I always watched my cadets' training. Some instructors felt okay about walking off for a bit. I never did. So long as the training protocols were in effect, I was there. My little pod of cadets also needed all the help they could get.

I started giving them nicknames out of age-old habit. We kept them between us, naturally, but all of my cadets had names. Twitch, Blondie, Hatchet, Desh... the names ran the gambit anywhere from affectionate jabs to aurebesh letters. I dubbed Cadet 65780 as "Shiny" pretty early on. He reminded me the most of a Clone out of all of the other cadets. he kept his head down, he listened, he trained, and he didn't ask questions.

I liked him.

He had just enough fire to be snappish when he needed to be but never enough to get him in trouble. He didn't care what the older officers thought about him.

Or anyone, for that matter.

He was there to be a soldier. He didn't have time for anything else.

He also took his work very, very seriously. I admired that about him. He was one of those kids who never hesitated to jump in with both feet and learn something new. Getting better was a side effect, of course, and before long he was one of my rising stars. It didn't mean much, but there were eyes on him whether he wanted them to be there or not. Had he had a family he would have been an officer. He may not have been a prodigy, but he was damn good at learning and adapting. He was almost as good as some Clones I had known in my life and considering that's what we had been engineered for, it's quite the compliment.

Today we had hand-to-hand combat training with another group. Captain Kesh's group, to be exact. The Commodore had stopped in to observe like he does and got to witness one of his star cadets get taken out by Shiny with seemingly no effort at all. I expected it. Shiny was training on droids with combat settings far above the designed level one that they were supposed to be starting with. He was easily on four or five, so seeing him beat Morrissey's precious winning bet was more than a little pleasing, though you wouldn't know it by looking at me.

"Captain Kando," Morrissey turned to me, all two meters of his smug, pretentious self, and frowned, "I want that Cadet to demonstrate his combat skills on a training droid. Level nine."

That made me stop and stare at him. I knew what he was doing. He was going to teach Shiny a lesson in forced humility whether it was deserved or not. I shot Shiny a look. All of the cadets had heard what the Commodore wanted and they all turned to Shiny, too. He had a brief flash of worry come across his face before he grabbed the training staff again in his left hand and gave me a nod before I could protest, "It's alright, sir. I can do it." He wasn't a lanky kid anymore. He had actually grown up in the three years he had been with me, but that didn't change the fact that the training droids at that level held little back.

And it didn't.

The droid dropped him again and again, and it was far from easy to watch. Even the other cadets had started flinching and looking away. The crack that was the sound of his nose breaking on one particular swing of the droid's heft arm made more than one cadet pale out and avert their eyes and when another quiet snap followed a particularly hard blow to his ribs, I saw Twitch - this mousy, rail-thin twig of a cadet - back quickly out of the training room to go throw up somewhere. Shiny kept getting up, though. Each time he'd wipe away some blood with the back of his hand or spit some out in an ever-growing puddle of bloody saliva just off to his left.

"Sir, this cadet clearly cannot-"

"Does he keep standing up or not, Captain?" Morrissey turned his eyes to me and narrowed them.

I knew what he was doing, and I knew why Shiny kept standing back up because he knew it too. Morrissey was making a point that Shiny was refusing to let him make.

Morrissey was looking pleased with himself as Shiny hit the ground over and over again, and I spun to him, "Commodore, stop this!"

When I turned back around, Shiny had pushed himself back up again and wiped a thin stream of blood from his nose with the back of his hand. Something in his face had changed. I had seen him do it before. He'd get this look in his eye that just told me that someone was about to pay for whatever they did. He used to get bullied a lot.

Used to.

And one day he just got that same look when that cadet that had tormented him for four months had punched him for the last time.

Putting it simply, he hasn't been touched since, though he has one single reprimand in his file and admittedly fewer friends than before for the obvious reasons.

Sure enough, he grabbed ahold of his training staff and gave a shout of frustration before he sprinted forward and slid between the droid's legs before it tried to take a swing at him. He swung the staff and hit the knee actuators, making the droid crumple to the ground as he swung himself over it and stabbed the electrified tip of the staff directly into its head. The droid spasmed and jolted before it collapsed into a smoking heap on the floor.

He still had that defiant look in his eyes as he turned to look up at the Commodore. The room was dead silent. Each of the cadets was just gaping at the ruined droid on the floor as Shiny locked eyes with the Commodore before he squared his shoulders and lifted his chin, "Cadet 65780 reporting that the exercise has been completed, sir."

Morrissey looked stunned, but his composure quickly resumed and he turned to me with a satisfied nod, "That... is an impressive cadet, Captain. I will be watching him closely."

Shiny didn't so much as flinch until Morrissey was gone before he let out a groan that stifled a long list of swear words in at least three languages as his knees gave out. To my surprise, it was his archnemesis, a cadet we called Blondie, who was over with him first.

"Sir, Cadet 65780 needs medical attention!" Blondie called out as he helped Shiny lay himself out on the floor.

"Kesh, get me a doctor down there now," I was already on the lift to the training floor as Kesh commed the doctor for me.

Shiny had a small circle of cadets around him, both Kesh's and my own, and I was more than a little surprised to see the cadet he had thoroughly pulverized kneeling beside him and helping keep his seemingly broken leg steady. "-is a bastard, Ruana. Wait until my father hears about this."

"Don't bother, Aabe. Morrissey will get his eventually," I heard Shiny reply with a shake of his head as he winced when Cadet Aabe readjusted his leg slightly. "Probably won't be me, but if there's a god out there somewhere, maybe he'll do us all a favor and get blown up on some Destroyer by Rebels."

"Twitch got sick, Ruana. Did you see him?" Another cadet chimed in as I shoved my way to the center of the circle.

"Too bad he didn't get to see you stick it to that ass."

"With a broken leg!"

"That ass is a commanding officer and you all will address him with the respect he is warranted," I cut in sharply and the chatter died to nonexistence. I looked down at Shiny, who was looking up at me like he was being kriffing inconvenienced, "And you quit looking bothered. You have a broken rib, a broken leg, a broken nose, and who knows what else."

"Yeah, and I need a bacta tube because I don't have time for this." He replied with that as he looked up at me looking like he had better things to be doing than, you know, healing himself.

I found him in the hospital alter when he was resting up from his float in the bacta tube and, once again, he looked inconvenienced. Most cadets would kill for a chance to rest up and be excused from training, but Shiny looked like he wanted to be everywhere but in bed. I pulled up one of the stark metal chairs and sat down beside his bed as he looked at me with one of those faint little half-smiles he would always give me.

"Congratulations," I snorted, "you've got the Commodore watching you."

I may or may not have let out a chuckle when I saw Shiny throw his eyes in a dramatic roll and a sigh to go with it. "Great," he half groaned the word, "because that brass tack is exactly what I want staring down the back of my neck all the time."

"Could be worse."

"How, exactly?"

"He could like you." That made Shiny bite back a laugh and snort instead, which in turn made both of us burst into a peal of laughter.

I don't get attached to my cadets, but Shiny is different. In those grey eyes, I see so much of Talen reflected back at me that it almost makes me wonder if the Force had a plan to saddle me with a Force-less Talen. Yet there's so much about the two of them that's different. Shiny is composed. He keeps to himself as if human contact would be a bigger burden than anything else, yet there's something in him that would make one fine leader if he ever felt ready to take the mantle. He had that way with people in a way that Talen had to try to achieve.

Shiny is a natural leader, but he doesn't want to be.

Talen wasn't a natural leader, but he wanted to be.

Shiny will have people follow him anywhere. He will be able to walk them into the fires of haran and they won't even ask why. They'll ask him how quickly he wants them to get there. Knowing him, he'll be right there with them.

That's the one thing him and the kid have in common.

They always lead from the front.

Guess I taught them one thing right after all.