Master Kota had seen to it that Denon had a small supply of fitted space suits for Wals' use. The complication of a tail made simple refitting almost impossible. The armorers had fitted plates to it, pinning down the normally bulky and flowing robes Wals favored under brown-striped white pauldrons and an armored belt containing an atmosphere regulator. The bubble-canopied helmet, transparent to his lower jawline where it hinged open to fold back behind his neck, was tucked into a pocket beneath his voluminous hood. It still bounced uncomfortably on his back between his shoulders. He had finally asserted himself at the addition of armor plates to his tail, leaving a single hinged plate protecting his posterior joint, the rest of the appendage sleeved in the black undersuit material common to clone trooper armor.
The overall effect, with his sleeves tucked into vambraces and his sleek build trimmed tightly, made him almost seem comically dwarfish beside the clone troopers, rather than merely short. His cavern-adapted eyes squinted in the comparatively bright sunlight of Denon as he walked towards the shuttle, well wide of the procession.
By the standards of most races, including his own, Wals was barely past the peak of his adolescence. The expectations of the war wore on even the most seasoned Jedi, but he was still of an age where he grappled with the idea of mortality at all. He almost staggered at the sight, as the caskets flowed from the hold of the llooming Acclamator by the score. He struggled to contextualize it.
The Battle of Geonosis had been a blur, a disastrous battle for survival in the face of an unexpectedly resilent opponent. What had been intended as a show of overwhelming force to cow a nascent group of revolutionaries had turned into a pitched battle far more evenly matched than the Republic had been led to believe. He'd only attended one funeral, aside from a more general memorial service. Seeing Master Shay's casket atomized in the ceremonial pyre at the temple had been devastating.
He couldn't possibly multiply the sense of displacement and disassociation by the numbers that filled the boarding ramp. He couldn't bear the thought of all those troopers, brothers in more than arms, confused and disoriented by the grief. Their training and their shocking youth sheltered them, perhaps, from the full impact, perhaps better than his more empathetic Jedi upbringing, but he couldn't imagine it was any less injurious to them than it had been for him.
He mounted the shuttle's boarding ramp with a shaky hand on an overhead bar, dropping himself into a jump seat at the shuttle's rear with much greater weight than his diminutive frame seemed capable of carrying. He slumped forward in his seat and put his head in his hands, eyes squeezed tightly shut.
OOC:
Wals will hopefully be able to requisition a suit of Jedi Recon armor (CotR p. 56 [4000 Cr; R8] with an integrated Breath Mask (p. 188 F&D [25 Cr; R1] and Commlink (F&D p. 180 [25 Cr; R0], and the Vaccuum Sealed Attachment [EotE 195 [1000 Cr; R3]. Let me know if any of that is out of bounds.