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of masters and men

Summary:

Cody ordered for Slick to be locked up, but just before he could be marched off to prison, Anakin interrupted:

"I'll take him. I'd like to speak to Slick personally."

Alternatively: Slick's accusations are taken seriously for once.

Notes:

A plot bunny spawned in my mindscape this morning and it would not rest until I wrote this fic.

Have I watched The Clone Wars? No, and quite honestly it's not very high on my to-do list (if at all). Everything you can recognize, I got it from this episode transcript or Wookieepedia, though I did model Anakin's speech patterns off of the films as opposed to the cartoon.

Click/tap here to see content warnings:

Discussions of canon-typical enslavement, mentions of character death (don't worry, it's not someone you'll miss).

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

"It's the Jedi who keep my brothers enslaved."

Anakin looked like he'd been slapped across the face — he had always struggled to conceal his emotions like a good Jedi. But inside, the Force was screaming in his ears: Listen to him!

Cody ordered for Slick to be locked up, but just before he could be marched off to prison, Anakin interrupted:

"I'll take him. I'd like to speak to Slick personally."

Obi-Wan shot him a disapproving look. Anakin ignored him: this felt right in his bones — in the Force. "I know there are thousands of battle droids on their way, Master, but… this is something I must do. Rex, with me. Master, Cody… I'm certain you have it handled."


In a cell in the Republic base on Christophis, a decade-old scanner, looking like it had been cobbled together from junkyard scrap, buzzed against Slick's temple. Rex learnt how to curse in five new languages.

"Why are you doing this?" As much as Slick resented the Jedi, he would have never expected any one of them to react as strongly as his "general"'s former apprentice did, let alone defy orders, claiming to want to help the vod'e.

The rogue Jedi could only reply with haunted eyes, quiet as the whistling winds of a desert sandstorm: "There is always a chip."


A standard month later, CT-3733 was reported to have been killed in action on Christophis. On an unrelated note, twenty nigh-identical men from various battalions found themselves applying for sanctuary on Naboo, claiming that there were slave chips in their heads.

Six months later, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine of the Galactic Republic found himself removed from office. Having one's head hacked off with a lightsaber tends to do that to someone.

Notes:

I found out from reading the wiki that Slick actually said all that to the Jedi's faces in the episode — the fact that Anakin didn't take those accusations seriously in "canon" feels very OOC to me, hence this fic. If I were to see the episode as part of my canon, then Anakin definitely wouldn't be there for that particular scene — I personally only accept The Clone Wars as canon in broad strokes at most, in part due to characterization issues like this.

The clone designation number CT-3733 is one I made up out of whole cloth. And just as this episode is titled "The Hidden Enemy", there's a hidden meaning behind why I chose it. I trust that you can figure it out yourself; give me your best guesses in the comments and I'll tell you my rationale.

Find me on Tumblr at @eldritchdemigodskywalkers.