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Junmyeon would say he takes little pleasure in his job, of being the assigned rain spirit of a small rural region, but that would be a blatant lie. There are more plants out there that need his attention compared to the big, concrete cities, and the residents are a lot more respectful of his position. The elder ones anyway, who had grown up grateful for every drop of rain and each sprout resulting from his favor. As for the youngsters...

He watches from a distance as Oh Sehun slips, falling even further behind the other, older children. The kid is small now, but from the shape of his face and the lines in his palm and the alignment of the celestial bodies at the time of his birth, Junmyeon knows he's fated to shoot up like one of the trees Junmyeon's kept an eye on since it was a mere sapling, his body reaching for the sky even if he doesn't quite seem to have the disposition to do the same in his endeavors. Hopefully one day he changes, blossoms, flourishes into someone who makes Junmyeon proud of the fact that his roots started in this little town, nourished by Junmyeon's rainwater.

Right now though, he's the brat who picked his nose at Junmyeon's shrine though, wiping it on one of the pillars the groundskeeper tried so meticulously to keep clean. Spirits, even ones as old and wise and benevolent as Junmyeon, could not stand for such disrespect.

"Sorry, kid," Junmyeon says with not nearly enough sincerity as he wiggles his fingers in Oh Sehun's direction. The rainclouds that were supposed to water the crops later get shoved over and squeezed ahead of schedule, showering down on the boy's small body instead, and Junmyeon can't help but chuckle a little when Sehun starts to whine.

"I always thought all of Grand Master Yoda's people were..." Junmyeon's voice trails off, and not just because they're in the library and need to maintain some degree of quiet and respect. His face scrunches up as he tries to bring to mind whatever word he's looking for, twisting into that weird expression that makes him look a little constipated.

"Bad-ass?" Sehun offers, only to be rejected with a quick shake of the fellow Padawan's head. "Old?" Yet another rejection, though this one kinda startles Sehun -- it's hard to imagine someone like Grand Master Yoda as having once been a youngling. He racks his brain for more suggestions, mentally pulling up the images of both the Grand Master and Master Yaddle. "Uh, green?"

"Diminutive," Junmyeon finally admits in a muted whisper, covering his flushed face in shame, as if either of the two most skilled Jedi in the Order would care about being called such. Though, coming from someone of Junmyeon's stature, it is a little hypocritical.

As far as Sehun knows though, Junmyeon's initial assumption is correct though. He knows for a fact that Grand Master Yoda and Master Yaddle are both barely sixty centimeters tall, and from the holocrons he's checked out of their battles, they had both always been that size. In all of his studies, he hasn't come across anything imply otherwise, or even visual records of any other members of their species. The galaxy is a pretty big place though, and despite being the largest collection of knowledge in the Galactic Republic, the Coruscant Jedi Archives don't actually hold everything.

He narrows his eyes at Junmyeon. "You found out something, didn't you?"

"I got to meet one of the Master and Padawan pairs from the Silikan Stillness," Junmyeon starts, though Sehun interrupts before he can explain any further.

"That bookbarge that was scheduled to come in yesterday?"

Junmyeon makes a flicking motion with his fingers and uses his control over the Force to flick at Sehun's forehead without actually getting his hands dirty. "Don't call it that! It's a Corellian Colonizer!" His expression turns reverent, and not for the first time does Sehun wonder why Junmyeon hadn't instead turned to starfighters rather than archives given his enthusiasm. "But yeah, it's the one that docked yesterday. I went with Master Kyuhyun to help with welcoming the Jedi who've decided to stay with us for the time being, and one of the Padawans I met was... like Grand Master Yoda. Except tall."

Imagining a tall Grand Master Yoda is actually a lot harder than Sehun thought it'd be, and all he can come up with is a green, rubber-limbed creature with those familiar, gigantic ears. It doesn't look right at all. "There's no way," he immediately argues, "whoever you met has got to be another species. I bet they weren't even all shriveled and and wrinkly like Grand Master Yoda."

"Yeolda isn't wrinkly because he's like centuries younger than Grand Master Yoda," Junmyeon tells him, rolling his eyes. "But he's got the ears and the three fingers and the same speech patterns and everything. He's just. Really tall. Unfairly tall."

Junmyeon probably just means tall compared to Grand Master Yoda and Master Yaddle. Like seventy centimeters instead of sixty. For a species that tiny, even that small difference would seem huge. "Whatever," Sehun says, rolling his eyes right back at Junmyeon, just because he knows it irritates the other Padawan, "I'll believe it when I see it."




It takes less than a day for Sehun to see it.

"Sehun, you must be," the tall, green, giant-eared, three-fingered alien greets him with a smile that's wide, friendly, and utterly terrifying, "Yeolda, I am, but call me Chanyeol, friends do." Just like Junmyeon had insisted, Chanyeol is tall even by human standards, and he's not wrinkly at all. His skin looks as smooth as Sehun's own, his hair thick and dark, more like Master Yaddle than Grand Master Yoda. His amber eyes somehow brighter than any of Coruscant's three moons.

"Uh, yeah," Sehun mumbles, only continuing with his greeting when Junmyeon nudges him in the side with one of his bony elbows instead of the Force for once, "welcome to Coruscant, Chanyeol."

It's strange, having to actually look up at someone who wasn't a full-fledged Jedi Knight or Jedi Master. It's partially because most of the older Padawans they'd grown up with had left with their Masters to train themselves throughout the galaxy unlike Junmyeon and Sehun who had Masters and positions and paths of study that kept them stationed at the Order's headquarters instead, and partially because the few Padawans they did still see were fresh out of the Initiate stage, still younglings in the grand scheme of the universe and in their own cultures, yet to reach their destined heights. Even Sehun has a few more centimeters left in him before he stops growing, unlike poor Junmyeon.

"Very cool, Coruscant is," Chanyeol answers happily, looking around wildly even though Sehun can't imagine how different the Jedi Temple could be from one of the praxeum ships they have flying around the galaxy. There would still be Jedi of all ranks running around with holocrons and lightsabers regardless of whether or not they were in the temple or on the Silikan Stillness. Those things were basically entire cities on a single ship from what he's heard, even better maintained than most planets on the Outer Rim. "Looking forward to exploring, I am."

"We could show you around, couldn't we, Sehun? We've grown up here our whole lives."

Sehun blinks, probably for the first time since he's laid eyes on Chanyeol. "Yeah, we have. We could," he agrees, taking in Chanyeol's mega-watt grin. He wonders if this is what being under a mind-trick would feel like, except he's pretty sure no one would dare to do such a thing to fellow Jedi, especially in the sanctity of the temple.

But he's not quite sure how else to explain the foreign pounding in his chest, brought on by the sight of this alien and the way his ears curl and uncurl as he rambles nonstop to Junmyeon about training on a praxeum ship instead of a proper Jedi Temple, of his experiences throughout the galaxy on planets the two of them have only heard of in their lessons.




"You know," Sehun says later that night, when it's just him and Junmyeon again because Chanyeol had to go meet up with his Master to discuss his future training on Coruscant, "Grand Master Yoda's kind of cute."

Junmyeon makes a face. "Sehun, he's a millennium older than us. Please don't tell me this is going where I think it's going."

"What? Oh, gross, no!" Sehun's pretty sure his face matches Junmyeon's right at that moment, and he shoves the other Padawan's shoulder. "I just meant... His species? They're pretty cute guys. The ears are cute."

He feels his skin prickle under Junmyeon's stare, and not even in that nice tingly way the Force is supposed to make him feel. The way meeting Chanyeol had made him feel.

"Sehun," Junmyeon finaly says, clasping a hand on his shoulder with a strange look in his eyes, "be careful, okay? Meditate a little more on the Order's teachings and calm your heart." There's something about the way he says it that leaves Sehun uneasy, and he probably pulls away from Junmyeon a little more roughly than he intended.

"My heart is perfectly fine," he mutters. Lies. He doesn't remember ever lying to his friend before, not over something that wasn't like where the last pastry on his plate had disappeared to. "I was just saying. Don't we have to love and appreciate all beings in the galaxy?"

"Equally, yes," Junmyeon agrees hesitantly, his voice making Sehun's stomach twist into knots, "make sure to remember that part, too."

Maybe some of the clones were a little closer than expected, but with it becoming evident that each individual was starting to develop their own personalities, it was inevitable that some would favor certain other clones over others. It wasn't like loyalty within squads was considered a liability. Even their Jedi commanders, for all of their stoic codes and oaths to remain unattached and emotionless, still prized camaraderie and loyalty among their ranks.

Even if they were clones, they were still human. Not merely beings based off of one.

And yet, CT-0522 and CT-0408 -- who had chosen the names Junmyeon and Suho for themselves as soon as they and their cohort had been granted the freedom to do so -- were unnaturally close. Far too close. Close enough for more than a few Jedi eyebrows to rise.

"They sleep together," Jongdae pressed his palms up against his eyes as if he was trying to squeeze out the image of two clone troopers spooning. Baekhyun didn't really see why he was complaining, it must have been one hell of a sight and it wasn't like Jongdae had never been caught glancing at the ass of one of their assigned clone troopers. Whoever had been chosen as the newest template for the Republic's clone army after Jango Fett had been far more aesthetically pleasing than his predecessor. Not that Baekhyun or Jongdae's Masters needed to know either of them thought that. "I went in to ask Junmyeon to cover a monitor shift and they were curled so tightly around each other it was like they were a single person."

"Well, technically-"

"No, Baekhyun. No clone jokes."

"What about masturbation jokes then?"

Jongdae made a small, strangled noise. "We aren't even supposed to know about that," he whispers, looking around for any sign of their Masters, like the old guys were gonna strike them out of the Jedi Order for even uttering the word.

"Jongdae, isn't knowledge one of the pillars of the Jedi Order?" Baekhyun asked cheerfully, only bursting into raucous laughter when Jongdae smacked his shoulder.