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The first thing every shiny assigned to Coruscant learned was that Commander Fox was insane. Not “eccentric.”Not “unorthodox.” Not “a little intense.”No. Commander Fox was completely, utterly, irreparably batshit. And somehow this made him the single most beloved clone commander in the entire Guard.
Every shiny had the same experience eventually. They’d arrive on Coruscant fresh from Kamino or transfer in from another battalion thinking: “Surely the rumors are exaggerated.” And then within forty-eight hours they would witness Fox do something that fundamentally altered their understanding of both military protocol and basic survival instinct.
“MOVE MOVE MOVE—”
A speeder screamed through lower Coruscant traffic, weaving between lanes hard enough to nearly scrape the walls. A wanted arms dealer leaned out the passenger window firing wildly behind him, Guard speeders pursuing close behind with sirens blaring. There was blasterfire everywhere, as everything descended into complete chaos.
The shiny riding shotgun in Fox’s speeder was having the worst day of his life. “Commander, we’re losing them!” Fox’s visor tracked the fleeing vehicle, and he calculated the distance.
“No we’re not,” was his calm reply.
Before the shiny could ask what that meant, Fox stood up on the moving speeder.
“…Sir?”
Fox holstered his blaster, then jumped. The shiny screamed. Fox hit the suspect speeder shoulder-first at seventy miles per hour and the entire vehicle fishtailed violently, with the arms dealer shrieking inside. Fox physically ripped the passenger door off, then disappeared into the speeder in a tangle of fists, armor, and violence.
The shiny stared in horror. “SINCE WHEN COULD COMMANDER FOX DO THAT?!” He shouted into the comms.
“Forever, we’re pretty sure,” came Commander Stone’s exasperated reply.
“WHY DOES HE KNOW HOW TO DO THAT?!”
“He gets bored in traffic sometimes.”
Thirty seconds later Fox emerged from the now-disabled speeder dragging two unconscious criminals behind him. He tossed them onto the pavement, and adjusted his gloves, looking at the shiny. “Still think Coruscant’s boring?”
The shiny, who would soon be named Shriek, fell in love with the Coruscant Guard right there.
The second thing shinies learned was that if Commander Fox said, “It’ll be faster this way,” you were about to experience something that should not be physically possible.
“Commander, the suspect’s moving across the upper platforms!”
Fox looked up. Three hundred feet up, a bounty hunter sprinted across suspended walkways between skyscrapers while traffic roared below like an ocean. Fox considered the nearest staircase. Then the nearest lift. Then the side of the building.
“…Commander?”
Fox handed his rifle to a stunned shiny. “Hold this.”Then he started climbing the wall, not using their equipment or his cables. Just pure Coruscant Guard insanity.
“COMMANDER FOX, HOW ARE YOU VERTICAL!?”
The shiny watched in absolute horror as Fox parkoured between support beams, vaulted a maintenance rail, and launched himself across a gap wide enough to kill a normal person.
A nearby Corrie, named Catwalk, or “just Cat”, sighed dreamily. “Ah.”
“What do you MEAN ‘ah’?!”
“Roof pursuit.”
“That’s not a THING!”
“It is for us.”
Fox caught the bounty hunter six rooftops later by tackling him through a glass café wall. The security report later described the maneuver as“aggressive,” so the café owner got compensation. The shiny got trauma. Fox got another commendation.
One of the defining characteristics of the Coruscant Guard was that they genuinely believed Fox could do anything. Not should. Could.
“Commander Fox, you can’t threaten a senator with tax audits.”
“Already did.”
“Commander Fox, you cannot commandeer a diplomatic shuttle.”
“Counterpoint: I need it.”
“Commander Fox, regulations prohibit atmospheric insertion without support.”
“Regulations are suggestions.”
The Guard adored him for it. Because Fox never asked his men to do something he wouldn’t do himself. Which unfortunately meant the Guard’s operational standards became completely deranged over time.
“Is this safe?”
“No.”
“Are we doing it anyway?”
“Fox approved it.”
“Alrighty then.”
Then the incident with Palpatine happened, and somehow that still wasn’t even the craziest thing Fox ever did. Because the absolute peak of Coruscant Guard insanity came after the discovery of the chips.
The actual assassination itself happened very fast. Later, after it was discovered, that part surprised people the most. There was no grand duel or dramatic monologue.
Just one very exhausted Commander Fox realizing the Chancellor was a Sith Lord, the Chancellor had orchestrated the war, the Chancellor had installed mind-control chips in every clone trooper, and the Chancellor was currently reaching for a hidden lightsaber.
So Fox did the only logically thing one could do in that situation. He shot him six times. According to Guard legend, Fox’s exact words afterward were: “This is going to be so much paperwork.”
The reasonable response would have been to report the death, alert the Jedi, inform the Senate, and prepare for governmental collapse. Fox chose none of those options. Instead he stared at Palpatine’s body for approximately fifteen seconds before saying: “Nobody panic.” Which, historically, always meant everyone should absolutely panic.
“What do we do now?” a Guard trooper asked.
Fox looked at the dead Sith Lord. Then at the Chancellor’s robes. Then very slowly said, “…I have an idea.”
The idea was terrible. Absolutely catastrophically terrible. And it worked perfectly.
Official reports stated Chancellor Palpatine had suffered severe exhaustion, an stress-related illness, and had been put on temporary holographic communication limitations. As such, most Senate appearances would now occur remotely.
In reality? Fox was sitting in a heavily secured office using altered hologram filters while several Guard slicers conducted the largest political fraud in galactic history.
The most insane part was that nobody noticed for an alarmingly long time. Because apparently Palpatine already spent most of his time hidden in private offices, speaking through holograms, and sounding vaguely annoyed. Fox adapted frighteningly quickly.
“Commander,” Tinkerer said carefully, “with respect… your Palpatine voice is getting better.”
Fox adjusted the hologram projector. “Thank you,” he said instinctively, then he paused and his eyebrows furrowed, “I hate that sentence. Never say that again.”
The Guard threw themselves into the scam with horrifying enthusiasm.
“Senate meeting in ten.”
“Does fake Palpatine know?”
“Without a doubt; he knows everything.”
“Hey, who approved falsifying executive schedules?”
“Fox.”
“Did anyone object?”
“We were too impressed.”
The Jedi somehow took longer than expected to figure it out. Mostly because every time Anakin visited the Senate he walked into increasingly bizarre situations and simply accepted them.
Anakin had once walked into the barracks mid-briefing. “Hey Commander Fox, have you seen the Chancellor today?”
Fox, who was actively disguised as the Chancellor from the neck up on a giant screen via hologram testing replied “No.”
Anakin nodded. He said, “Cool. Let me know if you see him,” then left.
The barracks were left in silence before Thire whispered: “…How did he not see that?”
Fox looked equally disturbed. “I don’t know.”
By this point, every shiny assigned to Coruscant arrived already starstruck. Not by Jedi or the heroes of the Republic. By Commander Fox. Because stories spread through the GAR like wildfire. Stories about Fox fistfighting bounty hunters on moving trains, threatening senators with paperwork, surviving Coruscant on three hours of sleep, allegedly killing a Sith Lord, and then supposedly committing identity theft against the Supreme Chancellor for the good of the Republic, though those last two were more of tall tales in the GAR than anything.
The shinies thought he was the coolest person alive. Which explained so much about the Guard psychologically.
“Commander Fox jumped off a gunship once without a jetpack.”
“No way.”
“Yeah. Landed on a speeder.”
“How did he survive?”
“Death knows better than to take him.”
Eventually Fox stopped feeling entirely real to the GAR. He became more like a cryptid or a phenomenon. Possibly a sleep-deprived law-enforcement spirit haunting Coruscant.
Troopers swore he appeared out of nowhere whenever someone broke regulations, or threatened clones, or were involved in corruption, or drove really badly. The terrifying thing was that underneath all the insanity Fox was genuinely one of the most competent commanders in the entire Republic. Which somehow made everything worse.
Because if he were merely reckless, people could dismiss him. But Fox was brilliant, hyper-observant, terrifyingly efficient, and just unstable enough that nobody could predict his next move. So, naturally, every shiny in the Coruscant Guard adored him immediately.