Author's Notes

It's me, I'm back, no I did not die. I don't know how many of you guys are coming from my other story Eyes of Reincarnation, but to those people I'd like to apologize for the lack of uploads. When I started writing that I didn't really have a set plan or direction for the story and it began to get more difficult to write out where I wanted the story to go or how I wanted the characters to develop which lead to a lack of inspiration and consistency when writing it. I'm honestly not sure whether I'll come back to it or not. This story is different though, I do have a plan and direction I want to take it.

I was inspired to write this story when I was re-watching some Clone Wars stuff, specifically some stuff on Clone Trooper Fives. I started to think on what might happen if Fives didn't die. That lead me to this, a story about a Ex-Jedi SI trying to stop Order 66, not the first of it's kind I'm sure but I haven't seen any that utilized Fives how I plan to.

I do not own Star Wars as much as I wish I did

Feedback is always welcomed (just please be civil about it)

Please enjoy

Chapter 1

My world was burning. Everything I knew, everything I loved going up in flames, and me along with it, pinned under a piece of the fallen ceiling.

My breaths grew labored and painful, my lungs now full of smoke. My mouth was full of the taste of blood and ash, while my sight was growing dim and blurry.

My thoughts were of one thing, that I'm going to die, alone in a burning building that was once my home, the only thing to keep me company being the fire and my slowly burning possessions.

My life didn't flash before my eyes, not exactly, I simply reminisced and wallowed in my regrets, how I wished I had made more connections, how I wished I had done more with my life.

I knew it was pointless pondering such things, but there was nothing stopping me now, my future was filled with death, and my present with fire, so why not think of the past?

My senses slowly began to give out, my taste was the first, followed by touch, smell, and finally my sight gave out. My hearing didn't give out yet though, not for another little while.

My last moments in life were spent in complete darkness, listening to a song, a melody, slowly being drowned out by the fire. The Imperial March, providing a score for the finale of my life.

I listened to the song as that was all I could really do, and let it carry me through the last cruel moments of my life. And eventually, with the last note of the song having played, my life finally ended.

BEEP

BEEP

BEEP

My eyes snapped open and I jolted forward in my seat with a gasp, sweat running down my face, and my heart was beating faster than I could care to keep count of.

A dream, or rather a nightmare, the same one I've been having for years. The events of the dream were already mostly forgotten, although the flashes of fire in my recent memories told me exactly what it was, after all, your death is something that's hard to forget.

I looked out the window of my flight deck and focused on the waves of Kamino outside gently swaying, making my ship rock, a feeling I had long grown used to.

As my breathing began to steady, and my heart beat slowed down, I chanted a familiar mantra to help further calm me down, one I had been taught from a young age. If you can call it that, does it count as young during your second life?

"I am one with the force," breathe in, "and the force is with me," breathe out.

I slumped forward in my seat with a sigh, that's better.

I looked down at my chair's armrest, or at least, what was left of it after falling victim to the panicked force abilities of an ex-Jedi. Now it was just a mangled scrap of metal and leather. I sighed again, deeper and longer this time, that's going to be expensive to fix.

The familiar beeps of an Astromech drew my attention back to the beeping on my ships console, my scanners had been triggered.

"Right, what are the scanners picking up Ardy?" I questioned the droid to which it responded with more beeps and boops.

I picked up my binoculars and looked directly northwest from my current position to see a Kaminoan Flight Pod racing away from the factory a little to the east. Not entirely unusual from an outside perspective but I've been here long enough to know that no pods should be out at this time.

I kept my eyes on the pod, as unusual as it was there was still the possibility that it's not what I'm waiting for. So I waited for a few more moments, until the side of the pod opened up and out jumped one armorless clone, Fives, I reminded myself, and one AZI-3 droid.

Excitement filled my body. This is why I was on Kamino, why I modified my HWK-290 to float on water, why I had spent so much time on my ship with no one to keep me company except an R6 astromech. All for this clone, all for Fives, because he has the potential to change the fate of the galaxy. I couldn't get him yet though, he doesn't have what I need, not yet. For now I need the droid.

"Ardy, get ready to lower the ramp." I instructed as I made my way to the back of the ship.

I was going to need to take a swim. I would have just brought along a water speeder but the factory's scanners will pick up anything with more power than a droid.

My ship's ramp lowered, revealing the ocean surrounded view of Tipoca city, the very one I was about to break into. I pulled out a rebreather, I wasn't exactly going to need it as long as I didn't go under the water for too long but it's always best to be careful.

Walking to the edge of the ramp I let the force flow through and around me, concentrating it around my legs. I felt it build, ready to launch me the moment I let it release as I crouched down preparing to jump.

"Watch the ship while I'm gone, Ardy," and with that I was off, soaring through the air, covering distance at speed rivaling that of any speeder.

When I began to feel myself falling I quickly maneuvered to hit the water with a dive. I counted the seconds before I hit the water and as I felt my body fully submerge I let the force propel me along, swimming faster than any normal human could.

It was moments like this that made me thank my time, as short as it was, at the Jedi Temple. There's always been something freeing about using the force for mobility, watching the world rush by and feeling the wind, or in this case water, moving around my body. At the very least it helped ease the stress for what I was about to do.

At the rate I was going it only took a few minutes to reach my destination, a ladder to a hatch that led into the city.

The hatch opened up to reveal a storage closet, walls lined with food and medical supplies. It was one of the many in the city, after all they needed a lot of supplies for the Kaminoan citizens and the clones being produced in the city's factories.

I pulled up the city's schematics on a holographic display, inwardly thanking myself for stealing these back when I first arrived on Kamino.

If I want to retrieve AZ my best chances will be after Fives turns himself in to meet with the Chancellor, which means I'd have to intercept AZ at the City Embryo Room. Any earlier and I'd be interfering with Fives' gathering of information, any later and I'd lose AZ.

I turned off the hologram and made my way to the door of the storage closet. The hardest part would be getting to the Embryo Room without drawing suspicion. Almost all the residents on Tipoca City are Kaminoans, droids, or clones, so a normal human with brown hair and green eyes would definitely stand out. I could try to pass off as one of the bounty hunters hired for training clones but my best bet is stealing some armor and trying to pass off as a clone.

I looked around the room. No clone armor, they must be located in the armory, which means I'll have to do this the hard way.

Sighing, I made my way over to one of the powered down cleaner droids. If I wanted to take a clone's armor I'd need to get one alone, which means I'd need to draw one in here.

I removed a panel on the droid and got to work fiddling with the wiring. During my travels I had met a wide variety of people and picked up a few tricks here and there, though the one I was about to use isn't very useful in any situation except distraction.

Once I was finished modifying the wiring I hefted the droid over to a wall and turned it on. The lights on the droid lit up and the droid let out a few noises before running straight into the wall, hard and loud. The droid backed away from the wall, and ran straight back into it making another loud bang.

As I moved to a hiding spot in the room, I could feel some emotions from the people outside the room as the droid continued to run into the wall, confusion, annoyance, curiosity, but most just ignored it and kept moving.

The droid had been running into the wall for nearly a minute before someone entered the room to check it out. A clone with shiny white armor, probably patrolling the city, or maybe on a break, I didn't know.

It didn't take long for the clone to notice the droid hitting the wall. He quickly made his way over to it and knelt down to turn it off.

As he did that I quickly and silently snuck up on him and slammed my fist into the back of his head twice, the sound of him collapsing to the floor was masked by another bang from the droid.

"Sorry about this," I apologized to the now unconscious clone. But now I had what I needed.

In a matter of moments I turned off the droid, dragged the clone to my hiding spot in a darker corner of the room, and put on the armor. Thankfully I was about the same size as a clone so I had no problems fitting into the armor.

I picked up the clone's blaster and walked back to the door.

Taking a breath in, I stepped out of the room and into the hallways of Tipoca, and began making my way to the Embryo Room.

"Time to change the story," I muttered to myself, too quiet to hear, as I melted into the crowd.