Kolar gave us the assignment and asked which of us would be willing to follow Padawan Jall without question-"

Trill finally rolled his eyes and looked to me with a shake of his head, "Drop the Padawan Jall act, Cobalt. None of us call him that when Master Kolar isn't around anyway."

It seemed we weren't the only ones who started tacking on nicknames to our jeti'ika. It made me chuckle seeing Cobalt get all flustered at the admonition, and I could already see Tor ready to jump to his defense. "What do you call him?" I asked with a chuckle as Umbra elbowed Cobalt with a snicker.

"You first," Cube jeered from his spot beside Vex.

"Kid and jeti'ika are popular ones here," Red replied and the rest of them laughed.

"You all are nice! You should hear what Cobalt called him on our first mission to Brentaal!"

"You annoying little sheb, wasn't it?" Trill asked, and all I could see was Cobalt's cheeks redden at the comment.

"Made the kid cry," Umbra supplied as Cobalt reared back and gave him a loud slap upside his head.

I knew the feeling. The way that I had treated Talen had been less than stellar when we had met. There was small comfort in knowing that I wasn't the only one of my brothers capable of being won over by the once small Jedi.

"Nowadays we just call him Tal. Easier, less offensive," Trill punched Cobalt's shoulder as the ARC put his helmet back on to hide his reddening face.

Before we could reply, a Twi'lek called the troopers' attention to a massive supply drop, and they hastily took leave of us with small waves. We were initially going to help when a voice stopped us, "Hey! Think you could give me a hand over here, Clone Boys?" I was stunned to see Seku, but she smiled at me before I could string a coherent thought together, "Hello there, Captain."

"What are you doing here?" It came out a bit rude, I will admit that.

"Saving my people," she spoke and pushed past me to the crate, tapping the keypad and letting it open to reveal a group of terrified aliens ranging from Togruta to Twi'leks to Rodians. They all rushed out to the other aliens Seku had been traveling with before she turned and looked at me again with another small smile, "You reunited with Talen, I take it?"

"Found you, did he?"

"We've been working together for months with the blessing of his master. The Separatists are working overtime to procure more slave labor for their factories. I plan to stop them."

"On Zeffo?"

"It was more than a resupply stop away from prying Republic eyes," Seku inclined her head towards me with a frown as she spoke. "Slaving, as you can see, but something else is going on here. It's why Major Venn is here."

"Major who?" Grek asked as he put one hand on his hip. "Never heard of this guy."

"Jarras Venn," Talen supplied as he made his way up beside us from where he had been speaking to another of Seku's entourage. "Former CIS officer from Onderon. He joined us after the death of Senator Bonterri, and he brought a rather... interesting group with him."

Red and Tor exchanged a glance, "Define "interesting"..."

"Droids. A whole battalion of them, reprogrammed and loyal to him. He's been working with the SIS for a while now," Talen shrugged as he talked, making the shoulder and chest guards of his armor clack together quietly.

It was the first time I noticed his arm guards. They were the ones I had given him all those years ago, and I smiled a little to myself. They finally fit him.

"He's been an incredible asset so far," Talen continued as his gaze flicked between my eyes and the arm guards with a small smile of his own. "He's been keeping tabs on CIS operations along with Senior Agent Dorne."

"Look at you playing spy," Red jeered and Talen rolled his eyes.

"Believe me, it's not by choice. I hate this espionage nonsense," Talen's reply oozed dread as he passed us and stood beside Seku. "I much prefer direct action to all this sneaking about, but if the Republic requires it, I am here."

His words didn't match his tone. Poor kid sounded utterly miserable. It wasn't in Talen's nature to be a subversive sneak. If anything, it was the opposite, but I suppose war has a habit of breaking people past their natures and turning them into things they're not. Red was the one who shot him a sympathetic look.

"What do you need us to do, Master Jedi?" Tor asked, snapping up just a little straighter and making Grek roll his eyes nearly out of his head.

"Tor, no need to be so formal," Talen folded his hands behind his back with an indulgent smile at the flustered Clone. "We're all friends here. Now, I need you four to be my liaisons with a special group we're working with. I'm not at liberty to say much, but I think you'll know them when you see them."

*

Talen's new secretive position was irritating more than just me, but we knew that we were going to have to make some concessions if it meant we got to get out of the office more often. The trek to this meeting place was one that followed along ridge lines and long winding paths, and before long we stumbled across one of the many settlements that dotted the landscape of Zeffo. Children at play stopped to watch us pass with wide eyes. There was some twinge of fear that came with seeing soldiers. Where we were, war followed. Despite that, there was admiration there, too. It was a wide-eyed, childish wonder, that thrill of finally seeing those "brave soldiers of the Republic" that were so often spoken about in the broadcasts from the Core.

We paused on the outskirts of one village to check equipment before we made the final leg to the coordinates that Talen had given us, and soon we found the children huddled in a group near a big rock watching us and whispering excitedly to one another. Red kept looking over at them as we checked, and finally one of them got the courage to move up from the rest. "Are you really clones?"

Red reached up and pulled his helmet off, sitting down on a nearby rock with a smile. Grek followed suit and the kids all gave a small gasp of surprise when seeing two identical faces looking back at them. I decided to humor them and did the same, and Tor reluctantly did as well when we all stared at him long enough. "Yeah, we're definitely Clones," Red nodded an affirmation as the kids all smiled upon realizing that we weren't as scary as they thought we were.

One kid came to stand beside his friend who had asked us the question, "You look like the other two that came here yesterday! They weren't soldiers, though. Their armor was a lot different."

Red and Grek exchanged a look as they hefted their helmets up under their arms. "What did it look like?" Red asked.

"Kind of like yours, but it wasn't white. Papa said they were Mandalorians." They all exchanged looks before the kid asked, "Are you Mandalorian soldiers?"

"We're not," Red mused as he turned to me, "but our big brother is."

There was a small chorus of "wow" that came from the assembled group of excited kids as I turned to Red, who was smirking at me the entire time. He wasn't technically wrong. Wylan Ordo had adopted me, though with him being MIA at the moment part of me wondered how legitimate that was.

"We need to keep moving," Tor finally piped up as he slung his pack back on and replaced his helmet. "We need to reach that mining tunnel or Padawan Jall will be angry with us."

"You know the Jedi?" One of the kids exclaimed and they all crowded around the rocks we had our equipment set up on.

"Have you seen his lightsaber?"

"Has he used the Force?"

"Does he even eat any food?"

"Can he read minds?"

They bombarded us with questions and it was getting hard for Red to keep from laughing. To these kids, Talen Jall, who was only older than them by about half a decade, was some mythical figure. To us, he was still just "kid", and hearing people talk about him like he was a storybook figure was more than a little funny to me.

"You haven't gotten a chance to speak to him?" Red asked again as the kids all shook their heads. "Why not?"

"Our parents say we should keep away from army stuff," one piped up from towards the back of the group.

"They tell us that soldiers are scary, but you're really nice."

"Are you heading over to the mine, too?" We nodded and the kids all began to chatter eagerly to one another. The child who spoke to us grinned up at us, "That's where the Mandalorians went, too!"

Knowing that, I noticed that Red and Grek moved out a little too eagerly for their own good. We found our way over to the mine that was still close to an hour away when we departed the excited children. We made our way down to the mine and through the opening when we were greeted with an entire squadron of B1 Battle Droids. We were fighting our way through the mine until we hit a closed door.

There was an explosion followed by a B2 Battle Droid flying through the wall. The husk landed at our feet by the time we had blasters out, and the familiar ping of blaster shots hitting metal sounded from the smoking hole. It was impossible to see anything there, but after a moment, more droid shells came flying out riddled with blaster holes before two figures jumped through the hole, blasters out, seemingly as confused as we were

We were all standing and pointing blasters at one another as the smoke cleared, and the familiar armor of Kote and Orar Beroya made us all lower them and stare at one another for a long moment before Kote reached up and pulled his helmet off. He had a new scar on his cheek, but he was still mostly intact. "Well, look who it is!"

Orar gave a laugh and lowered his blaster, too. "Hello there, Kamiini!"

"What are you psychopaths doing here?" Red asked as he and Orar exchanged rather brusque handshakes.

"Hoping to find you, actually. That and Seku reached out to us and said a friend of hers and the kid needed help." Kote and I clasped forearms and he looked over my brothers with a nod, "Good to see you four. We've been helping with the scouting for Talen. Figured it was a good time to roll in the favors we owe him."

Part of me wanted to ask, but before I could, Orar held out a map puck and flipped it on, revealing the rocky layout just south of our position. He pointed to a small cavern opening with his free hand, "They're holding slaves in there and using them for something. No one is sure exactly what, but the locals mine this area. Whatever they think is in those mines is valuable. They've got it locked up tighter than a Hutt's purse."

"The Major thinks he has an idea about how to deal with that little problem," Kote spoke with a chuckle in his voice which meant that it likely involved explosions of some kind, "and it also calls for a little help from you bunch."

"Do you trust him?" I asked the question and Kote shook his head.

"Not as far as I can throw him, but I don't think he's working with the Seppies. I know for a fact that his motivations aren't altruistic, though. Keep an eye on him. He's unusually interested in Jedi."

That set off red flags for all four of us. I didn't even need to see my brothers to know that. "What are you thinking?"

"Don't know, but I know I wouldn't leave him unsupervised with the kid if I were you."

"Not that you should worry too much," Orar cut in with a shrug, "considering that Captain of his and that one ARC - big scary one with the blue eyes - would probably rip him in half." I was almost surprised by their description of Trill and the blue-eyed Cobalt, but something told me that if they were anything like us, then it wasn't a wonder that they would go out of their way for Talen.

If anything, they seemed even more dedicated to him than we were, and for a long time, I saw us as the height of loyalty. We made our way back through the mine together, stepping over the droid husks on our way out and chatting all the while.

"Where's Ros?" Red asked as he fell in step beside Orar.

Orar looked over at him, "Back on Mandalore. We're working on freeing it from the clutches of some crime lord at the moment. It's, uh, a bit of a hellhole at the moment. He's doing alright."

"What about Wylan?" I looked at Kote, who glanced at me and shook his head.

"No sign of him since Pre Vizsla died. We have no idea where he is."

There was a silence that fell between us as we looked between one anotehr at the news before Orar piped up again, "He left when Pre decided to take a strike back at Satine. He has a lot of ill-will from the old wars, and with any luck, it hasn't killed him."

"He's an ornery old bastard," Kote supplied with a nod. "He won't go down without a fight."

I was hoping somewhere deep down that he was alive out there. A small part of me hoped that I would have someplace to go when everything was over that wasn't... well, wasn't eternal military service.