Marshal Commander… well, was he really a Marshal Commander anymore? The Grand Army of the Republic didn't even exist anymore, so the rank held no meaning. He wasn't even technically a citizen of the Republic, so was he an armed undocumented alien?
That was a question for another time.
Bly clamped down on his mental shields and focused on the here and now. He used his military training to focus on the present situation, pushing all the worries and grief to one side. He'd deal with them later, he was an ARC Trooper after all, they'd trained for situations like this. High stress situations weren't something that he wasn't accustomed to.
He'd fought in a war dammit.
Though, meeting with the Jedi High Council felt more stress inducing than any mission or campaign ever had. He was mentally going over everything he could remember about the members of the council in his head. The information would be semi-useful however, since they were in the past, and most of the Jedi he knew were either children, hadn't been born yet, or were younger to the point where they would probably be unrecognizable.
In fact, every single person they passed was a stranger to Bly. There had been a lot of Jedi Generals who served in the war, and he knew that a lot of them had died during the First Battle of Geonosis, but he didn't recognize anyone here. They all looked so foreign to him, strangers all, and he was certain that he and the other ARC Troopers were getting similar reactions by them.
Going off of what thirteen-year-old Quinlan Vos had said, most people were going to assume that they were mandalorians. Bly could see that as being possible. The plastoid armor was based off of a mandalorian style that the Cuy'val Dar wore. The mandalorian bounty hunters turned trainers all had their own unique armor, but the common structure remained the same for them, and the vode had simply copied them.
Though, the armor was also distinctly un-mandalorian, as the helmets were the biggest example of that. The visor was all wrong, and mandalorians in general didn't have so much white paint on their armor, as well as insignias of rank that no longer meant anything adorning their chest plates.
Those insignias meant nothing to anyone but those of the 327th Star Corps. The ten ARC Troopers and the little Twi'lek were the only ones who even knew that the Star Corps existed. For everyone around them, they were simply mandalorians with matching armor and a lot of weaponry.
Which led Bly to start thinking about security around the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. They, the ten heavily armed ARC Troopers, had just walked right in. Granted, they had a Jedi Master with them, but no one had even stopped them for any sort of identification. Bly knew that this was the past, but these glaringly obvious security flaws couldn't stand.
Fox would have had a stroke if he had seen how weak these defenses were.
But they could deal with all of that later, for now, they had a council meeting to get to.
"Master Tholme, Padawan Vos, and… mandos." The padawan that sat in a little seat next to the High Council chamber's doors stood up and made his way towards them. He looked young, maybe around fifteen standard years, and Bly didn't recognize his face at all. He was a Zeltron, his skin more of a neon pink than a baseline human's was, and he had blue hair and that braid that all padawans seemed to have hanging over one shoulder.
He also had a truly ugly haircut, by the Prime's saggy balls, why was it like that?
"Padawan Eskren, we are here to see the High Council on a matter of most importance." Master Tholme said.
Padawan Eskren eyed the Jedi Master, then looked at the ten heavily armed ARC Troopers, and then went to a grinning Quinlan Vos, and then he just sighed.
"The council is in session at the moment master, you'll have to wait." Padawan Eskren said.
Bly shifted Aayla in his arms, the little Twi'lek had finally succumbed to her younger body's need to sleep, out like a rock, her head resting against his shoulder. She seemed to weigh too little for a four-year-old, and Bly didn't know if that was normal for Twi'leks or if he should be worried, he'd have to look that up.
"Come on Kenka, we got mandalorians here!" Quinlan Vos said and jerked a thumb at the ARC Troopers. The kid knew they weren't mandalorians, yet he seemed unwilling to share that information with any of the jedi they'd past on the way here. Bly could already see the little shit of a general the kid was going to become, and it brought back memories of a much older man doing something very similar to what the kid version of himself was doing right now.
Bly heard one of the men snort at that. They were all holding up better than he expected, though that might just be the training speaking. It might all come crashing down once they got a moment to just sit and breath, to really think about what the hells had happened to them all.
"Just because you managed to get the first mandalorians into the Temple without having them shoot you dead in about a thousand years doesn't mean you can interrupt a council session." Padawan Eskren said, hands on his hips.
"We must insist on it Padawan Eskren. The information we have to inform the council of is very important." Master Tholme said.
"I'm sorry master, but the council is in session, so you are going to just have to wait-" The padawan's words were cut off by the doors to the very room opening.
Bly watched as a tall baseline human looking jedi walked out. He had a beard and hair pulled back into a bun. Bly didn't recognize the man, so he probably didn't serve during the war, maybe he had been one of the many who had died on Geonosis. That was a rather dark line of thinking and he quickly refocused.
"Master Jinn." Master Tholme said with a small incline of the head.
"Master Tholme." Master Jinn said and then his steps faltered as his eyes met with Bly and the other nine ARC Troopers.
They had gotten a lot of those looks from everyone they had past, though the smaller jedi didn't seem as shocked, more curious than anything. No one was hostile towards them, though Bly was pretty sure he had seen one or two of the adolescent jedi making aborted movements towards their lightsabers. He wasn't offended by it though, and Quinlan Vos had explained the history that the Jedi Order had with the Mandalorians, and clone troopers were basically mandalorians.
Bly was just happy that no one had gotten hurt yet.
"What is-"
"We shall explain it later Qui-Gon, now if you don't mind." Master Tholme said and stepped around the other jedi and headed into the room, all the while Padawan Eskren sputtered about it not being their turn.
Bly didn't see anything else to do but follow the jedi in, and he too stepped around Master Qui-Gon Jinn. The man was so shocked at what was happening that he didn't even react, and soon enough ten heavily armed ARC Troopers as well as a sleeping Twi'lek and a grinning Kiffar padawan had stepped around him and into the High Council Chamber.
The doors closed on the human jedi, and Qui-Gon Jinn couldn't help but feel that something had happened that wasn't supposed to happen.
LINEBREAKASDF
Mace Windu was not having a good day.
First, Qui-Gon Jinn comes in and has all but an argument with his grandmaster. That grandmaster being the Grand Master of the Jedi Order didn't help and having it in front of the rest of the council just seemed cruel. They had a hard enough time getting through all the daily business of the council and Mace didn't have the patience for another one of Jinn's rants.
The fact that Master Yoda was trying to push Senior Initiate Kenobi onto Jinn didn't help matters.
Sometimes he wondered what would have happened if he had taken Master T'ra Saa's offer instead of joining the High Council. Maybe he would be traveling the galaxy and actually doing good with his Master instead of sitting here and listening to endless debates over banal topics. It was hopeful thinking, his former Master would be more than willing to allow him to tag along, but he now had responsibilities to take care of.
He had made his decision, so he had to stick with it.
That didn't mean he had to like it though.
Mace rubbed his eyes as Qui-Gon finished whatever he was speaking about and turned to leave. The doors to the High Council Chamber opened up and Mace was nearly blinded by the shatterpoints that appeared. It came at him with such force that he physically recoiled in his seat, his eyes immediately snapping towards the figure, or figures, that were the cause of it.
The men were armored in white and gold plastoid that covered them from head to toe. It was a style that had similarities to mandalorian armor, though it was also distinctly different. The T visor that mandalorian helmets were famous for was absent here, and Mace knew for a fact that mandalorians didn't follow a strict coloring scheme, deriving different meanings from each color on their armor.
All of these men had the same gold and white on their armor. Everything about the armor was identical to each other, barring some extra equipment of course, and they all stood at exactly the same height. Mace watched as several smaller shatterpoints came into being around these maybe-mandalorians, and a whole lot more around the young Twi'lek among the group.
How very curious.
"Masters." Master Tholme greeted the council with a nod of the head, ignoring the rather shocked looks that some of the other members were giving their… guests. Their heavily armed and armored, but nonviolent guests.
"Friends, you have brought, Master Tholme." Master Yoda said.
"Yes, Master Yoda. And we have quite the story to tell." Master Tholme smiled, which was rather odd for the normally stoic jedi master.
Mace could see the veritable storm of shatterpoints that would surround these men. There were too many for a normal person, even force sensitives didn't have these many shatterpoints, and Mace didn't know what to think about it. He barely heard what the mandalorian holding a Twi'lek child was saying over the force of the shatterpoints on his shields.
It was too much all at once, all this information coming at him.
A part of him noticed that this mandalorian at a lightsaber at his belt. It was clearly not his own, the force singing a decidedly different tune compared to the man himself. Even more curious was the fact that the man had mental shields at a level of a jedi knight, yet Mace was sure that the Temple had never encountered this man. It was clear that he was knowledgeable about the force, and even more clear was the fact that the force reacted to him from time to time. His actions were in tune with it, and Mace believed that the man probably didn't even know he was using it.
That would be something they had to check later on.
"I find this tale to be a rather hard to believe one." Master Plo Koon said, the Kel Dor Jedi Master steepling his fingers together, his masked face revealing nothing. "Time travel as you put it is only a theoretical concept, and one that has not yet been proven."
"But it's true! There's no other explanation for it!" Padawan Vos said, before realizing just where he was, and ducked his head down slightly.
"My padawan speaks true masters." Master Tholme said, and the force rang true at his words. "It is the only explanation."
"I do find it a curious situation." Master Yan Dooku said, and Mace noticed that several of the mandalorians barely covered a flinch at the man's words. "The force is certainly agreeing that this is time travel."
"I find this hard to believe." Master Mundi said. "There is no other evidence that supports these claims, and why would the force send back mandalorians of all people if it were true? The Jedi and the Mandalorians have a bloodied and violent past."
"We're not mandalorians." The one who identified himself as Commander Bly said. "We may look like mandalorians and speak Mando'a, but we're not mandalorians. We're simply soldiers."
"Soldiers, who were cloned from a mandalorian." Master Yarael Poof pointed out. "You all speak the language, fight like mandalorians, and have similar armor to mandalorians. If one were to have only glance at you, they would rightly assume that you were mandalorian."
"May we get back on the topic of this meeting masters?" Master Tholme said. "Time travel is real, and we have eleven beings as proof of it."
"Jedi, you are not, yet a lightsaber you have." Master Yoda said, drawing everyone's attention to the Grand Master, and then to the man known as Commander Bly, and the lightsaber on his belt.
"It's not mine, it's actually Gen- Aayla's lightsaber. She grows up to be a Jedi Knight." Commander Bly said. Mace noticed that there were shatterpoints bending and twisting with the man's words. He was holding a future knight in his arms at the moment, and based on the shatterpoints, there were a multitude of paths that this young girl would now be going down.
Them all being here has thrown up so many shatterpoints that Mace knew that he'd need to spend several days in meditation to be able to understand it all.
"You mentioned that there was a war in your future." Yan Dooku said. "A war that the jedi were leading."
"Yes… the jedi were commissioned as generals." The words were nearly bit out. Commander Bly was the only one of these men to have removed his helmet, and Mace did not fail to notice the subtle defensive formation that they had taken up, putting the Commander and his young charge in the center of this circle.
"It is a dark future that they have come from." Master Tholme said. "I feel that the force has sent them back here so that they may prevent it from coming into reality."
"That is a very ambitious assumption to make." Plo Koon said.
"But it has to be right." Padawan Vos said. "They wouldn't be here otherwise."
"I believe that the padawan is right." Master Sifo-Dyas spoke, the man's eyes were wide with realization. "I… I've been having visions as you all know. Visions of a war, darkness consuming the galaxy as we know it. This… these men are proof of it."
"Sifo-" Yan Dooku tried to speak to his friend, but he was interrupted.
"I know it to be true! Why else would mandalorians be fighting along side jedi? Even if they do not see themselves as mandalorian it is clear that they come from a mandalorian lineage. There is a war coming masters, and now we have to start making preparations, the Sith are going to return."
"Preposterous, the Sith have been extinct for a thousand years." Ki-Adi-Mundi said.
"Actually, they aren't." Commander Bly spoke up. "The Republic is fighting against a Sith Lord in our time."
Mace noticed that the man was pointedly not looking at one half of the council chamber.
"Know it for true, do you?" Master Yoda asked, his expression pensive.
"Yes, he had a red lightsaber and everything."
"Speak more of this, we must, and meditate. Dark is the future, fear that we are not prepared, I do."
"We must also speak on young Aayla Secura's predicament in all of this." Master Tholme said. "Her situation is unique after all."
"And we shall, after a well needed break." Mace said before anyone else could do something stupid like drag the meeting on even further. They'd been holding sessions for five straight hours at this point.
"Agree, I do." Master Yoda said.
With that, the meeting was concluded, and Mace stood from his seat and rubbed his eyes lightly. The force certainly knew when to throw them all for a curve. Time traveling mandalorians who said they weren't mandalorians and a young Twi'lek who would grow to be a Jedi Knight. Mentions of a great war coming and the Sith returning, it was all too much for one day.
Mace noticed that Master Sifo-Dyas rushed over to the mandalorians and started a hushed but not subtle interrogation of the commander. No doubt the man was speaking on his visions, and though Mace knew the man to be reliable about them, he didn't fully trust them. Sifo-Dyas was an often-eccentric man who held ideals that were sometimes even more extreme than Jinn's.
One of those extreme ideals had been the certainty that there would be a war to come.
None of them had truly believed that at first, but with the appearance of time traveling mandalorian soldiers, it was becoming all too believable.
The shatterpoints were almost vibrating with anticipation, and Mace sighed as he rubbed his head, the migraine already coming.
He dug out his commlink from his pocket and hit the speed dial. He needed to speak with his former master and see about that special form of mind meditation that she'd always bugged him about. Mace could already hear the "I told you so" in Master Saa's voice.
Mace wouldn't even hold it against her, he had bigger things to worry about after all.
