#intel gathering

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。..・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. The Clone Wars. It hadn’t affected your little world very much at all really. You had the and routine that you’d had for years now. Wake up sometime in the afternoon, do your little daytime jobs, get ready for work later in the evening, arrive at work for the night and get down to business. You were a dancer, see, at a club in the less respectable part of Coruscant. The city-wide planet. You hadn’t been born here but you had to admit you loved it. It had an air of importance no matter who you were. Even the scummiest characters felt as if they played a part in the daily workings of Coruscant.

Even you played a part. A bigger one than someone may think at first.

You had a little secret, a hidden talent, if you will. You had a remarkable mind that allowed you to pick up on minuscule bits of information and piece it together to make a whole picture. All you needed was one look at someone and you could tell where they were born, how old they were, what they did for a living. You were like a master of people watching. Some may call it lying, or overthinking. The truth is you just knew how to be observant where others weren’t.

This skill of yours made for great fun when new prospective clients wandered into the club and you needed to figure out if they were any good. Were they going to pose a threat to you and the other dancers? Did they have enough disposable income to be paying the dancers after they’d done their work? You could garner all of this from a single look, a few seconds of eye contact. Sometimes the dancers made little competitions backstage in the dressing room on how quickly you could suss out the clientele for the night. You usually beat their estimations every time.

So, when five rather unusual clones strolled into the club one night, straight past the burly bouncers and into a VIP booth right in front of the main stage, the dancers came rushing to get you. At first, you didn’t entirely believe them, you had to be honest, the sound of five clones just waltzing in was a bit far fetched. The Clone Wars hadn’t touched your little bubble, why had it decided to pop it now? Curiouser and curiouser you became, eventually finishing your makeup for the night and getting into your outfit for the night. You were due on stage in a few minutes and needed a plan.

You sent one dancer to inform the DJ of your arrival and queue up your song of choice as another dancer helped you shimmy into a floor length flattering evening gown with elbow-length gloves to match. You were already dusted in body glitter to make you shine under the spotlights, all you needed was a smile and a wink and you were ready to go. You positioned yourself on stage as the other dancers prepared your entrance. A heavy velvet curtain was currently obscuring the crowd’s view of the main stage, allowing you to be perfectly revealed to them in spectacular fashion. Once the other dancers had given you the go ahead, the DJ began playing your song and the curtain fell away.

Once the crowd realised it was you, applause thundered across the club, men and women alike coming to watch your infamous show. The music was bumping across the club, drowning out any conversation and obscuring any that weren’t meant to be heard. There were movable steps at the front of the stage that you delicately descended, once you were clear of them, two dancers swooped in and removed the steps. Not that anyone saw it as they were all entirely transfixed on you. It was just you, the music and those five clones sat in that VIP booth that you had so swiftly avoided after coming down from the stage.

With practised elegance you walked across the floor, body in time with the music, sometimes lip-syncing the lyrics for a bit of fun. You chose tables at random and paid delicate amounts of attention to the people sitting there. One table held a group of younger men who clearly had the money to spend an entire evening with you, their suits were from a tailor in the more respectable parts of Coruscant, and they smelled of expensive cologne. You were familiar with the scents coming from them. You grew bored of them and decided to taunt a lone woman at a single table. The spotlight followed you diligently. The woman was excited at having your attention and flashed you a dazzling smile. Still, you needed to get closer to the five clones who had been following you across the floor with their eyes since you appeared.

As the song came to a close, you found your way across to them. You did one last twirl as you undid your evening gown, but in those few seconds where you faced the VIP booth, you had a closer look at the clones. The one on the very left seemed to stand out the most to you. If you saw him walking in the street you’d pin him as a strange one. His skin was a sickly pale colour, maybe he had recently recovered from an illness, he had no hair on his head. His eyebrows were brown, full and strong. His facial bone structure was very pronounced. His eyes were a light hazel, very beautiful to gaze at, you decided. He had little metal parts in his head, they glimmered in the spotlight, that’s how you’d noticed them.

‘Odd’, you thought, but then you caught sight of something beneath the table. A prosthetic arm. It made sense to you now, and as you made a millisecond of eye contact you realised that this clone was embarrassed by your attention. So, you moved it onto someone else. The next clone you laid eyes on was a timid looking creature. He had goggles over his eyes and an odd haircut, he was more awkward than uncomfortable. His hair was a soft brown colour, his eyebrows shared this colour but were less strong than the previous clone’s had been. They shared the same hazel eyes, however. He seemed completely uninterested in the entire situation and was tapping away quite contently on a datapad in his hands. Fair enough, not everyone was as sex-crazed as some could be, but he'd still chosen to accompany his group here... so maybe he was interested. His armour was also more white in comparison to the black and grey armour of his companions.

But, the clone in the middle? Oh, he was interested alright. 'Hungry for more' might describe the look in his (also) hazel eyes. Speaking of his eyes, you surmised that they probably scoured at people a lot even as they roved up and down your body, practically mesmerised by the dress. But his face told another story. A crosshair tattoo adorned one eye and a toothpick rolled between his teeth as he took you in. He had grey hair, which caught your attention. His eyebrows did not share the same colour, they were the same as his companions’. You guessed that if he could get up and leave his companions to get to know you, he would, but his own arrogance was stopping him.

Similar to this clone, the one next to him was showing a keen interest in you, his posture was entirely relaxed. One arm was slung over the back of the booth and his mouth smirked at you as you studied him. If you had to guess, you'd say he really didn't mind being here in the slightest, in fact, he was probably enjoying it the most. You'd bet credits he suggested going here tonight. His hair was a darker brown, it suited him, and his eyebrows were straighter, less harshly shaped. His eyes were hazel too, if not a bit more on the green side. Half of his face was covered in a black skull tattoo, and by the Maker did he look good with it. A red bandana kept his hair out of his face, clearly a well-loved accessory by this clone by the look of the fabric.

Finally, on the opposite end of the booth sat a rather physically impressive clone. He rivalled the bulkiest bouncer that worked at the club by far, and could barely fit in the booth, hence his position on the end. He had a scar on one side of his face that seemed to have resulted in his right eye being a different colour to his left. He shared the hazel eyes of his companions. His eyebrows were the unruliest by far but you wouldn’t have them any other way. It seemed like it suited him. The dumbfounded look in his eyes but open posture told you that he was happy to be here but unsure of what was supposed to happen. You were sure that underneath that armour he was just as muscly and able to snap the next guy that you looked at in half. He had no hair on his head, maybe due to that scar...

It had been mere seconds since you had approached the booth and you had your information, already mid-spin and undoing the dress for your grand finale on stage. With that, you winked at no clone in particular and covertly signalled the DJ to play another song so you could continue the ruse of being a dancer who was doing their job.

You picked your way back to the stage and made a show of getting up there in your tight evening gown and eventually received ‘help’ from two prepositioned dancers. They joined you in helping you ‘undress’ much to the amusement of the crowd. Finally, they left you and you undressed, finally giving the crowd what they had waited for. The other dancers watched on in awe from the wings as you captivated the club again with another performance of lip-syncing and acting. You did one last song in the newly revealed outfit that was daringly revealing but also very flattering and sensational before the curtain rose from its place on the floor and hid you from view. Whooping and whistling and clapping erupted from the club and you smiled devilishly at the awaiting dancers in the wings. “Well,” You began, walking over to them, “I think we’ve got some troublemakers on our hands.”

As you entered the dressing room the dancers that were available gathered around you to hear the information. .・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。..・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。. "So they're clones, right?" One young dancer with recently cut hair asked. They were perched beside you on the vanity, listening intently. "They are, but they're different, they don't behave like other clones." You were getting ready to go home for the remainder of the night, the club getting less and less populated as the night went on. "Strange," Another dancer added, "they seemed to be acting like any other man to me." Agreement rose from the dressing-room and you chuckled. "That's why I am the intel gatherer, not you lot." Another wave of agreement went around the room and you all found yourselves laughing. Only you could garner so much information from a couple seconds of visual contact. As the night got later and the club closed, some dancers departed and others were still packing up. It had been only a few minutes since you stopped discussing the clones when you sensed someone lingering, and whistled to silence the dressing-room. A whistle from you meant utter silence and everything stopped. You caught movement from the hallway that made you silently slip off of the vanity, you grabbed your self-defence keychain that was on the table. Only in a robe and heels, still dusted with glitter, you entered the hallway and found the five clones waiting there. How the bouncers hadn't thrown them out yet, you weren't sure. Another whistle from you alerted the dancers that the situation had been resolved and you heard the chatter start up again. Your self-defence keychain still remained in your hand and you met eyes with the clone who had the red bandana and the skull tattoo over one half of his face. Just like you'd told the other dancers. "Can I help you?" You asked with a hint of warning in your voice. You'd had to fight off plenty of strange people walking home after work before, and you'd lived to tell the tale so far. "You're the woman who came over to our table earlier?" Bandana asked, his voice rough as gravel. "I am." You replied with arms crossed over your chest. "You were only there for a few seconds, but it proved enough to tell the entire dressing-room about us and our jobs. That's rather impressive." Goggles spoke, the datapad now nowhere to be seen. "We like to gossip." You replied with caution. They knew something, didn't they? "You're also an informer for the Jedi Council about matters to do with the war, aren't you?" Skull face said slowly, as if revealing a great secret, probably because he was. Your lips couldn't help but transform into a tight smile as the words were spoken. So, they knew about you, they were here tonight for a reason. An interesting development, to say the least. "What if I was?" You challenged, leaning against the wall. "We would benefit greatly from someone with your skillset, I've done the calculations and-" Goggles was cut off by the tall, lean and moody one. He'd had a toothpick in his mouth earlier. "Speak for yourself, Tech," He drawled, "we work just fine on our own." You suppressed an amused smile at the sniper's comment and let the others talk. "We're offering you a place with us to help the war effort on behalf of the Republic," The pale one offered, "so what do you think?" Your eyes scanned them all again and you found yourself truly torn between the decision before you. Leave the club and the family you'd found for the war which you really had no idea about the state of? It would mean you were more than just a dancer with a knack for entertaining. You'd be fighting and working for the Republic, actually doing something with your life other than being an object to a load of sad men. "Sleep on it, make arrangements or not, we leave here in three days, you can either come with us or stay here." Bandana declared before all five of them filed out of the club's back exit and said no more. You loosened the grip on your keychain and returned to an almost empty dressing-room. You searched underneath your vanity with a