#imperial watcher

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Every Cipher has to put a great deal of trust in their Watcher, if they are to meet any measure of success. They have to trust that they don’t need the full picture, that they will be given what information is relevant and necessary, they have to trust that they will be directed toward what they need to focus on, that the parameters set for them, difficult or painful or unpalatable as they may seem, will always be with a bigger picture in mind that they need not be privy to. Always for the greater good.

And Cipher Thirteen was part of a program that necessitated an unprecedented level of trust.

Watcher Five reveled in it. He was just as delighted as his new charge to explore the new possibilities that Imperial Intelligence had to work with, just as hungry to push the limits and test the boundaries. But his excitement came with an edge; a new avenue of power, a new method of control. One couldn’t exactly call him reckless, he was far too methodical in the planning of his exercises for that. But some might consider the fact that he preferred to test Thirteen’s abilities in situ as an unnecessary risk.

Five would argue that utilizing the full extent of terrain that Kaas City and its surrounds had to offer was invaluable in regard to training purposes, and he’d argued long, hard and frequently enough, with impressive enough results to back up his words, that Keeper no longer tried to curb and redirect his enthusiasm.

He was expecting the flight to run through without a hitch, as every other one had. Thirteen had been put through every area before, after all, just not following the particular route Five had mapped out for him this time around. Five had assured him he’d calculated it down to the second, boasted that if Thirteen could maintain a steady speed he could operate his side of the exercise with his eyes shut.

Five was confident, and Thirteen trusted him.

Five was confident, and he didn’t think the comm call from a fellow Agent would impact his response time in the slightest.

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Thirteen had been given the option of a running start, or to be pushed off the ledge. He’d chosen to be pushed, if for no other reason than to see the look Five got in his eye when he shoved him backward, naked, into the yawning chasm beneath them.

There was as much glory in falling as there was in flight, and Thirteen was able to experience the best of both worlds and everything in between as Five tracked his progress from his monitor and controlled his shapeshifts to best fit the situation. A man one moment, tall and lean and fit, a brilliant beast the next, impossibly huge and brimming with strength and chaotic energy. Then small and lithe, building up speed and angling his wings and body vertically to slot through a narrow pass, feeling the change come on again as he exited the crevice at the precise moment that let him kick off the rocky wall with legs that were both humanoid and reptilian, and land with precision on a scaffolding beam overlooking one of the great unfinished Sith monuments being worked on below. Wings turned back to arms, human feet found purchase on the textured metal surface, and then he launched again, ready for the agile hawkbat shape again that would let him catch a thermal and send him once more skyward.

He was ready.

Any second now.

Five was really cutting a fine line with this one, wasn’t he?

If he wasn’t careful someone working down there was going to see-

Five Five Five where are you what are you doing that pole is coming awfully cl---

Thirteen had trusted, trusted implicitly that Five knew what he was doing, that making such a close call was all part of the exercise. He encouraged it half the time, after all, the element of danger being something they both enjoyed to a slightly irrational degree. It was impossibly difficult to believe that his Watcher would actually allow him to become skewered on a flagpole over half a klick up, even if, in the last half second, that absolutely looked to be the case. He should have reacted sooner, but the idea that Five would knowingly let him be damaged was so unthinkable… Thirteen shouted voicelessly into the rush of wind as he tried to twist away mid-air, suddenly not knowing if the plan was for him to simply keep falling or to try and grab a hold of the pole; in that half second his body contorted, shrunk down, his holler turning into an animal screech, but he was already moving wrong and the next thing he knew was a shock of pain that nearly blacked him out on the spot, and he suddenly couldn’t move.

Reflexively, he tried to flap away, but only one wing was moving and that action blistered so much agony through his chest that he immediately gave up and hung limp, only for the pressure of sagging in place to become rapidly unbearable as well. He wrapped his good wing around the post, clung desperately for purchase with his legs and beak, and waited while stars spun in his vision.

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“Well make sure you send it along as soon as y-“

Five stared at his tracking screen and immediately ended the call as his heart leapt into his throat.

Thirteen had stopped moving.

Why had he stopped moving? For a few furious seconds Watcher Five’s eyes, wide with unprecedented uncertainty, roved his monitoring equipment. The shift had gone through successfully, all of his Cipher’s readings demonstrated that he’d reacted properly to the implant’s signals, his heart rate was up though and his…

Five didn’t bother looking any further to try and determine remotely what might be wrong. He was in his speeder in a heartbeat, traveling at a speed that would earn a six digit fine to anyone else in any other circumstance. And he knew; he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he’d made an error, that he’d let his attention lapse for a few crucial seconds, that he’d cut it too fine and he’d triggered Thirteen’s change too late. He knew, when he saw his precious hawkbat wrapped around a flagpole, that it was his fault. Shame and loathing twisted his insides into churning acid, and as he set his speeder to hover his hands were shaking. Thirteen’s normally green eyes were bright, solid silver, and he thrashed and cried out and hooked his beak into Five’s hands as his Watcher attempted to pry him free. His beautiful sleek body patterned in purple and gold was wet and red, and Five realised that the pole had gone through him twice, one of his wings wrenched and twisted and stuck taut behind him.

Five realised that pulling the bat free was not an option, not if he wasn’t going to bleed out in the time it took to get him to the med labs.

It almost took too long to laser cut through the top of the flagpole as it was, and there was smoke pouring from underneath Five’s speeder when he skidded up to the landing pad outside Intelligence headquarters, bowling the taxi droid clean over the edge.

Guilt was not an emotion Five knew how to handle particularly well, and in the days that followed he was absolutely intolerable. His temper was hot, and his was just as quick with his fist as he was with the sharp edge of his tongue. He made sure that the recruit who’d commed him during the training exercise was fired, for perfectly sound and unrelated reasons. The Fixer who’d asked too many questions about what had happened found themselves stationed on Balmorra for seventeen months. The workers in the expansion district, upon whom Five had officially laid blame for the incident in his report, found themselves with pages of new documents to fill at the commencement of every day’s work outlining all of their communication relays, so that their signals wouldn’t ‘interfere’ with Intelligence work ever again. The project manager who argued about it being a waste of time had a nasty fall the following week.  Keeper finally agreed to Five’s insistence that they fast-track development of a system that allowed the Ciphers to control their implants internally, and Thirteen was to be the first fitted with the new tech.

Thirteen himself was left wanting for absolutely nothing during his recovery in Five’s Citadel apartment.

And Watcher Five’s comm was set to silent. Never again was it answered during any mission in which he was overseeing Thirteen’s work… not that he had to, after long. Balmorra was getting awfully full of recruits who’d tried to contact Five at the wrong time.