AN: Heyo, longer than last weeks. Way longer. And Clone Wars! Real, actual Clone Wars! Tbh, as of like last week all I had for Michelle's battalion was 'Evie + cannon fodder' but the rest of them have just kinda filled themselves in as I went. Because obviously none of them are cannon fodder to Michelle, they're real people that she's responsible for. So yeah. Evie's the commander (same rank as Cody + any Padawan), Doc is the head medic and usually the one patching Michelle up after insane stunts, and then shouting every other medic into submission. Name is self explanatory. Clip is one of the heavy weapons experts, which is to say his job is making things go boom, in as many ways as possible. His signature trick is making a clip of ammo explode, and nobody knows how in the fuck he does it. There's a few others that are less colourful, Heya got his name for starting every conversation with 'hey', Bug is super interested in insects (guessing Kamino doesn't have many/any bcause ocean vs bug rarely ends in bugs favour and there's nowhere else for wildlife), and Whiskey took one swig of whiskey for his first drink, almost choked to death on it, and swore off alcohol forever.

Random clones aside, as is mentioned, the squad has (yet another) set of new designs! Because everyone's fighting a goddamn war, they're less concerned with looking good, and have shifted into dressing for combat and lots of it. And by squad I mean Michelle, Zinnia and Coltin. Seha's combat outfit is the one she had in the last design. Don't fix what ain't broken. Neria doesn't have one because she's a non-combatant, and will spend most of the war working on ships/designing them. Isaac… well, we all know what happened there. And everyone else is canon therefore you already know what they look like! It's on the blog, if you don't know by now where that is then I really can't help you.

Anyways, enjoy!

Part 3, Chapter 10: Make the Most of Freedom

Michelle had known that the Clone Wars would go for three years. She had figured that it wouldn't be that long, and she'd be more focused on Palpatine's background machinations. Honestly, she'd half expected it to be kind of fun, considering she would know the exact sequence of events, and be living directly through one of her favourite shows.

Yeah. Not quite.

As it turns out, war was - shockingly enough - war. And not very fun.

Sure, there was catharsis in the explosions that she caused. The many, many explosions. And her battalion of clones were awesome, especially Evie. Apparently they had been specifically chosen for her due to having unusually talented pyrotechnics experts, and a general ability to not question weird shit. Which was convenient, because Michelle tended to not have the time to explain her weirder plans while in the thick of things. And Evie was some of the best backup in a pinch that she had ever had, especially given the man's gift for herding the other clones. Made sense, considering he was a commander. He also seemed to have decided Michelle was not capable of caring for herself, which was honestly pretty fair. He'd taken to making sure she stopped charging wildly into battle with no plan or backup. And wanted her to eat at least two meals a day. Like some kind of animal.

And after she had offhandedly mentioned wanting armour in 420th colours, Evie had managed to track down some chest armour for her, all dark green, and with the Jedi Order symbol painted on in black on the left shoulder. It was awesome, and had immediately earned Evie the spot of best commander ever. It was a little unfortunate that her badass long coat covered up the symbol, but whatever.

Yes. She had made the long coat part of her battle outfit. It made her feel cool.

On her part, she had been slowly yet surely getting through Evie's shell of professionalism. It had mostly started with her walking in on Evie after an especially long battle, trying to brush out his ridiculously tangled hair. Michelle could relate, and responded by giving him a bottle of her conditioner, and sitting down to help him with the knots. Evie's hair may have been short by her standards, but by military style was ridiculously long. Apparently he liked it long, and she really didn't have room to judge. Instead, Michelle had shown him how to braid it out of his eyes, and called it a day.

It was hard to be unrelentingly professional with someone who gave you conditioner and braided your hair. Not that Evie wasn't giving it his best effort in the field, but during downtime he was getting downright friendly. The man had a very deadpan sense of humour. Michelle could respect that.

He also hated puns, which meant Michelle and half of the higher ranked clones all made as many puns as they possibly could. He probably wasn't going snap and kill them. Probably. Hopefully. Maybe.

Well, the head medic (creatively named Doc) was usually seconds away from trying to strangle them all at once. Starting with Michelle, usually for her fondness to fling herself into battle head first, usually grinning maniacally. As one does.

At least she got along with Clip, the clone in charge of the heavy weaponry. They shared many interests. Like horticulture. And vaguely nonsensical political debates. And obliterating massive amounts of droids with extreme prejudice. Normal things that normal friends did.

So. Overall, war wasn't very fun. But there were redeeming points, and frankly? There were worse people to try and save the Republic with.

Sometimes she could even forget that they had chips in their brains set to kill her at a single order from Palpatine. She wasn't stressed at all.

"Wow, this ship is a piece of shit. What kind of terrible Jedi General would run a dump like this? Clearly, some complete idiot." Michelle said loudly, striding onto the bridge of the flag ship. She was fairly certain that every clone present from the 420th was staring at her with horror behind the helmets, while the 501st and 212th were either shocked, or pissed off. That was fair.

Anakin grinned, and gave Michelle a rude gesture, casually stopping another clone from getting up to probably kick her ass. She could respect that clone.

"Hi Michelle, I'm going to kick your ass." Anakin said cheerfully, cracking his knuckles and walking towards her. Michelle grinned back for a second, before realising that wait he was serious.

"Anakin, no! Anakin why? Wait… is this about the thing with Senator Amidala?"

"It absolutely is, remember the part where you weren't supposed to tell Obi-Wan, and immediately did? Snitches get stitches, Ketros."

Michelle made the executive decision of hiding behind Obi-Wan. A very unimpressed Obi-Wan.

"Sir? Should I intervene?" Evie asked, sounding mildly amused,

"Yes! Intervene immediately, come here! Commander Evie, meet Commander Anakin Skywalker, a bitch-ass padawan who should show proper respect to someone who outranks him. And is a real adult, unlike him." Michelle sniped, glaring at her younger friend.

"I would argue that last point for both of you." Obi-Wan added, firmly removing Michelle from her hiding spot behind him.

"Shut up and hug me you beautiful bastard. You finally ditched the mullet!" Michelle cried happily, pulling Obi-Wan into a quick hug, before doing the same to Anakin. Hugging was a tough guy thing, right? Right. Well, now it was. They could all use more emotional honesty anyways. Besides, Obi-Wan had finally gotten his Clone Wars hairstyle! …Fitting, considering it was actually the Clone Wars.

"Coltin made a compelling argument." Obi-Wan said with a small smile of clearly fake innocence.

There was a brief pause as Michelle and Anakin both processed that, and immediately did their best to never think of it again.

"So, let's get down to business, right now immediately! Rellekka, this shithole again. If… what's his face premier guy is down there and comes across us, I'm going to deck him, and none of you can stop me." Michelle said with some slightly forced cheer, changing the subject to their main purpose of reuniting.

Sometime after their mission to Rellekka, they had managed to get their shit together enough to join the Republic. Which went well, considering that they were now under Separatist control.

But, something something important hyperspace lanes, so Ketros and Kenobi had been sent to go kick them out. And Skywalker was invited too, but he was a padawan and therefore just a side note.

Also, he ruined the alliteration of the Ketros Kenobi team up. Shame on him.

"Yes, let's get to work. Michelle, your talents are best suited to leading the 420th in the ground assault. Anakin and the 501st will be providing you with air support, and I'll handle the orbital battle with the 212th, and assume overall command. Any questions?"

"Yeah, how come you get to decide you're in charge?" Michelle asked, more to be contrary than for any real leadership struggle. They were the same rank after all, at least for the last few months of Anakin's apprenticeship. Then he'd be a council master, and she'd be expected to let him take the lead. She was taking her kicks while she could.

Obi-Wan raised an unimpressed eyebrow.

"Michelle, we want the planet intact at the end."

"…Fair enough, I like a ground fight better anyways. You get the space battle planned, I'll be stealing your padawan and running away to coordinate our ground and air assaults. Commander Evie, stick with General Kenobi, you know how we work, give the heads up if any of his plans will get in our way, give me the heads up if something unavoidable comes up. Nice to meet you all! Anakin, 212th commander whose name I haven't caught yet, let's roll!"

With a general wave, Michelle strode out of the room, coat billowing around her, Anakin and Rex quickly moving to follow.

Obviously, she knew Rex's name, but that was one of those things she technically wasn't supposed to know yet, so eh. She'd wait for him to introduce himself.

Also, was Rex actually a Captain? She'd never gotten that. If he was in charge of the 501st, shouldn't he have been a commander? Life was weird. The army was weird.

Thank god she was completely normal in every feasible way.

Riding the transports down to landing got less unnerving with experience. Really. Michelle wasn't stressing at all. And if her grip on the straps hanging from the ceiling was tight enough to leave her white knuckled, well, nobody needed to know that. That was what she wore gloves for.

Really, she was a grown ass twenty two year old woman, and she still had anxiety attacks. Some things just refused to go away.

At least she was a champion at keeping her face impassive.

As they came down for a landing, she heard explosions outside of the ships, Anakin and the 501st busy covering their landing, in their usual dramatic fashion. Wonderful.

Well, it actually was pretty wonderful, considering that otherwise they'd probably all be fucking dead, but Michelle was in a bad enough mood during landings to find a good excuse to silently loathe anything and everything.

The transport touched down, and the doors slid open. Despite charging onto a battlefield, Michelle's mood instantly lifted, lightsaber flying to her hand as she charged out with her men.

Really, it was much less terrifying when her life was in her own damn hands.

About twenty minutes later, the battlefield was now considerably more terrifying. Mostly due to the fact that the Separatist base had heavy artillery, and judging by the amount of explosions, a fuck ton of it. Once they got it firing, the bastards managed to drive off the aerial support, and then turned it on the Republic ground forces. Which was somehow even less fun than one would assume.

Also, Michelle had managed to get a bit ahead of her troops, which was just great. She loved getting shot at with fucking artillery while alone, and very obviously the Jedi General.

"ANAKIN, COULD REALLY USE SOME BACKUP HERE!" Michelle yelled into her comm, diving behind a crashed Separatist tank, in the hopes that it could take a few blasts for her. "THE ONLY CURE FOR THESE EXPLOSIONS IS MORE EXPLOSIONS!"

Goddamn heavy artillery. Specifically Separatist heavy artillery, as if she had command of that sort of firepower Michelle would be having the time of her fucking life.

But it was significantly less fun when they were aimed at her.

"Sir, we can't hold out against this artillery much longer!" Evie called through the comms, sounding stressed. Michelle could relate.

"Yeah, working on it, SKYWALKER, DO NOT MAKE ME COME UP THERE!"

"Sorry sir, General Skywalker's a bit busy with a situation, what do you need?" Rex responded, sounding mildly stressed.

"Guess it's you and me Rex. Alright, I'm gonna make a big-ass distraction on the ground, you'll know it when you see it. Most or all of the artillery should get pointed at us on the ground, so I'll need you up there to get in real fast and destroy them with the bombers. Can do?"

Sounds good sir. Waiting on you."

"Awesome. Evie, order everyone to fall back, I'm going on alone. Bombers are going to destroy the artillery, be ready to move in when they do." Michelle ordered into her comm, wincing slightly as a blast rattled the tank she was hiding behind. Things were about to turn ugly.

At least she looked good.

"Sir, I swear to fucking god-"

"Complaint noted, fuck the fuck out!"

She stayed behind the tank a moment longer, and was pleased to see a steady retreat.

Well. Time to single handedly cover everyone's asses.

Michelle palmed her lightsaber, and took a deep breath, centering herself in the Force. Because what she was about to do was incredibly stupid and possibly suicidal.

"Leeroy Jenkins." She whispered to herself, stupid old humour taking the edge off the fear.

And then she ignited her lightsaber, turned, and force-pushed her tank shelter towards the Separatist stronghold.

People usually forgot that, on some level, every Jedi was a creature of the Force. And while they focused on the serenity part of it all, the Force was inherently chaotic. Meaning that if any situation became desperate enough, and a Jedi had enough motivation, they could fuck your shit up.

It took the Separatists about three tossed tanks to figure out that the lone Jedi was a bit more dangerous than the army retreating behind her. Unfortunately for them, by that point Michelle was already very rooted in the Force, and had no plans of coming back up any time soon. Artillery began to shoot at her, but she saw it before they fired, zipping across the battlefield with Force-enhanced speed, dodging around the explosions before they even went off. Dimly, she registered that the Separatist commander was losing his shit.

Good.

She made a point of staying just far enough away that the aerial bombardment wouldn't get to her when it happened (already happened?), instead keeping her distance, and hurling as many pieces of debris as there were, sending them to cause the maximum amount of damage. In the background, Michelle could feel the muted shock from the clones registering through the Force. The tiny part of her still focused on the physical could hear Evie shouting in her ear through the comms, but the words were lost to the roar of the Force.

When the bombing began, she was almost surprised, still dodging out of the way of a blast that would never come. Which just made her disorientation worse, but whatever.

Blankly, she was aware that the artillery had stopped firing, and bombing was coming to a stop, with the 420th charging into battle. Michelle was fairly certain she was supposed to be joining them, but the Force was crashing over her like a tsunami, and a pounding headache re-married her mind with her body.

...Why did everything hurt?

Slowly, Michelle sank down to her knees, not really processing the army rushing forwards around her, or the hand on her shoulder, or the familiar helmet kneeling in front of her.

Someone was calling for a 'General', but everything was already going black. Michelle was more than happy to collapse into her Commander's arms.

"...isn't going to be pleased about this."

"Well, what could we do? You were in orbit, and I was off playing tag with a Force-forsaken air fleet. Rex and Evie were the only Commander's she could get through to, and neither of them would know enough to stop her."

"I doubt that will matter much to Coltin if she doesn't pull through."

"Let's not bring your boyfriend into this Master, I'm scarred enough as it is. And she's probably going to be fine, Doc said her brain waves are bouncing back to normal. Besides, have you heard what the media's saying about her? That much attention, she'll wake up just to bask in it."

"Well, if it were you, maybe."

"Now see here-"

Michelle groaned, the sound weak, but enough to cause the conversation to stop for a moment, silence briefly hanging in the room.

"Did she just-"

"Yes, I thought. Michelle? Can you hear us?"

"...Fuck me." She rasped out, opening her eyes, and immediately closing them again at the bright light. "What happened?"

"You almost killed yourself like a dumbass. Because you're a dumbass." Anakin said helpfully,

"You opened your connection to the Force too deeply, and almost died from the physical and mental strain. You've been unconscious for almost two days." Obi-Wan added, sounding both concerned and quietly furious. This seemed bad for her future.

"Did we win?"

"...Yes. We won. Well done you suicidal idiot."

Obi-Wan seemed really pissed off. She would have to do something to make it up to him.

"M' sorry." She mumbled, already feeling herself slip back into sleep.

Obi-Wan sighed, sounding tired.

"Please stop doing things to get yourself killed?"

She didn't respond, already gone again.

The next time she woke up, it was to Doc standing by her bedside, switching out an empty IV bag for a fresh one, not looking at Michelle.

"Sup." She said, making the medic jump about a foot in the air. In her defense, she had waited for the IV bag to be hung up first.

"General! You're awake again! General Kenobi and Commander Skywalker said that you'd woken up briefly, but you hadn't been overly lucid. How are you feeling?"

"A lot better, honestly. What's your medical opinion?"

Doc shrugged.

"Dunno. You had some scrapes, burns and bruises from playing tag with explosions, but physically nothing was seriously wrong with you. The Jedi said that it was some Force shit that almost killed you this time, best we could do is monitor your brainwaves. I don't know what the hell you did, but it was scary as all fuck. Please never do that ever again. Evie's going to strangle you with his hair."

"Good, that's how I've always wanted to die."

"Right? Also, Clip would like to have words with you, and those words all start with 'holy fuck everything exploded', so that conversation should be enjoyable for you." Doc deadpanned, checking a different bag near the foot of her bed. "You think you're good to walk, or should I keep the catheter in?"

"...Lemme check first." Michelle said carefully sitting up, wincing at the head rush. Standing up didn't immediately lead to falling down, which was always a nice sign. "Yeah, take it out."

"Can do."

"General." Evie said, entering Michelle's tiny room in the medical wing. Which she was apparently confined to for another day, just to make sure that she wasn't dying. A common concern, really.

"Evie! I've been watching the news, you would not believe the shit they're saying about me, and I love it! They've nicknamed me 'The Destroyer' for my stunt, how hardcore is that? And I only had to almost die horribly to get it. I'm amazing. I have a fan club!" Michelle said cheerfully, gesturing to the newsfeed playing on her datapad.

Oh, sure, she knew damn well what was going on with all the media coverage. Michelle's new-found fame had been given to her for the exact same reason as Anakin and Obi-Wan. Sure, she was good. She knew that she was unusually good by Jedi standards, had spent most of her time since her arrival in the dimension working just for that, due to knowing what was coming. Her, Anakin and Obi-Wan were skilled and entertaining, which meant fuckall in the long term. The main reason was that they were all incredibly high up on Palpatine's watch list. Anakin had probably been filed under 'future apprentice' since day one, Obi-Wan was literally the only Jedi in a thousand years to have a Sith kill count, and Michelle had 'mysteriously' figured out literally all of his plans as a teenager.

Yeah. They were all on one hell of a watch list. And if he could use the media to do his stalking for him, why not?

One of Palpatine's worse traits was that he was a sneaky bastard. Because Michelle couldn't help but respect the son of a bitch for his tactics.

"...General? You're zoning out on me." Evie pointed out, eyebrows raised in minor concern.

"What? Yeah, no, sorry, was just thinking about whether my fan club's gonna be bigger than Anakin and Obi-Wan's." She said, shrugging with a grin. Evie rolled his eyes.

"Sign me up for General Kenobi's fan club, he's not as bad as you and Skywalker."

"One time he jumped out a window in upper Coruscaunt after an assassin droid and rode it around for like 15 minutes, just kind of… hoping that Anakin would show up with a speeder in time to catch him."

"...Fuck, you're all insane."

"Pretty much! Come, sit down, Doc won't be by for a while, he just changed my IV like an hour ago-" Michelle started, before cutting herself off at the sight of Evie's noticeable wince.

"Nope, nope, nope nope, we're not talking about that, I refuse, we are not discussing the concept of IV's, or needles, or anything. Hate them. So much." Evie complained, noticeably shuddering.

"Are… are you telling me that you can happily charge into battle beside me, but are afraid of getting a needle?"

"It's a perfectly legitimate fear! Do you realise you're just… letting people stab you?! Stabbing! That is what's happening and I refuse to take it! Not unless I absolutely have to and even then they'll have to catch me first!" Evie yelled, pounding a fist on his armour for emphasis. Michelle snorted.

"Wow, tell us how you really feel. Y'know, that's a really unfortunate phobia, considering your name kinda sounds like-"

"Oh, don't you start, I know where my name came from you complete asshole. I gash my knee open during training one time, get a serious infection, and then I wake up in the medbay a week later, and my brothers won't shut up about how apparently I responded to the antibiotics by slurring about 'not wanting any ee-vee's'. So yeah. I know."

The gravity of the rant may have been lost on Michelle, as she had been giggling for half of it.

"That's amazing, is that actually how you got your name?" She managed to get out around the laughter.

"Could be worse, could be worse. Whiskey got his by trying to take his first drink of alcohol - from a bottle of whiskey - choking on it, coughing so hard he passed out, and then swearing to never drink again."

And that set Michelle off laughing again.

AN: Question: Did Michelle just almost kill herself with the Force for the sake of a meaningless victory in a puppet war?

Answer: YUP. Ironically, at this stage, her Star Wars love is working against her, because despite the whole 'war is hell' thing, a not insignificant part of her brain is screaming "OH MY GOD I'M IN THE CLONE WARS THIS IS AMAZING". So she's accidentally acting against her own best interests sometimes, and just not realizing it. Michelle, winning should not be your first priority you know there's no winners in this situation except Palpatine.

That's part of the downside to her getting Palpatine squared away like 5 years ago, because holding a stalemate for that long means it's her status quo. So 'fuck up Palpatine' has been a sidenote in her brain for so long, she has literally forgotten he's the main threat. Don't worry, she remembers eventually, and it's honestly my favourite moment ever when she does. Her reaction is a thing of beauty. And then she starts trying to slow the train down and accidentally derails it off a cliff. Nobody knows what's happening! Anarchy!

…But like, give it a bit. Part 4 has the Ryloth arc, the Geonosian brain worm arc, and the Zillo Beast, with a fair amount of original stuff happening alongside it. Part 5 is entirely the Citadel and Slaves of the Republic arcs, and is where the train completely derails and never really manages to get back on the tracks right. Oh Michelle. I actually looked up the canon timeline for this, and teeechnically speaking Zillo Beast comes right before Geonosis, not after, but honestly I think everyone can forgive me for fudging one detail and moving on.

And honestly, I didn't even mean it, but the sentence "The only cure for these explosions is more explosions" is literally Michelle's entire battle strategy in a nutshell lmao.

So yeah, Michelle is famous now. Kenobi-Skywalker has become Kenobi-Ketros-Skywalker. The Hero With No Fear, The Negotiator, and The Destroyer. Michelle is very fond of her name because while she pretends to be a Skywalker type, she's actually a hell of a lot closer to Obi-Wan's manipulations, and everyone expecting her to be straightforward explosions makes it a lot easier to follow through on her real goals. It's not very hard to get away with things when nobody is looking. And you'd better believe that the holonet very quickly decides that Kenobi-Ketros-Skywalker is a threesome in every sense of the word. Despite Obi-Wan having a boyfriend, Anakin having a fiancée and Michelle being a lesbian. It's how the holonet is, just roll with it.

Also hope y'all like Evie because next chapter has a lot of him. A LOT. Evie needs character development the most right now really, because he's going to be relevant for a very long time. What role is played…. Spoilers.

See you all Tuesday!