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“This is my first time on Coruscant,” the shiny comments, peeking up at an older trooper. “Any advice?”
“Avoid the Guard’s Commander, and you’ll be all set,” he replies, only half-joking.
The shiny frowns, biting their lip. “Um… Which Commander is that?”
“You’re talking about CC-1010, right?” another trooper chimes in, leaning forward eagerly.
The trooper sitting beside her scoffs. “You mean Commander Fox? I’ve heard he’s a real—"
“—amazing guy, you’ll see,” Cardy continues enthusiastically, practically dragging Dogma down the hall. “He’s always happy to see new recruits. Word of warning; he has a real resting bitch face, so even though it may look like he hates you, I promise his face is just like that.”
Dogma nods, swallowing heavily. He wants this to work so badly, needs it to work, to make up for the failures of his previous posting and everything that he—
“—absolutely ruined,” Boost complains, gesturing with his drink, unknowing when his exuberant gestures cause half the drink to slosh out onto the bar table. “And it was completely unfair, too! How was I supposed to know that there was a special parking permit needed for that level? Coruscant is way too big for me to know every little nuance in their political bullshit!”
“No kidding,” Sinker mutters bitterly. “We had to spend the rest of our leave in lockup just because some natborn had to go and pick a fight. The Guard are such—”
“—competent bastards,” Rys says admiringly, “This part definitely wasn’t in the schematics.”
Imposter rolls his eyes, turning his head away like that will somehow disguise the heat flushing his cheeks. “It wasn’t hard.”
Freak grunts, slugging Imposter in the shoulder and ignoring his yelp.
“Not for you maybe, Mr. Engineer,” they say gruffly. “Take the compliment. I certainly couldn’t have done this by myself.”
Imposter’s ears are turning red at this point, and he huffs. “Whatever. I didn’t do it for attention. I’m just sick of the Commander complaining about the damn thing all the time.”
“Well, Fox will love it,” Rys laughs, patting the new, souped-up coffee maker in a fond gesture.
“He better,” Imposter says darkly. “It took me—”
“—three weeks, and I haven’t heard anything from him,” Rex says, frustration bubbling under the surface. He knows that he’s just ranting at this point, but what else is he supposed to do?
“I mean, Fox is a Marshall Commander,” Kix offers, though it’s a weak excuse. “I’m sure he’s busy.”
“Busy enough that he can’t even take the time to shoot off a simple comm?” Rex counters, but then sighs, reigning himself in. The last thing he wants is to take out his frustration on Kix when the medic has done nothing to deserve his ire. “It’s just… aggravating. Sometimes, I swear that Fox thinks—”
“—he’s invincible,” Nightingale complains, rolling the wadded-up ball of bandages back and forth between her palms. There’s a loop of bandages wrapped loosely around her wrist, and an open wound that she keeps picking at. Fox, that bastard, actually had the audacity to scold her for that. “How am I supposed to keep him alive when he’s always jumping headfirst into trouble anytime I turn my back?”
“Mhm,” Victor hums, fiddling with the wiring of his prosthetic hand.
“I mean, how many times do I have to add screws to keep all his damn limbs in place before he starts setting off the metal detector at the Senate entrance?”
“Sounds good,” Victor mutters absently. He hisses when a tiny jolt of electricity arcs off his palm, cursing under his breath.
Nightingale runs a hand through her hair, ruffling the short buzzcut as she continues. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate his dedication, kark knows we’d all be dead without him, but running himself into the ground is not a good—”
“—solution,” Cody says, face grim. “The Coruscant Guard are good at what they do. Fox is good at what he does. But this is far beyond him. In my professional opinion? Keep them as uninvolved as possible. There’s no way this will succeed otherwise.”
Kenobi raises a brow, though he nods, making a note on his datapad. “As always, I will trust your judgment, Commander.”
Cody stands just that little bit straighter, pleased at his General’s trust.
“Speaking of the Guard, are you very familiar with Marshall Commander Fox?” Kenobi asks, a tinge of intrigue in his voice.
Cody resists the urge to roll his eyes. Kenobi can never ignore a mystery.
“We trained together for a portion of our time on Kamino,” he explains. “He’s harsh, but he knows what he’s doing. The perfect example of a clone officer.”
Kenobi hums. “I see. I had wondered, because an old friend of mine had an encounter with him, and he said that Commander Fox was quite—”
“—idiotic!” Thorn isn’t yelling, but it’s close.
Fox just gives him a blank, vaguely confused look, like he can’t possibly imagine why Thorn is being so mean to him.
Thorn takes a moment to breathe, tilting his head back as he tries to keep his temper under control.
“I was in the perfect position to take them on,” Fox says, looking for all the world like single-handedly taking on a group of smugglers is a perfectly logical thing to do. “We’ve been trying to get a lead on these guys for weeks. When would we get another chance like this?”
Thorn can almost feel his blood pressure rising. “Why not radio another squad to come with you?”
“I couldn’t afford to wait,” Fox shakes his head. Then, he adds; “Besides, it all worked out in the end. I can handle a broken leg.”
Now, it’s not that Thorn doesn’t understand his reasoning. He may have even done the same, in that situation. But the fact that Fox avoided going to the medics, tried to splint his injury himself and is completely unrepentant about it…
Thorn explodes. “Why were you even—”
“—with Commander Fox?” the trooper says exasperatedly. “Seriously, I gave you one rule. One. And you just go ahead and break it on your first day of leave?”
The shiny wilts, looking sheepish. “Well, I got lost… And when he found me, he offered to bring me back to the ship. I know it was probably just protocol, but he was still really nice about it. Maybe he’s not so bad?”
“Come on,” the trooper rolls their eyes. “Do you—”
“—really think it’ll work?” Dogma says quietly.
Cardy grins, gently bumping their shoulders together. They’re off-shift, crowded together in a single bunk, whispering about the future of Coruscant and the Guard’s place in it.
It’s a terrifying thing, to contemplate a future that always seemed so impossibly far away, but Cardy isn’t worried.
“Of course,” he says proudly. This is the one thing, in the entire galaxy, that he’s never had any reason to doubt. “Fox is our Commander. There’s nothing he can’t do.”