Saturday, From the MCA to the GFFA

[uncertain_dume]

Kaidan was test-driving a new outfit under his armor. A bamboo-fiber quick-wicking shirt with a seamless design and a pair of cargo pants he’d adapted to have more updated fastenings than 21st century Earth. He brought the Eagle and his own Scorpion, as well as a duffle bag to store his armor in once they got to wherever they were going. In theory, they weren’t looking for trouble. In reality, he didn’t really go anywhere without being armed for bear anymore these days. In all honesty, trouble sounded like fun. He fully realized he was in Bad Life Choice mode.

He got to the building and texted Kanan to let him know he was there.

Kanan's reply text, at least, was quick and to the point.

Up on the roof. Come around by the front door, I'll toss my keys down.

He was just finishing up his walkaround of the Escape. for... roughly the eleventh time. He was taking no chances. It wouldn't do to have structural damage while reaching hyperspace speeds, after all.

Kaidan headed toward the front door. Squinting up toward the roof, he folded his lip between his teeth and gave a short, sharp two-tone whistle.

And Kanan, true to his word, leaned over the edge, dangled his keys for a moment, and let 'em fall. He figured he probably didn't need to walk Kaidan through which was the key for the front door and which wasn't - it would be the one that wasn't for Luke's or the school, obviously.

Kaidan’s hand glowed briefly and the keys only fell for a moment before floating down into his hand. He shot Kanan a grin and headed in the door. He only had to try two keys, because shut up that Luke’s key looked like a normal housekey to him. Kaidan really needed a better idea what ‘normal housekey’ looked like.

He took the stairs two at a time until he emerged on the roof. He waited until Kanan was in view and tossed the keys back toward him. “Reassuring the baby that you still love her?” he teased.

"She might have been scared out there without me," Kanan fired back immediately. And then smirked sideways and shook his head. "Making sure the diagnostics didn't miss any structural damage that could compromise the hull during re-entry. Or, hell, out in hyperspace. Going at faster-than-light speeds through a parallel plane of existence would be a bad time to figure that one out."

“I bet she missed you, too,” Kaidan grinned at him, “And yeah, hull compromises would be bad at even standard FTL. Everything ok so far?”

He kind of assumed it must be, or Kanan wouldn’t be cracking wise. There’d be a whole lot more swearing and probably his hands diving into his hair. It didn’t look as though he’d been tearing out huge chunks of it. Then again, Kanan wasn’t lacking in the hair department.

"She's fine," Kanan admitted, sighing. "If they didn't know what they were doing going up, they at least figured it out once it was time to park her again. The only real concern I have is the fuel." He shrugged, slanting a glance Kaidan's way before peering back up toward his ship's cockpit. "How do you feel about making that stop before we pick the bar?"

They could have... juice... in celebration of a job well done.

“Fuel is kind of necessary,” Kaidan shrugged, “I mean, the bar can wait. Running out of fuel if we need to make a strategic retreat would be bad.” Really bad. Someone might throw a rock at the Escape or something and he’d have to keep Kanan from introducing them to the term ‘severe bodily harm’.

“Did you have somewhere in mind?” he asked, “And, is this a purchase or, uh, requisition of fuel you’re thinking of?” He was down for either.

Mmm. Juice.

"A requisition," Kanan replied, almost cheerily. "I need to keep what credits I have for the bacta, not to actually purchase it, but to bribe those leads I have."

Mitsutada had better appreciate the lengths he was going to in order to get a supply that would last them any amount of time during their strange war through time.

"The more money I wave around, the more likely they'll be to give me a lead to a more steady supply we can dip into for the milk runs, too."

Kaidan huffed a small laugh. He’d rather expected that answer. “Fair enough,” he agreed, “Find some of the guys in their shiny, shiny white armor and lessen their load by what the Escape can hold?” A beat. “Ok, that rhyme wasn’t intentional. I’m in a mood. It’s a good day.”

"Is it, now?" Kanan smirked a little at him. "Well, good. Because it's going to either get much better or way worse in..." He considered for a moment. "An hour, maybe two. Depends on how close the portal dumps us off to an Imperial resupply station." And with that, he was hefting himself up onto the Escape's hull, making his way to the open cockpit. "An hour gives us time to work out a strategy between us for taking care of the guys in their shiny, shiny white armor. Mine so far has usually more or less been, 'don't get shot.'"

In his defense, it generally worked, too.

Kaidan walked up the side of the Escape to the cockpit and plopped into the second seat. There was nothing he could do to help with any internal systems check, he wasn’t familiar enough with the controls. “It is,” he confirmed, “I might be running on most of a full load of sleep for the first time in awhile, the weather’s nice, the company’s good, we’re getting off this backward planet, and hey, we might have some fun. It doesn’t take much to make me happy.”

He adjusted himself in the seat so he could watch Kanan do all his pre-flight. “‘Don’t get shot’ is what most strategies boil down to in the end anyway,” he answered, “Without knowing the layout of the supply dump or the area around it, my off the cuff plan would be the time-honored ‘look at that nice shiny distraction’ play. Smoke’s always good, people always want to watch a fire. Some sort of chaos is good but that’s less controllable. Throw some stun mines around a chokepoint, keep ‘em down long enough to get away.”

"I suppose this," Kanan mused, "is when I ask about what kind of arsenal you've brought along today." He turned a grin Kaidan's way as the canopy of the cockpit lowered over them and sealed them in. "The fun part is going to be getting the fuel cells from the supply depot onto the ship without getting the Escape shot, too. She's not exactly Imperial standard."

She was, in fact, a Separatist ship, back during the Clone Wars. There wasn't really anything standard about her, in the end.

Kaidan made wide innocent eyes. “Arsenal? I mean, pistol, mine gun, grenades, assault rifle.. That's not an arsenal.” A beat. “I left the sniper rifle, shotgun, and heavy pistols at home. Though in hindsight, I kind of want to see what you'd do with one of our shotguns.” Inferno rounds were fun, ok?

“What's the baby got for defenses?”

"Decent shields, excellent guns," Kanan said, shrugging simply. He didn't figure getting into too many specifics would actually be useful beyond what they could hold up against or blow up. Not with two entirely different realities between them and because canon only shows her blowing things up but never gives me specs about it dammit. "She can give an Imperial TIE or three a run for their money, she's got maneuverability they only wish they had."

A beat.

"And Imps don't bother shielding their one-man fighters. TIEs tend to go off like fireworks in a dogfight with her."

“Her guns manual or fired from up here?” Kaidan asked, absorbing the data. Not shielding a fighter would make it lighter, but it said something -a lot of things- about the Empire. He gave a mental wince for the pilots.

“So the main crux will be while we're on the ground,” he mused. “Don't suppose she has a cloak?” Kanan hadn't mentioned it, but it was worth checking. “Any idea what their security is like around the depot?”

"No cloak," Kanan sighed, shaking his head. "That kind of tech doesn't come cheap or easy, not at the size it would take to hide even a small freighter like this girl here. Guns," he turned to another panel on his ship, gestured to what was essentially a glorified joystick on the console, "are fired from right here. And as for security? Depends what else they have tucked away there on any given day. At minimal, there'll be regular Trooper patrols. Possibly surface-to-air weaponry. It'd be safe to assume we'd be up against turrets, at the very least, if we had to fly in too close."

He paused.

"Fuel cells aren't exactly light, though. We need to come in as close as we can without being spotted, or we'll have a long walk with a heavy load."

“Do you need me to take the guns while you pilot, comes to that?” Kaidan asked. “Turrets won't be a problem for long if I have line of sight.” He considered it, “Though if I could get to them on foot, I could just lock the controls down. That might be better in the long run.” Explosions drew attention.

“How close to the ground can you fly her before you have to park, and how fast can you park her?” A long walk with a heavy load while under fire wasn't ideal. “And how stable are the fuel cells? Eezo isn't something you want getting shot at.”

"I can kiss the ground with her wingtips if I need to," Kanan replied. "She will hold altitude even with the wings folded up again, but I don't recommend it. If you take the guns while I fly, all the better. I can do both if I need to, but having a gunner makes not getting hit a bit easier."

He paused, and then added, "I wouldn't want to get caught in a fuel explosion, either. A cell exploding wouldn't level the entire depot or anything, but odds that we'd be able to get out of the blast radius in time would be small. I could probably hold back a small blast with the Force, but doing that while surrounded by Imperials is a problem of a different sort."

Kaidan nodded, still processing. “Let's plan on me doing gunner duty, then. More useful than being supercargo.” Frowned, “Wish I had schematics, but I can head-map when we get there.”

Fingers drummed on his leg, mentally ticking things off. “Do your depots pick up the kind of pop up towns that ours do? Alliance depots are so bad about it, they usually become cities within a few years. Or do they try for more clandestine?”

Throwing Kanan an almost apologetic glance, he added, “I could probably shield us too, but that'd cause the same sort of problem. My general plan is to not use biotics where I could be seen doing it.”

"Yeah, I get it, buddy," Kanan replied easily. "Your biotics are too similar to the Force, it'd be better to avoid them completely if there's a chance someone might spot you. Wits are more than enough to manage most of what needs to get done in there." He paused, and then smirked a bit. "I should have packed up my armor."

Because guess who had once denuded a Stormtrooper officer and stolen his gear, Kaidan. Guess.

“You mugged one of them?” Kaidan asked with a chuckle, “Of course you did. Why didn't you bring it?”

"Why go in there looking like a smuggler sleemo when I can go in and have them salute me?" Kanan's grin was utterly shameless. "Makes things much easier when you can just tell them to load the fuel onto the hovercart for you."

“You look nothing like the sleemo, you have better hair,” Kaidan said without missing a beat. “And you left the armor at home. So you wanted today to be interesting, you say.”

Hey now, Skywalker's mane was glorious.

"Hey, this wasn't meant to be a boring trip," Kanan quipped, and after one more glance at the ship's screens, he nodded and started to lift her off the roof, wings folding down as he gained altitude. "Anyway, I don't think you've seen the stormtrooper white in person yet, have you? I wouldn't want to spoil that surprise."

Kanan wasn't sure if Kaidan would laugh at it or rant about it, or maybe just compare it to Stance's. Whatever the case was, he didn't want to miss it.

Kanan's hair was better and Kaidan wasn't even going to try to be unbiased.

He paused before answering. He had seen Stance's whites. “Haven't seen the modern armor, no. I'm familiar with what the island troopers wear.”

He'd asked Liam to let him check it out awhile ago. Kaidan hadn't really been impressed. There was bias there too.

"What the island's troopers wear is... functional," Kanan said, though even he didn't sound terribly convinced about that part. "The Empire's Stormtroopers have armor that protects them about as much as a TIE protects its pilot. People are expendable. There'll always be more people wanting to sign up."

Always. Maybe out of fear, maybe because they actually believed in whatever it was the Empire claimed to stand for. They had an entire galaxy to recruit from. Why care about individuals?

That was so opposite of Kaidan's world view. It made him smile a little - also Kanan's. “Well, I have an opinion of that whole ‘show the weak spots in a contrasting color’ thing, but since they're the people likely to be shooting at us, I'm not complaining about their lack of sense on the matter.”

He watched the clouds zip by for a few minutes. “Is it wrong that I'd kind of like to get my hands on their propaganda to see if the same tactics could be used against them?”

"What, see if you can turn people against the Empire?" Kanan lifted a shoulder in a shrug. "You might get the attention of a few people. You might also stumble across the one Imperial who'll keep throwing people in prison until somebody confesses to posting the anti-Empire materials. They don't actually need a reason to go around ruining lives."

“It’d be more a thought exercise than anything,” Kaidan said, “Your galaxy sounds like it has far more habitable and inhabited planets than mine. There’s a tipping point needed for..” He sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair, “Sorry. Side effect of the job.” Learning how to uphold the stability of a galaxy came with a giant heap of learning the ins and outs of destabilizing one. Kaidan was more or less running something in his head most of the time, especially with Balak being a dick back homeward.

He relaxed back against the seat as the ship climbed into the atmosphere. “In a way, I’m glad the Reapers were giant sentient space bugs instead of a government of any kind. Other than the indoctrinated, there was no us-vs-them within the species of my galaxy, it was all-of-us vs Reapers. Couple of the indoctrinated people tried to change that but they didn’t get very far.” Mostly thanks to the Normandy’s crew, and their Commander being a force of nature and cult of personality all in one.

"Yeah," Kanan sighed. "The tricky bit with this is that it's clear across the galaxy, it's people against people, and it wasn't so much a case of the Republic falling and the Empire stepping in as it was the Republic just sort of... being swallowed whole by the Empire overnight. It was one thing, and then the other, with the Emperor at the forefront."

Doing... well. They both knew what the Emperor had had the Troopers do.

"And far too many people still don't realize what the Empire means, yet. Or they're too afraid to speak up. There are beginnings of... something. I saw that when I met Hera. But they're small beginnings. I suppose that's the way beginnings are."

“Also the problem that it’s people,” Kaidan frowned, “which means that you’ve got people who are benefitting from the system and will fight for it because they believe in it, or the ones who are at a far enough remove that they have the out of sight, out of mind thing going on for all the shitty things that Empire’s doing. That’s basically where all civil conflicts begin.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair, “Which.. you probably already know. Sorry. It’s the stupid shit back home. Smaller scale, I’m looking at destructuring a mercenary band. Catastrophically. So that’s basically where my brain’s living right now.”

He parsed the information about the small beginnings, “Yeah, beginnings have to start somewhere. One of the phrases that gets tossed around a lot is ‘the hottest fires have the most established bed of coals’. I used to think it was stupid, because to get coals, you have to have a huge fire first. Except I was wrong, because actual wood charcoal is made by smoldering wood in a low oxygen environment slowly over a long period of time. The phrase made a lot more sense when I found that out.”

Kanan nodded a little, glancing up as the portal opened before them, and he paused a moment in the conversation just to direct the ship safely through.

"Nothing worth happening comes overnight, basically," he offered. "I can appreciate destructuring a mercenary band, especially catastrophically. Where the galaxy is concerned, I'd be afraid to see just how that catastrophe falls. And what kind of void it would leave in its wake."

He turned a wry smile to Kaidan, then glanced at his controls and punched in a command to start calculating hyperspace coordinates.

"Mercenary bands function on a slightly different scale from an entire galaxy suddenly left without a governing system. But... hell... maybe even that would be better than what we've got." A pause. "Or maybe we'd end up run by Hutts. The Cartel is opportunistic like that."

“No, it’s always good to have a structured governing system to fill the void with,” Kaidan agreed, smiling wryly back, “The problem with that is finding one that doesn’t just go the way the first one did. Something something power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely something.” He mentally saluted Baron Acton, even after mangling the quote on purpose.

“Taking the mercs out is like playing whack-a-mole. One goes out, six others are coming up. Destabilizing them, making them crumple and implode from within? Makes the other merc bands cautious. The smart ones, anyway, but they don’t send me after the stupid ones,” he added. Not that they really had to send him, so to speak. It was more of a hobby. “The other merc bands tend to take care of those without my help. I wouldn’t even be wasting my time on this one except it’s the only avenue I’ve got so far to the puppetmaster behind ‘em.”

He turned his attention to the window. He’d traveled with Kanan before, he knew what it meant when he began punching things into that console. Watching the light of the stars stretch into the void like lasers wasn’t something that ever got old for him. It was similar, if not exactly the same, as the Doppler shift a mass effect Relay jump caused.

Calculations complete, Kanan took the ship into hyperspace. The stars around them seemed to stretch and go nowhere all at once, for the longest moment. And then the Escape was hurtling through the blue-vortex twisting reality that meant that they were on their way.

Kanan leaned back in his seat. Not much to do from here except enjoy the trip.

"Like shooting at rodents to see which nest they scurry back to," he mused. "I'd say that sounded almost like sport, except I have yet to meet a rodent that goes out of its way to make people's lives miserable for personal gain. Even womp rats aren't vindictive, just hungry."

Nope, that never got old. Zoom! “I mean, it’s kind of a hobby,” Kaidan said, throwing his friend a lopsided grin, “I’ve got no problem with rats. They’re quiet, clean, keep to themselves mostly. Mercs could learn a thing or two from rats. Rats have empathy for their fellows, for one. I’ve met very few mercs who did.” He paused and then made a face, “No, that’s not accurate. I know at least one giant 1500 year old Krogan who has more empathy than he likes to let on. It’s just that my view is a little tunnel vision. Mostly I only come in contact with mercs when I’m shooting at them.”

Kanan gave a little chuckle at that.

"I've been known to take on a few mercenary contracts over the years, when things got tight," he noted, "but those were one-shot hits in desperate situations. I hardly joined some kind of mercenary band for it. And honestly, I was just as happy fixing farm machinery when that was the work that came to me." He paused. "Until I'd get bored and wander off to the next world, anyway."

Which usually only took a month or two.

Kaidan threw him a wry look, “I’m only surprised you could sit still long enough to fix farm machinery. Unless the stuff in your galaxy flies.” A beat, “Which it might, for all I know.” Hey, they had hover bikes, why not hover combines?

“I kind of miss working on machines,” he confessed, “My first tour with the Normandy, while we were working out the kinks in her systems, I did a lot of panel-pulling and monkeying around in the works.” Kaidan chuckled a little, “Kind of became a game. Race? Something like that. The minute a headstrong young Quarian lady came aboard. Tali, man, lemme tell you that you’ve never met someone as nuts for equipment tinkering. I had to start tagging my work with a chalk pen, then lo and behold come the next time I pulled a panel, TZnR would be written there, sometimes with a snarky comment.”

Winced a little inside at the memory of the SR1’s demise. Two years and several months before Horizon. He forcibly punted that thought wholesale. It was a good day, he was not going to let his brain sabotage it. “So. Sabacc - did you bring cards?”

"I brought cards," Kanan confirmed, reaching down to pick up a small bag he'd left on the floor. Not much was in there; some power packs for his blaster, a few ration portions, a couple of tools he'd been meaning to leave on the ship, and the ever coveted deck of Sabacc cards. "Alright," he said, pulling the deck out of its case and offering the cards to Kaidan. "Looks like we're starting from the basics for this one. Deck of seventy-six cards, with sixty divided between four suits; flasks, sabers, staves, and coins. The rest are special cards; two sets of eight. Each card has a number value. The four suits are numbered one to eleven, plus a Commander numbered twelve, a Mistress numbered thirteen, a Master numbered fourteen, and an Ace at fifteen. Follow so far?"

He hadn't even covered all the cards yet. Just teaching Kaidan the game itself would probably take most of the trip.

Kaidan nodded, frowning in concentration. “The number of the cards is odd. It almost sounds like an Earth Tarot deck. Please tell me they’re not also used for divination?”

Kanan looked faintly intrigued.

"The Centran Sabacc deck is, yeah," he replied. "I don't know the meanings of the cards for that purpose, though. Never really threw in with that sort of thing."

... Because he had enough headaches from the Force shoving visions into his head without looking at random chance with a well-shuffled deck of cards for guidance.

“Me either,” Kaidan said with a wry smile, “My mum had a friend who was into it, which is where I saw it. Liara has a deck that looks similar, but hers is used for Asari meditations, not divinations or games. Are the pictures on the decks pretty standard? It sounds like the Centran deck is different?”

"There are over eighty different variants of the game," Kanan noted, "and a few decks that account for that. But mainly, the game can be played on the same standard deck." He nodded toward the deck. "We haven't even gotten to the face cards yet. Like I said, two sets of eight. Each of those faces has a numerical value as well, but it isn't as straightforward as one through fifteen."

Kaidan eyed him. “You weren’t kidding when you said this was going to eat the dead time, huh? So the Commander, Mistress, Master and Ace aren’t the face cards. Interesting.”

With a nod at the deck, he asked, “How long have you been playing?”

"Ten years," Kanan replied. "Give or take. The troopers sometimes managed to get their hands on a deck, during the war, but I didn't really come into the game until after."

After.

"The Commander, Mistress, Master, and Ace are cards with faces, in that they aren't the pip cards like one through eleven in each suit are. But what I'm talking about are the other sixteen cards, the special cards. Balance, the Star, Demise, Endurance, the Evil One, the Queen, Moderation, and," he smiled wryly, "The Idiot. Each of them has a number in the negatives assigned to them, except for the Idiot, which has a value of zero."

So, if he bumped into Caleb again.. probably not something to suggest they play. Got it. “‘The Evil One’?” Kaidan asked with a brow lift. “So, that’s eight. What’re the names of the others?”

Kanan shrugged.

"Evil one. Symbolic of the Dark Side, I suppose," he supplied. "And the other eight are just those eight over again. So you have that many fewer cards to learn this way."

Lucky Kaidan!

“Ok, so two of each, got it,” Kaidan confirmed. Narrative echo is narrative and echolike. “How many cards to a hand?” Would he be able to fit the cards in his hand? Good god, that was kind of a massive deck. Though, really, he supposed it wasn’t that much bigger than a standard 52-card pickup deck.

"You start with two," Kanan replied. "Sabacc is a game of collecting cards to your hand, swapping them out if you need to. The ultimate goal of the game is to end up with a hand that totals either positive or negative twenty-three, without going over. You go over, you bomb out. The only thing that can beat a twenty-three in either direction is something called an 'idiot's array.' Pain in the choobies unless you're the lucky nerfherder who has it, it's the Idiot card, a two of any suit, and a three of any suit. Rare hand, and unbeatable."

“So kind of like Pazaak with a lot more cards. If you both wind up with a hand of 23, is there a tie breaker? Like, whoever has fewer cards, or whoever has more face cards to make up their 23?” Kaidan asked, absorbing the information.

He figured Kanan had said choobies just to get a rise out of him, so Kaidan ignored it with dignity. Either that or he was getting into trashboy mode, because that? Wasn’t a normal Kanan phrase. “And there’s two Idiot cards? How many people usually play a hand? Is it one-on-one or is it a round, like poker?”

Kanan was absolutely slipping into trashboy mode, yeah. With the cantina plans for later, and provided the supply run didn't go right to hell, it was best to get an early start on that one.

"Ties are rare, but there's a tiebreaker device for that," Kanan replied, smirking faintly. "Random number generator; the person with the highest number in case of a tie wins the game. And you might be on the fast track to winning only to have that changed right out from under you. The thing that really sets the game apart is that sometimes, your cards change. There's this thing called a Sabacc shift, scrambles everything, except any cards that might be sitting in the interference field - we'll get to that in a moment. Yeah, there are two idiot cards, and you can play the game one-on-one or in a round. It's a closest-to-twenty-three situation, or whoever has Pure Sabacc - the twenty-three - or whoever gets that elusive Idiot's Array."

“So the easiest cheat vector would be a sleeved Idiot,” Kaidan mused, thinking about it, “Provided they hadn’t already been played. There’s no way that’s gone unaccounted for.”

"Like I said... the cards shift," Kanan noted. "You'd have to either have that Idiot in a place where it wouldn't be subjected to that shift, or have another card that simply wouldn't. It's not an impossible game to cheat at, but it doesn't lend itself well to it. Having the idiot from the deck you're playing up your sleeve would just result in you swapping out to find it's become a three of coins or something, instead, otherwise."

He shrugged.

"There are ways to cheat it. There are ways to cheat everything. We'll worry about getting you playing the game before we get into those, though."

Because of course Kanan knew them. Didn't use them as much, these days, but then, he didn't play much Sabacc these days, either. There weren't many other players on the island that he knew about.

“Interesting,” Kaidan said. Solo was made of liiiies. “Sounds like it must have some neat field strategies behind it.” Part of him was happy to have another complicated card game to focus on. Like several other people on the island, too much downtime left him feeling bored. Learning things from other places kept his brain occupied in a more pleasant and positive manner than the entire problem of Balak did.

Not that he’d really stopped thinking about that problem, it was simply back-burnered for now while waiting for more data from Liara.

“Not really worried about learning the cheating methods,” Kaidan admitted, “I tend to pick those up pretty quick. Not to be able to, but to recognize when it’s being done. It can tell you a lot about an opponent player. How they cheat, when they cheat - the ‘why’ becomes apparent, helps define points of leverage.”

Threw Kanan a small grin, “Hernando won’t play poker with me anymore except for candy. It frustrates him, because I never need to cheat with the cards in my hand.”

"Hernando strikes me as the type to have a lousy Sabacc face," Kanan noted, smirking faintly. "Poker face? Is that a thing?"

Earth.

“Poker face,” Kaidan confirmed with a bob of his head, “Totally a thing. Also a song by an artist known as Lady Gaga. Don’t ask me why, strange artist names are apparently a thing here on antique Earth. Hernando’s poker face isn’t terrible, but he’s complete crap at reading body language. Or, rather, he thinks he knows how and I can foul him up far too easily.”

Kanan had seen it a few times, how Kaidan’s outward body language could be completely different from what was actually going on inside his head. “You’d think after the first three or four times, he’d learn that if he thinks he’s reading something off me, he should be a little wary. His innocence and faith in people is adorable that way,” Kaidan drawled.

Kanan has a few choice words he could have said about Hernando's 'innocence and faith in people.'

Instead, he shrugged.

"Some people have it," he said instead. "Some people really shouldn't be trusted to bet the ship."

That's why he quantified it with ‘that way’. “I'm a cynic, I don't think anyone should be able to bet the ship. I mean, I wouldn’t let them bet my ship,” Kaidan said.

Then he shrugged, “I used to be that way, unable to play a decent hand because my face gave everything away. Joker and Vega took me to school and taught me how to run a good hand at poker. Spectre training took care of the rest of it.”

"Someday I'm gonna meet more than Jack," Kanan mused, smirking faintly, and maybe, uh, leaving off that dead crewmate while he was at it. Happy thoughts. Happy ones. "Sounds like your people could probably school me in a thing or two. I mean. Might take a while to figure out what..."


Next thing that went out the window while Kanan was slipping into trash mode: Anything remotely resembling Jedi humility.

“I quake at the idea of you and Vega in the same place at the same time, and not in a good way,” Kaidan shot back immediately, smirking right back. “You sound just like him but you’re about half his size, width-wise. He’s a good ol’ barrio boy. Joker..” How to describe Joker. “Imagine a human-shaped creature made entirely of sarcasm, snark, snide, and a bunch of otherwise antisocial, misanthropic tendencies. Now, make that man the best damn pilot you’ve ever seen.”

He shot Kanan an amused look, “He could give your ego a run for its money. But he’s a good guy. They all are. Now, the one I want you to meet is Garrus. That’s just going to be fun. I might even put money on that. My own money, even.”

"Put money on something being fun?" Kanan looked amused. "I'm not going to take that bet until you tell me how, exactly."

“Fun for me,” Kaidan clarified with a small grin, “And who said the bet was with you?”

"If I find out you've already got money on that one," Kanan said, smirking and shaking his head. "Really, though, given how well Jack and I hit it off, there's always a chance we'll just all team up to break your head, buddy."

Fun for the whole family!

That was pretty much the bet he had in mind, yeah. Kanan and Garrus were going to get on like a house afire. Tali was going to run rings around them both. Kaidan was going to sit back with popcorn the whole time.

“Now, would I let you find out if I did?” Kaidan drawled, making a little tsk noise. “Really, Kanan.” His tone was still light but the words were a little more serious, “While Jack’s instant unJacklike behavior was faster than I expected, the result’s the same. I just figured it’d take her longer to see it. And considering how fast the most misanthropic of my crew took to you..” He gave a low whistle. “Buddy, you’re doomed, I ever haul you home with me.”

"I'm almost afraid to ask what it is you figured she saw," Kanan quipped. "So I won't. I'm guessing what makes me most doomed is the fact that I'll also be hopelessly outnumbered. I'm good, but even I don't think I can hold up against the combined forces of your crew if any of them are anything like you."

It'd be interesting to see just how quickly he either took to them, or was steamrolled flat by them.

Or possibly some combination of the two.

“I know what she saw,” Kaidan smirked at him, “She didn’t tell you? Aww, isn’t that a shame. Now you’ll just have to wonder.”

Kanan was going to fit in like he’d always been there. It was a little scary to contemplate. Kaidan also privately couldn’t wait until Kanan met Liara. Now, that? He wanted to be there for.

“They’re not like me,” he smiled lopsidedly, “They’re better people.” For a certain value of ‘better’. A Krogan ex-mercenary who’d taken over his home planet and united the tribes with the idea of, if not peace, a better way of life for his people in mind. The former C-Sec officer-turned-vigilante-sniper who was unofficially second in command in the Turian government because he was solidly reliable. A Quarian Admiral, who kept the other three Admirals in line. The galaxy’s top information broker who only ever used her power for good - and occasionally a little mischief. Vega, Joker, EDI, Traynor.. all good people. The best he’d ever known. Yeah. Kanan would fit in just fine.

Which Kaidan wasn’t dumb enough to say out loud, because Kanan - for all he thought he did - did not take that particular compliment well at all. It was true nonetheless.

“Heh. Oops,” Kaidan chuckled, “I forgot to email Jack to let her know I was heading into another reality.” Kind of on purpose so she didn’t ask to come along.

"Oh, she'll love that," Kanan laughed, shaking his head. "There's room for three on the ship, but only if she doesn't mind riding in cargo. Next time, you should invite her, see how that goes."

No, Kanan couldn't read narrative. But he did enjoy Jack's company.

Kaidan snorted, “She wouldn’t mind riding in cargo, but you’d have to put up with her bitching about it the entire way. Though if it wasn’t this particular week, I might’ve, just to see the look on your face when Jack gets unleashed on your reality. I’d have to get a picture, it’d either be an epic ‘what the hell have I just done’, or you’d be doubled over laughing. Either way, it’d be a good snap.”

"I'm picturing Jack against the Empire," Kanan admitted. "Hit another supply depot, watch the bucketheads run in terror once they realize they don't stand a chance..."

This was not a very Jedi thought to be having, Kanan.

But that wasn't stopping him from smirking faintly.

"Maybe someday."

“Bet on Jack,” Kaidan answered instantly, “When she gets going, there’s no stopping her. Short of enough tranquilizers to take down a..” He paused, “What’s the biggest, nastiest, most vicious animal you’ve got on your side?”

Kanan considered for a moment.

"Krayt dragon, maybe," he mused. "Sarlaccs are pretty massive, but I wouldn't call them vicious, considering they just sort of wait around for something to fall into their mouths..."

A shrug.

"We have no shortage of big and vicious. I'm sure she'd give half of them a run for their money."

“She doesn’t wait around for much,” Kaidan chuckled, “Like I said.. an amount of tranquilizers. Sometimes she can be distracted. When she’s on a tear, best to just kind of stay out of her way. She’d probably hit that supply depot like it was her own private party.”

Especially if she learned what the bucketheads would do to Kanan if they knew who or what he was. Then she’d probably invent an entire new sport: bowling for bucketheads.

“And? This is after she’s mellowed a few years,” he added.

"Sometimes I wish I could hit a supply depot like it was my own private party," Kanan noted. "Nothing would give me more joy than ripping that whole place a new one."

Well. There were probably things. But he wasn't going to get any of those things while trying to ferret away fuel that didn't belong to him, probably while being shot at.

Kaidan arched a brow. “Yeah, I could see it. I mean, I can’t see you actually doing it, but it’s a fun mental picture of you doing it all the same.” Sue him, he liked watching Kanan work.

“Alright, so.. we’ve gone over the cards and their baseline meanings. You keep making noises about the game getting twisty. Start talking, Jarrus,” Kaidan drawled.

Kanan chuckled a little, actually kind of thankful for the distraction from that train of thought, reaching to take the deck back and shuffling it before dealing out two cards each, face-down.

"It's easier to talk us through it as we go," he explained. "The game starts by calling out our card totals. Not the cards themselves, just what they add up to if you take what you're given and do the math."

He set the rest of the deck down, and then took his own two cards and turned them over to display them for Kaidan to see. A three of sabers and one of the Moderation cards.

"The Moderation card is worth negative fourteen points," he explained, nodding down to his hand. "The three of sabers brings that total to negative eleven. My goal for this round would probably be to bring it down to negative twenty-three, since three isn't a hell of a lot to build on, but remember, there are far fewer negative cards than there are suit cards, so pulling this down to a minus is still easier said than done."

“So it doesn’t matter if the total of 23 is positive or negative,” Kaidan mused, thinking about it. “Interesting.” He flipped over his own cards and looked at them.

"Right," Kanan confirmed, nodding toward Kaidan's cards. "Call your total? You don't have to show me what you've got, but this is just a practice round anyway."

Kaidan eyed the cards and shrugged, “Nine.” Then he flipped them back over so Kanan wasn’t looking at anything but the backs.

Kanan nodded. "You'll probably want to go up, then," he noted. "Unless you get a few really good negative draws. Now a few things are going to happen, here. Starting at my left - that's you however you look at it - the next player gets to choose whether they draw one or more cards, once you do that you can choose to swap a card in your hand with another draw from the deck, or you can choose to stand. Bear in mind that if you go past twenty-three, you bomb out and lose."

“The 23 applies at the draw, not with a swap?” Kaidan asked with a small frown, thinking about it.

"After the swap," Kanan clarified, "and there's another step before your cards get called, too. We'll get there in a moment."

“Ok,” Kaidan said, “So there’s a chance, if you drew over 23, that with the swap you could knock it back down. Good to know.”

"Right," Kanan agreed. "So go ahead and draw, bear in mind that you get one swap, and then I'll teach you a little about the interference field and the Sabacc Shift."

Because like this game was going to make it easy by letting you think you had some modicum of control over what was in your hand.

“How many can you draw at once? Is there a limit?” Kaidan asked.

"How many are you willing to risk?" Kanan shrugged. "Bearing in mind that your next card could put you over and a swap might not do you any favors, that one's up to you."

Kaidan shrugged and drew three cards. It was an odd hand, and only brought him to 15. He didn’t decide to swap any. “So now I have more cards and a different total.”

Kanan nodded, and then gestured vaguely to Kaidan's hand. "Are there any cards there you're particularly attached to? You can pick one to put into the interference field." He nodded toward a little device sitting near the deck. "That'll keep that card safe if a shift hits."

Ah, 'if.'

“Not really, but I can fake it since this is a test hand,” Kaidan answered. He chose a card, a 3, and put it in the interference field. “So what’s a shift?”

Kanan just smirked over at him.

"You'll see eventually. Is that your round? Satisfied with what's in your hand?"

Helpful, Kanan.

“You’re an ass,” Kaidan said in a friendly tone, “Yeah, that’s my round. I knock.” He knocked a knuckle on the table for effect.

Kanan answered that with a chuckle as he reached to draw a card, considered it for a moment, and then nodded and drew another. And the he reached to place one of his cards into the interference field - and sighed and lifted it again a moment later, just short of actually making it to its destination.

"There," he said, "is your Sabacc Shift. Take a look at your hand, now."

All of those cards? Completely randomized. With the exception, of course, of that three Kaidan had placed in the field.

“Huh,” Kaidan said, peering at the cards. “Ok, so - since that’s not you messing with me,” he threw Kanan a small smirk, because he wouldn’t have put it past him otherwise, “What’s the mechanism of that? If you say ‘magic’, I’m leaning over to kick your shin.”

"Kaidan, I don't blame anything on magic," Kanan deadpanned. "This is the Force."

It was not. And the way he was smirking probably made that clear.

Dramatic eyerolling ensued. “I suppose even the Force needs a hobby,” Kaidan drawled back at him. “They feel like paper, maybe plasticized? Are they chipped somehow?” He began inspecting one of the cards.

Kanan just smirked a little, held up a hand, and pulled one of the cards from where it was sitting using the Force. The Force also let him pull one of those cards carefully in two, a small array of fasteners drifting lazily around the two halves as Kanan turned them around to show the miniscule, complex array of circuitry inside.

"What, they don't make cards like this on Earth?"

“Nope,” Kaidan answered, leaning in to look at the circuitry, “Not at this time. They’ve barely got tablet technology working and affordable. Definitely nothing this thin. We have microtech in my time but I’ve never seen it used for playing cards.”

He continued to examine the circuitry. “That’s really cool.” It had circuitry and a power source. Very small ones, but they were there. That made them more than just cool, it made them potentially useful for a whole other purpose than playing a game.

“So the shift is random chance? Timed?”

"Random," Kanan explained, lifting a shoulder, hand still outstretched, card components still drifting. "It'd be much more of a scramble to get things done if we knew exactly how many seconds we had before our time ran out. This way, there's not really much point. It'll happen when it happens."

He closed his eyes, and slowly the components all pulled back together again, fine electronics work knitting together seemingly of its own accord.

He reached out and took the card in his fingers.

"Not every deck uses electronics to shift," he noted, "some are just dice and a different set of rules. But this does add a bit more excitement to it. Little more challenge." He glanced at his hand, and then smiled wryly. "Would've gotten Pure Sabacc if I'd gotten that card into the interference fast enough, too. Kark me."

“Pure Sabacc?” Kaidan asked, “So we’re going to go over the hands now?”

Watching Kanan play with the Force also never got old. Nice display there, buddy. Excellent control.

"Pure Sabacc," Kanan confirmed. "The perfect twenty-three."

Positive or negative, of course.

"But yeah," he added. "Now we show our hands. My turn's over, I'm either screwed or lucky, let's tally our results."

The switch handn’t really done Kaidan any favors. Even with his safe three, he still only had a total of 17 when all the positives and negatives were summed. “There’s only one draw? Or is this just short because it’s a demo? Or does the switch signal the end of the round?”

Look, he had a lot of questions. Turnabout is fair play.

"The shift marks the end of the round," Kanan confirmed. "You can go around the table a few times before the shift happens, it just happened to hit before I was finished my turn. If it hasn't come back around to the dealer, the rest of the players continue on until it does, and that's when we call our totals." He nodded down to his hand. "This shift wasn't kind to me at all. Twenty-seven. I bombed out, you win by default."

“Huh,” Kaidan said, thinking about it. “Sounds like a game that might involve an awful lot of screaming. If the shift ends the round before someone’s called their hand, anyway. Or do they? If you’d successfully reached Pure Sabacc, would you lay it down and call?”

"Not until the end of the round, when it comes back around to the dealer," Kanan noted, "but yeah, you can call any time everybody's had their turn. Makes it that much more interesting... is your perfect hand going to survive while the other three idiots at the table hum over their cards or isn't it?" A beat. "House rules might vary there, though. You'll want to know what variant you're playing by before you get going. Especially if you're playing for credits."

“That’s not happening anytime soon,” Kaidan said, shooting him a sideways grin, “Not til I get my head around it better. Though I will have to pick up a deck of cards somewhere so I can monkey around with it.” With a nod at the interference field, “How many cards can you put in there?”

"However many'll fit," Kanan replied, shrugging. "One per round per player, but if it comes around a few times you can put a few in there. If you're really lucky, you'll get your Sabacc in there and you can just hold until someone calls."

Or just call yourself.

Kaidan considered the information. “How’s betting work? Similar to poker, or are there rules for that as well?”

Kanan raised his eyebrows a little, smirking.

"Dunno. You feeling up to teaching me poker?"

Kaidan laughed, “You’ve been on Earth how long and you haven’t picked up pool or poker? Buddy. Kanan. How? Yes, of course I will teach you poker. Then you can bring your Sabacc face to the table and remove cash from the wallets of people who should know better than to bet on bad hands.”

He shook his head sadly. “And then blackjack, which is kind of like Pazaak’s idiot baby brother. Also a good way to remove cash from wallets.”

"I'll admit," Kanan noted, "that I'm a big fan of any card game I can use to line my own wallet with. My problem is I just don't spend enough time on the mainland, I suppose. Really should, given my cupcake addiction. I need an enabler like Rosalie in my life more regularly anyway."

“Hernando thinks I spend too much time there,” Kaidan shrugged, “He’s all ‘but the island is so great why would you want to leave’, meanwhile I’m all ‘think I’ll go free-run through the streets of Baltimore at 3am’.”

That wasn’t the wisest life choice he’d ever made. Then again, he’d never been bothered by anyone. It let him burn off whatever was in his head without worrying that he was keeping someone awake with it.

“There’s at least one casino up Jersey-way that I’m not going back to anytime soon,” Kaidan said wryly, “but it’s not the only one on the mainland. We can head out sometime and introduce you to the wide world of idiots who think they have a good poker face.” There were.. Kanan, there were so many idiots like that.

“Stance’ll be happy,” Kaidan teased him after a minute, “You start eating more cupcakes, you’re gonna need to run just that much more. Rosalie and her kids are good people, though, so consider this my enabling.”

"Hernando thinks the island is great?" Kanan sounded a little bit baffled by that, yes. "I mean, I'll be the first to say I'm not planning on leaving it any time soon, but the only reason I came back to the island after I was capable of getting back home again is because I needed a home base that isn't in danger of crawling with Imperials any time soon." Kanan frowned. "Fandom's fine, but actual civilization every now and again is nice, too."

Plus, cupcakes.

"I've been trying to pare back on the sugar some," Kanan added, wryly. "You hear enough people express concerns about your pancreas, you start to wonder if maybe just losing all the vices wouldn't be a bad idea after all."

“Yup,” Kaidan confirmed, shaking his head a little, “Even after all the shit, he’s still pretty much in love with the crazy rock we inhabit. I can kind of understand it. He grew up on a human-only Earth. On the island, he’s met people from all sorts of realities and, for the most part, they’re generally not assholes.”

It was one reason this version of Earth bugged him so much - all humans, all the time. He wasn’t used to being on a planet without the familiarity of Salarians, Asari, and Turians walking around.

“You know I’m just giving you shit about the sugar, right?” Kaidan asked, eyeing his friend, “You don’t exactly carry around any extra padding, and I’ve seen you eat, which means your metabolism’s probably high enough to handle whatever you throw at it. If you lose all your vices, you’re going to be unfit to live with. You’ll start drinking kale smoothies and talking to us all about the wonderful benefits of essential oils and organic foods and I’ll have to stab you as a public service - if someone else doesn’t beat me to it.”

After a moment, he continued, “Besides, I’d rather have you eating every sugar-coated everything in sight if it makes you happy. You have enough days where you’re not.” Caring, of a sort. Macho bullshit, of another, because he wasn’t exactly saying all the things he meant when he condensed it like that.

"I'm not supposed to indulge too much, anyway," Kanan noted, smiling wryly. "Life free of material wants, yadda yadda... One of these days I'll actually start acting like a Jedi, and then people will worry if I'm ill, I'm sure."

A pause.

"Until that day, I intend to enjoy what I've got. So long as it doesn't hurt anyone."

Cupcakes yes. Drinking no.

Kaidan arched a brow, “You hardly indulge at all. Though now I’m curious what a Kanan ‘too much’ sugar binge would even look like.” He paused to consider it, then threw Kanan a look and just snickered. “Probably like that time Atton fixed you a, what was it? Liquid Pixie Stix drink? The same week you were trying to eat a giant gummi bear?”

Drinking definitely no. Kaidan was a little worried about the other end of this trip, if a cantina was involved. He trusted Kanan - he didn’t trust bartenders. He’d met too many of them.

"Even I can admit that was a bit too much," Kanan allowed. And then chuckled and shook his head a little. "Still have most of that first bear sitting in the freezer, I'm probably set on candy for quite some time."

He glanced at the readings on his console for a moment, and then sighed a little.

"Probably about twenty minutes before we're there. Even odds we'll hit some kind of Imperial security detail before we even hit atmosphere."

“Things likely to get dicey right off, or will they just watch us?” Kaidan asked, expecting the former from the sigh.

"Depends on how bored they're feeling," Kanan replied, honestly enough. "I have plenty of fake credentials that'll check out just fine, but the Empire never needs a good excuse to try to shoot a ship out of the sky if they can come up with the smallest justification. 'They were in the way' was one I've seen all too recently."

Kaidan grimaced. “Not that I needed more reason, but really not liking this Empire, buddy.” Understatement is understated and statementlike. “That’s shitty pilot training and even shittier military discipline right there.” Yup. Professionally critiquing the Empire and finding it lacking. “Goal for the day: Not get shot out of the sky. What’s the play if they do start firing? Dodge and run or do we get to shoot back?”

"Depends," Kanan replied, "on if they feel like following. And what kind of ship is doing the shooting. A fight with a squadron of TIEs is one thing, there's not much we'd be able to do against a Star Destroyer, or a Gozanti Cruiser."

Well. The Escape had helped take down a Gozanti before, but it had been without shields entirely at the time.

“You’d have maneuverability against a bigger ship,” Kaidan mused, “Here’s hoping you’re as good a pilot as you think you are.” Which, he figured, Kanan probably was if he’d kept his skin and his ship intact this long. He also assumed that while traveling with Hera, who Kanan had identified as the best pilot he’d met, he’d probably learned at least a few tricks. Kaidan certainly had from Steve and Joker.

“TIEs are fair game?” he asked after a moment.

"I'm at least half as good as I think I am," Kanan replied, smirking. "But yeah... TIEs are fair game if they're coming at us. I'm not putting my baby on a watch list if I don't have to, either."

Kaidan grinned over at him. “Well, yeah. I kind of meant if they come at us all pew-pew-pew’ing. I generally don’t fire at ships that aren’t already firing at me.” A beat. “Unless they’re Cerberus. They’re flying those colors, I’ll fire at will. But you don’t even have Cerberus in your galaxy, so.”

"So that's a moot point?" Kanan shrugged and nodded. "But yeah, anything that shoots at us, we return fire. Hopefully while I still have an opening to punch back into hyperspace. We can't afford for TIEs to cut us off, there'd be no getting out of here if they did."

“Thankfully, yeah, moot point,” Kaidan agreed. “Mostly just a thought. They’re the humano-centric assholes in my galaxy. My brain’s correlating the things you’re telling me about the Empire with the assholes I know and hate back home.” He thought about it a minute. “You have a secondary fuel depot to bounce to, comes to that?”

"I've got a list," Kanan agreed. "The trick is figuring out which one we can bounce to that I actually have enough fuel to travel to in the first place."

... So, basically, there wasn't really a margin for error, here.

"If this one doesn't work out, I'll probably take us around to Moraga, dock her there for a while with an old friend of mine," the first person to ever know Kanan Jarrus, in fact, "and then we bum around his neck of the galaxy until it's time to head home through a direct portal. Simplest contingency plan until I can afford to top up the fuel legitimately."

“There’s always the option of hopping home, grabbing the Prothean and heading directly back through a portal to the fuel depots, if Portolocity can get the coordinates that close. I mean, I don’t have a hyperdrive in the thing,” yet, give him time, “but it has FTL and plenty of cargo space,” Kaidan offered. “Less maneuverable than the Escape due to size but she still handles pretty well.”

"She'd also stand out like a sore thumb," Kanan noted, frowning in thought. "At least with a modified freighter, the base is something familiar. The Prothean is entirely new. We'd have everybody's attention, then."

He leaned his head back in thought.

"Which could be useful as a distraction under different circumstances, now that I think of it..."

“She can also carry the Escape,” Kaidan pointed out, “so if we need to bounce back before you’re actually flying on fumes, that’d be one way to spare some.”

He eyed Kanan with amusement. “I mean, I kind of did want to see how kinetic barriers hold up against blaster fire, though this isn’t the ideal way to do that.”

Kanan snorted and shook his head, rife with amusement of his own.

"Ideally, I'd be testing the guns on my ship against your barriers in an environment we can both control," he agreed. "Any time you want to play around with that conundrum, we can park 'em somewhere save and give that a test run. Not," he added, "that I'm up and raring to shoot at you."

He figured it wouldn't hurt that the Prothean was more than massive enough to stand up pretty well to the Escape's guns, shields or no. Especially in atmosphere, with full control over the power Kanan was putting into his blasters.

“Oh, I’m sure you have your days,” Kaidan drawled at him, then grinned, “Yeah, someday we should do that, just to see if there’s any calibrating necessary. Not really itching to get her shot at, but the optional secondary ship was a thing. There’s also the shuttle, but I’m not sure even that conforms enough to shuttle standards in your neck of the woods.”

Boxy little thing that the Kodiak was. He lifted a shoulder, “Guess I’ll get a better education today, huh?”

"Guess so," Kanan agreed. "Three minutes until we drop out of hyperspace. It'll be a great education pretty much immediately, most likely."

“You take me to the best places,” Kaidan said with a dramatic dreamy sigh.

"Yeah, buddy," Kanan laughed, setting the Sabacc deck to the side and turning to lean back over the ship's controls, "that's because I care."

He could only hope that they wouldn't drop out of hyperspace directly in the middle of, as they say, 'the shit.'

Knowing his luck, it could go either way.

Kaidan grinned over at him and leaned back, strapping in and buckling up just in case. He put his hand near but not on the trigger mechanism. “I almost feel like we should have some sort of dramatic music,” he mused, “You have a…” He paused, considered what kind of music Kanan said he liked and then hastily added, “Nevermind. I’ll bring one next time.”

The most dangerous two words in geek language: roll init.

"Can't fight an evil Empire without dramatic background music? That's a new one to me," Kanan mused.

He maybe hadn't spent nearly enough of his life just getting into bad action holos. He could appreciate the quip because of the ones he had seen, but not nearly enough.

“Can’t come out of hyperspace or through a relay jump without dramatic music when you have no telemetry about what awaits on the other side,” Kaidan clarified. “Fighting an evil Empire definitely requires music but that’s something that I feel should be more carefully curated than the anxiety-drumming ‘what will our heroes encounter next’ music of a jump through the void.”

Someone was maybe a little too cheerful about this.

“It’s also a requirement that if we cause a big explosion in the background that we walk slowly away from it to the tune of thumping bass,” he said. “I mean, usually when I know something behind me is going to blow the hell up, I kind of run? But I wasn’t abreast of the rules until a few weeks ago. Slow walk, casual-like, to the tune of loud bass.”

"That mostly sounds like a great way to get your ass burned, to me," Kanan admitted.

“That’s what the kinetic barriers are for,” Kaidan agreed, “Super useful, those.” Even non-biotic armor was equipped with a form of kinetic barrier in his galaxy. Someday, Kaidan was going to see what the GFFA offered up as armor and he was going to side-eye so hard at everyone except Mandalorians.

"I'm going to have to get my hands on those, aren't I?" Kanan, after all, wasn't a great fan of getting his ass burned. "How else am I ever going to be properly dramatic?"

Especially since he didn't wear robes.

Or a cloak! But that’s because he was smart. “Did you want armor?” Kaidan asked, a little surprised, “I kept asking you why you only wore the partial for a reason, buddy.”

"I'll tell you what," Kanan teased. "If I ever find myself in a situation where I absolutely have to walk slowly away from a large explosion, I'll get back to you on that one."

Someday, as a bodiless presence in the Force, Kanan was going to look back on this day and kick himself.

"For the time being-- let's see what's on the other side of this hyperspace jump, shall we?"

And just like that, the ship punched out of the blue vortex, leaving space around them, dotted with stars, with a small brownish planet down below them.

Well, Kanan hadn’t immediately started swearing, so that had to be good, right? Kaidan gave his brain a second to adjust to the strange sort of silence that followed a hyperspace jump. It had a different sort of hum than a mass relay jump but the sudden cessation always jarred him a little. Kaidan eyed the planet below. “Where are we?”

"Rocky little world called Jelucan," Kanan replied, looking at his scanners to make damn sure there weren't any Imperial ships just hanging out somewhere in his blind spot. "It was annexed by the Empire a couple of years ago. Little too rocky, little too cold for them to have much out here just yet, but that just means that their outposts are too far apart here for them to be able to get quick reinforcements if we do come in fast and give 'em hell."

“How’s the telemetry?” Kaidan asked, watching Kanan read the data. “And, provided we haven’t been spotted, what’s the plan? Go in hot or go in sneaky?”

"We're going to be outgunned if we go in hot," Kanan replied, frowning thoughtfully. "Even if they don't see us coming, there'll probably be more than enough troopers and ships to handle one light freighter and the two idiots who are in it. Better to get as close as we can, sneak our way in. There's some rough terrain along the way, but unless we kill everyone on that base, there's no way we're leaving with fuel if we crash in there like a herd of bantha."

Kaidan didn’t even have to ask if that was a plan. He knew Kanan. “What are the chances of a repeat armor mugging?” he wondered, “Grab some of those hideous whites, go in, load up, walk out?”

"Honestly? So long as there's a patrol outside of the outpost itself, it shouldn't be difficult," Kanan replied, shrugging and steering the ship toward the planet below. "The hardest part is mugging the one guy with gear that'll actually fit you properly. But hey, if I can luck out with leather pants, a plasteel alloy shouldn't be a stretch from there..."

He was never, ever letting go of the very well-fitting leather pants. They were great. And terrible. In equal measures.

“If there’s more than one patrol and we have options, I can fire up the Omni and get data on which ones might be the best to mug,” Kaidan offered, “It’s set up with medic data so it’s used to grabbing info like that.”

He laughed quietly, “Those damned pants. Leave it to you to find the one other guy with legs all the way up.” Kaidan was never letting him live those down.

"The Force led me to that guy's pants," Kanan decided. "It was clearly meant to be."

Important fact funtime with Kanan Jarrus.

"But yeah, might as well use the Omni wherever we can. That's something we don't have here. Gives us an edge they don't have."

Kaidan eyerolled a little. ‘Meant to be’, right. Possible, but equally possible that Kanan had looked over the lot and chosen the tallest of them in hope.

“I already have your stats from our last portal trip,” he said, “It’s constantly updating mine, so we’re good there. I’m going to be so itchy wearing something with a visible display of weak points.” He grimaced. “I mean.. you’d think they’d make that whole undersuit thing white at least?”

Kaidan, if that was the worst thing you had to say.. though it probably wouldn’t be once he got inside it and saw just how crappily the Empire armored their soldiers. “Don’t suppose they do anything as helpful as standardize the time between patrols?” he asked hopefully.

"I have never known the Empire to do anything helpful," Kanan replied. And then paused. "Besides not shielding their fighters, I suppose."

Seriously. Most helpful move the Empire ever made, there.

“‘Stupid’ is the word for that,” Kaidan said helpfully, “Helpful as it is, it’s only helpful to the people shooting at their forces.” A beat, “Which I shouldn’t complain about but damnit, Kanan..”

He didn’t have to continue. Every possible thing he could have ranted about, Kanan already knew. He’d had longer to adjust to the Empire’s disregard for lives. Kaidan had heard about it but being where he’d have to witness it was adding whole new levels to his ire.

“Don’t suppose their recruits are stupid enough to fall for the ‘we got lost, could you give us directions’ ploy?” he asked, mostly facetiously. Mostly.

Kanan just shot Kaidan a brief sidelong look, making a little snorting sound.

Yeah, no. Not generally.

"Out here in the middle of nowhere, we'd have to be pretty damn lost," he mused. "But hey, you want to give that one a try, you're welcome to it."

Kaidan shrugged a shoulder, “I could make it look like a ship crashed. Then they might believe..”

He paused and examined that thought. “Would something like that draw them to investigate, or do they have drones?”

"Recon probe droids," Kanan supplied. "Yeah, we'll want to keep an eye out for those, on the off chance they've got those on patrol all the way out here. They'll be keeping their eye open for us, too."

“Does their data livestream or are they the kind that have to call back to the mothership?” Kaidan asked, thinking.

"It varies," Kanan replied. "Depends on the data uplink. Some can and do stream. Others just record, and then bring the resulting holo back to base for inspection later."

“Do you want me to take them out if we see any?” Kaidan asked, “Or would that invite more problems?” He wasn’t going to be a whole lot of help until they had a better plan of what was going on, so he figured he’d just data-gather until there was something he could do. “We probably don’t want them close enough for me to touch, but, uh, if we do get that close, I can do more with them than just make ‘em go boom.”

"If you spot any, drop 'em," Kanan said immediately. "On the off chance that they aren't transmitting a signal, the last thing we want is for one to get back with holo footage of us. Well. You might be fine. I kind of want to keep out of the limelight for a while longer, if I can."

Kaidan nodded. “All I need is line of sight,” he promised. Kanan’s comment made him think. “If we find an unlucky patrol, I should drop them,” he said after a long few minutes, “Unless the positioning allows you to drop ‘em from behind or from far enough away they won’t see your face.” He scrubbed a hand over his, and, because he didn’t want any misunderstandings, asked. “If they do, is that a ‘so be it’ situation, or an ‘end the problem’ situation?”

If it were anyone but Imps, Kaidan wouldn’t even have asked. Kaidan had zero problem with a leave no witnesses order. Kanan usually would, but this situation wasn’t usual. Even so - that decision had to be his. Shooting back at them was one thing. This was something else entirely.

Kanan was quiet as he watched the world approaching from below. He'd insist he was looking for a safe place to land near the outpost, somewhere that wouldn't draw attention but wasn't so far away that they'd be walking for hours, either. And that wasn't exactly untrue, either.

Finally, at length, he said, "Do what you need to do."

The Imperials wouldn't afford them a single courtesy if they were found out, out here. A few less in the galaxy never hurt.

Kaidan silently watched Kanan come to terms with both the question and the answer, and nodded once. He knew what that direction would cost Kanan, but in all honesty Kaidan felt better knowing there’d be less risk of identification, because he also knew what identification would cost Kanan.

Earlier, Kanan had said ‘unless we kill everyone on that base’ - Kaidan had been on ops like that before. It was standard protocol, during the war. Before. Thanks, Bioware. Came down to it, that was exactly what he could and would do. Yet he knew that it would have to be dire straits indeed before Kanan would make that call. Like the other, that one had to come from him. This wasn’t Kaidan’s op. Whatever they did here, they’d both have to live with. Kaidan privately hoped the idiots in white shot first.

Kanan didn't say another word until he'd brought the ship down. Again, he'd blame the terrain, and at least in that regard he'd have a decent argument. This world was rocky outcroppings and sheer drops, and if the Empire didn't see them coming in, odds were just as good that it was because there wasn't anywhere closer to land the Escape unless Kanan were to bring her down right on top of them after all.

It took a bit of skill to nestle her in between two large boulders, sheltered from view by a cliff all on either side, but skill, and the Force, were two things Kanan had. Just because Hera was the best damn pilot in the Galaxy didn't mean Kanan hadn't picked up a trick or two hauling freight, legal or otherwise, across the Outer Rim.

He blew out a breath as he reached for his long coat, the one he'd worn back on Gorse, around the time he'd met Hera.

"Chilly out there," he noted, glancing at Kaidan. "How's that gear for handling the cold?"

“It’s rated for space,” Kaidan said, “Internal temperature regulators. I brought a jacket to wear if I had to take it off once we were down.” He’d mostly worn the armor because: space rated. If anything happened while they were in transit. Though now it seemed prudent to keep it on. He always had Barrier at the ready - but that was also visible to everyone once it was up and might bring more attention than they’d want. “Plus,” Kaidan smiled lopsidedly, “Canadian. We’re used to the cold.”

Kaidan, you ass, you were from Vancouver. “You want I should throw the jacket over the armor?” Since smugglers didn’t wear full kit.

Kanan just raised his eyebrows and chucked the coat Kaidan's way.

Honestly, nothing would grab Imperial attention faster than showing up at their front door in armor from top to bottom.

Kaidan caught the coat and arched a brow Kanan’s way, “What are you going to wear? Do you want my jacket in return, or are you going to do some sort of meditative ‘I’m beyond the reach of cold’ thing?”

Kanan just smirked a little in reply.

"Drifter. I'm used to everything."

Kanan, you ass. Coruscant was climate-controlled.

"Give me your jacket, buddy."

Kaidan shook his head with a small smirk and dug the jacket out of his bag. It was a square sort of leather jacket and it clanked a little while he handed it over. The inside was a quilted insulated layer of synthetic down. The clanking came from some ultralight armor pieces inside. There weren’t many of them, this wasn’t a jacket meant to ever be primary armor, but Kaidan didn’t own any jackets that he hadn’t slotted some armor into, if only for protection while he was on a bike. This one had been chosen more for aesthetic than anything - Kaidan didn’t have much gear that would look like it fit in the GFFA.

“At least you’ll be warm,” he quipped.

"At least I'll be warm," Kanan agreed, taking the jacket and hefting it experimentally before shrugging and working his way out of his own chest and shoulder armor. This would do the trick just as well, and having to shuck another layer of armor later, if they managed to take out a patrol and make off with their gear, would just slow them down. "Now let's see how badly I'll be swimming in it."

“Shoulders should fit you fine, but the rest’s gonna bag a bit,” Kaidan said with a smirk. Kanan was built more like a Y, whereas Kaidan was a solid H shape all the way down.

He’d worn the black armor for this trip based on what Kanan had said about Trooper armor. The white plasteel pieces should, if they found someone of his size, be able to attach over his existing SPECTRE armor. Kaidan would feel better with his own armor underneath. For all it was black, it didn’t have a whole lot of weak points. Even the parts without hardened plate still had armored mesh lining.

It took him slightly longer to get into Kanan’s coat and when he did, he looked down at it with amusement. He could close it with a belt but there was no way those mag snaps were going to fuse over his waist. Kaidan chuckled a little to himself and undid his holster, wrapping it around the outside of the coat for this purpose. Besides, he wanted the gun where he could reach it.

“I’m feeding you more cupcakes the second we get home,” he teased Kanan.

"I'm holding you to that," Kanan replied, rolling his eyes.

Hey, if teasing came with cupcakes, he'd take it. He set his chestplate and pauldron on the pilot's seat to pull back on when they returned, pulled on Kaidan's coat - which fit his shoulders great and then hung off of him awkwardly everywhere else - and then shrugged and double checked his supply of power packs before opening the Escape's canopy.

"Ten minute walk north of here," he shared, clipping a few more packs to his belt for good measure. "Some of that is going to be climbing. The fun part will be bringing the fuel back, but I have faith we can figure that one out."

A Jedi and a Spectre walked into an Imperial supply depot...

“Hopefully we can find a hover pallet,” Kaidan acknowledged. If not, well, they’d manage. They were resourceful.

He ran a last minute check and then frowned. Rummaging in his duffle, he pulled out a secondary strap and wrapped it over one shoulder, clipping it in on both sides of his waist like a baldric. Then he brought out the assault rifle and docked it down his back. “Scope might come in handy,” he explained.

Climbing out of the cockpit, he walked down the side of the ship until he could take the small jump to the ground. He hit the ground with knees bent and then stood and gave himself a tiny shake to adjust the weight of everything.

Kanan was a few seconds behind, taking a moment to shut the canopy again and secure it before jumping down to the ground, pausing to pat his ship's hull a moment.

"Shouldn't be too long," he said, either reassuring himself or his ship, or maybe just keeping Kaidan in the loop. "If we're really lucky, it'll be minimal security because we're in the middle of kriffing nowhere. Maybe they'll be on their lunch break."

They would not be on their lunch break. Obviously.

Kaidan had nothing to say about the reassurance. Didn’t everyone pat their ship? For all the Escape didn’t have a VI onboard, it was still a ship and every single one had their own personality.

Spaceboy was a little biased here, too.

“Think our luck’s that good?” Kaidan asked, amused, because it generally wasn’t. “At least the place isn’t entirely made of karking shrimps.” When in Rome, swear like a Roman. He spent a moment powering up the Omni and typing in some commands. Mostly a mapping program.

"If I wanted to fuel my ship with shrimp, we would have stopped on Mon Cala," Kanan quipped, leaning back against his ship while he watched Kaidan work. "That thing maps as we go, right? Does it scan ahead at all?"

“Can you fuel the ship from shrimp?” Kaidan asked, interested, “Does it have a mass converter? It doesn’t look big enough.” He eyed Kanan for a moment, waiting for a ‘mon calamari’ joke that never came - and he didn’t miss it one bit.

“As far as the LIDAR can reach, yeah,” he nodded, “It can pick up life signs and heat signatures, that’s pretty standard for this unit. I was setting it to check the stability of the rock on the incline, in case there were any areas prone to a rockslide or slippage.” He paused, “Anything else you can think of that a computer might be able to do?”

"Does it have Solitaire?"

Kanan.

Kaidan smirked. “It has Solitaire and Pazaak.”

"Huh." Kanan shot Kaidan an easy grin. "I'm going to have to get me one of those. For now, checking for terrain conditions and keeping an eye out for life signs will do. Ready to get going?"

“You’re probably better off using your phone,” Kaidan teased him, “I can probably translate the Pazaak program easily enough. OmniTools are implants and, I mean, you could get one, but..” But most people didn’t enjoy surgical implants, for all they were common in his galaxy.

“Yeah, as ready as I’m going to be. Head on, oh fearless leader.”

Kanan made an amused snort, and then shoved off from the Escape, making his way carefully between the two large stones that marked the ship's parking spot. The cliff walls rose up several meters to either side of them, which was great for keeping them out of immediate view. Not so great for giving them anywhere to go if any curious Imperials decided to glance down and then shoot the fish wandering around the bottom of the barrel.

"We'll want to get out of here as soon as possible," he noted, shoulder practically hugging one rock wall. "First thing we need is a sturdy enough rock face to climb, preferably with nobody hanging out at the top."

Kaidan assessed the rock around them with both eyes and Omni. He pointed to one area with a deep crack running all the way to the top, “That route’s out. Crack’s off-width and there’s rubble. Little way up, the flake’s unstable.” He squinted up at it. “That’d make a nice trap for anyone who didn’t scan it. Up wouldn’t be as bad as down, but that flake’s not anchored so any weight tugging on it’s going on a date with gravity.”

The rest of the walls looked ok, so he scanned the top. “Nobody in the immediate vicinity.” Pointed to one wall, “There’s a small ledge up that one, where we could gopher while not hanging from our fingers.”

"That'll work," Kanan decided, nodding and making his way over to the wall where Kaidan had indicated. "You climb often?"

He wouldn't be surprised. He didn't himself, typically, but the Force generally accounted for little hiccups like that along the way, just so long as he was open to it.

Kaidan nodded. “Unlike some people with an allergy to gravity, I can’t Throw myself up a cliff,” he teased. A little more seriously, “I’ve only found one place on the island where I don’t really have to worry about passers-by when I want to practice with the biotics. It’s down the bottom of the inland cliffs. I can rappel down, but I usually downclimb it. Better exercise that way and it gives me a chance to inspect the rock.” He frowned up at the rock face, “Had I planned for it, I’d have brought some pro, but this looks chunky enough that, barring accidents, shouldn’t need it.”

He walked over to one wall and powered down the Omni. Looked at the holds and gave an experimental step up. “I did a little rock climbing before I joined the service. Vancouver has some nice mountains close by. Did some in training. More recently, it was a thing Jack and I would do during downtime. I’d rather go skydiving. Jack’s not so much a fan, so this is her adrenaline rush activity of choice.”

Kanan patiently waited for Kaidan to pull himself up and ahead. Not just because he figured he already had an idea of the best route up, though, sure, that would factor in. But also because he'd be in a far better position to catch Kaidan on the way down if anything did give way. He could recover from a fall on his own easily enough. He had yet to see Kaidan climb.

"Sounds like a good time."

“I’ll tell her you said so and she can add you to the ‘haul him out at the asscrack of dawn to climb a cliff’ rotation,” Kaidan smirked. It wasn’t an idle threat, if Jack moved to the island. He also had a private bet that Kanan would cheat like hell. The cliffs really weren’t terribly high.

Kaidan climbed, using his feet and legs to propel himself upward while his hands kept him close to the rock. The additional layer of a long coat made the climb a little slower, but he wasn’t in any great hurry to test rock he’d never climbed before.

And Kanan wasn't in any hurry to have to test his ability to cling to a rock wall and levitate a fully-grown man through the Force at the same time today, and so he waited for Kaidan to get a little distance, and began to follow him up.

"I look forward to it," he replied.

You know. To cheating.

“Why isn’t reverse psychology working? Why is your brain backward?” Kaidan teased plaintively, “If I tell you not to hang out with her, you will hang out with her. If I suggest you hang out with her, you’re going to hang out with her. There’s just no winning. Can’t win, can’t lose, can’t get out of the game..” He was going to get so ganged up on if she did move to the island.

That wasn’t really the complaint it should have been. He smiled a little as he continued his way up the rock. “My only consolation is knowledge that she and Hera are probably going to combine forces against you.” Take that, Jarrus. Welcome to life with the most spiteful of baby sisters.

"Combine forces against me to do what?" Kanan gave a weird look to... the bottoms of Kaidan's feet, mostly. "Limit my cupcake intake?"

Hera would never do such a thing! She knew how much he needed those cupcakes!

“Just imagine everything in your life with 50% more heckling involved if she moves here,” Kaidan instructed with a small chuckle, “And probably with that much more trouble you get dragged into.”

Kaidan didn’t really mind the trouble. It was, for the most part, purposeful trouble.

"Well, that'll be a fun change of pace," Kanan mused. "Usually I'm the one doing all the dragging."

Case in point, this. Right now. That they were doing.

Kaidan peered over his shoulder enough to shoot Kanan a grin. Oh buddy. You don’t even know. “You do remember that I asked, right?”

"Asked to come offworld," Kanan called back up. "The whole fuel run fiasco is my fault."

He said 'fault' in a way that suggested that he did not at all have any remorse over the situation they were currently in, mind.

“Technically, not your fault,” Kaidan pointed out, “You didn’t ask to have your ship taken for a ride without permission.” Stolen. The ship had been stolen. But returned. “A necessary pit-stop, more like.”

Grinned a little. “Though you could have suggested going somewhere to buy fuel.” That? Would have been less fun.

"Could have," Kanan agreed. "You know what ship fuel goes for in the Outer Rim under the rule of the Empire?" He raised his eyebrows faintly. "It's a little more steep than filling up a bike, I have to say."

A pause.

"Anyway, that would have been boring, and I don't feel like spending my entire cupcake budget all in one go."

“Hell, Kanan, I don’t know what a deck of cards goes for over here,” Kaidan said cheerfully enough, “You’ve never gotten around to explaining prices.” And the last time he’d been in the GFFA, shopping hadn’t been a thing he’d been thinking about. Though he’d done a certain amount of self-kicking about that in the meanwhile.

“Do the ..whatsit.. hover bikes take the same type of fuel?” More technical interest. “I know it’s encelled, but.. what is it? Carbon-based? Atomic? Hydrogen? Something else?”

"Depends on the engine," Kanan replied, hefting himself up a little further. "Bikes don't run on starship fuel, that would be a disaster. Fuels like rhydonium are pretty ridiculously volatile, and you don't just go dumping that into a Joben T-85 all casually. You spill a drop of that stuff and it's HAZMAT suits and evacuations until the area's clear."

Kaidan filed away the name of the bike. Thank you, Kanan, that was useful intel. “Eezo’s volatile but not in the same way,” he offered, “If it’s refined and you add an ignition source, it’s gonna go boom in a big way. If you pour it on the floor, it’ll make a mess but the danger is if you breathe it in. It’s pretty much a one-way trip to cancer city if you aren’t a biotic, and even we’re not immune completely. It’s mutagenic, but biotics have already got the mutation as a birth defect from their mothers being exposed.”

"Our galaxy's got plenty of stuff that'll cause mutations or worse," Kanan noted, "but I'm having difficulty thinking of anything that's quite so... pivotal as Eezo's been in yours."

He paused a moment to give Kaidan a chance to get a little more distance between them, looking thoughtful.

"Anyway, the takeaway here is that anything you can use to get a ship off the ground probably isn't something you want to go throwing around or anything. Whatever they have at this depot, it's kid gloves on the way out again."

“I mean,” Kaidan said after a minute more of climbing, “I generally don’t go throwing any sort of fuel around. Not if it’s the sort I want to use as fuel later, anyway.” He stretched for a hold and spent a moment eyerolling with the knowledge that Kanan wouldn’t even have to. The few inches difference in height was nothing on the extension of reach it gave his friend. Kaidan had learned all about that advantage during sword practice.

He reached the ledge and moved along it with his head below the summit, giving Kanan room to step up.

A few moments later, Kanan joined him, crouching down that much lower once he was there. Here was a situation where it wouldn't hurt to be slightly shorter, he figured. He paused to dust himself off, and then turned to nod to Kaidan.

"There we go," he mused. "Now we've got the easy part out of the way."

Kaidan threw him a small grin. Powering up the Omni again, he ran another scan and shook his head. “I got nothin’,” he murmured quietly, “You’re not getting any bad feeling tingles, are you?”

Tingles, the technical word for Force advice.

He leaned his head up and back a little so he could peer over the summit. Shook his head, couldn’t see anything.

"Weirdly enough," Kanan mused, "I have an okay feeling about this." His brow creased slightly. "I don't trust it."

Okay feelings weren't a thing! Who authorized that? When they'd come all this way with him halfway anticipating disaster already!

Kaidan turned the Omni toward Kanan and casually ran his biometrics for a moment. “Temperature’s within normal range,” he mused quietly, “You don’t appear to have any sort of fever.” Look, it was worth checking. Kanan and feeling like things were ok were not two things usually found in the same sentence, any given day.

Powering it back down, Kaidan shrugged. Putting his hands over the top edge, he vaulted the summit lip and stood up for a look around. Still didn’t see anything. He frowned. Great. Now he wasn’t trusting it.

Kanan was soon to follow, hefting himself up and frowning a little. They weren't entirely out in the open, but it was a near thing, and there didn't seem to be anything that might take any particular interest in them wandering around, either.

"If they've packed up and moved on, I'm going to be very put out," he intoned, shaking his head and starting to walk northward.

Kaidan followed at a casual stroll. “How old’s your intel?” he asked, mostly just curious. He had no idea at what speed the Empire could dismantle a supply depot, though he was gathering from things Kanan had said that the kind of manpower they could throw at anything they wanted done meant that if they needed it done fast, it’d get done fast.

"Recent as we can get it," Kanan sighed. "Weeks? Maybe a month. Most of what we go chasing are rumors. Whatever it is we've got going, it's too damn small for a proper informant network yet. Which is why I've been running my ass all over the galaxy just trying to get a bead on a steady supply of bacta."

He shook his head a little.

"Jelucan's an Imperial world, though. It makes no sense that they'd just up and take off. Maybe we're actually just lucking out so far."

“So, pretty recent,” Kaidan mused, “That’d be enough time to move something, my side of reality, if they pushed it. Otherwise just the logistics of moving a depot would take most of that time. Not sure if that’s even the case here, but..” He looked around at the rocky expanse of ‘not much’, “Doesn’t look like anything ugly’s gone down here in the recent past.”

"At least there's that." Kanan snorted. "Maybe it's actually been so uneventful here that they're just bored of having nothing more exciting than muunyak wandering around and they're getting complacent."

He could live with a complacent Empire.

“Muunyak?” Kaidan asked. Look, you knew he was going to. He half suspected that was why Kanan peppered random words into his speech in the first place. “Boring would be nice. Stroll up, steal some armor, steal some fuel, go home..”

Boring would be boring, though.

"Muunyak," Kanan replied. "Livestock around here. Closest I can think to describe them would be..." He sighed. "Miniature banthas. I really need to learn more about Earth, apparently."

He shrugged.

"I'd take boring. Let's cross our fingers for boring, save the excitement for the cantinas."

“You’re also going to have to show me a bantha at some point,” Kaidan pointed out, “Rancor, I have drawings of in the book you gave me. Bantha, I’ve never seen.” He continued to stroll casually along. Someone watching might think he had not a care in the world. If they weren’t paying attention to the way he was watching the landscape. Just in case of observation.

“Probably not many cantinas in this place,” he noted, “though I wouldn’t be opposed to finding one.”

"If we don't end up with fuel, at least we can get a damn drink," Kanan agreed, meandering alongside Kaidan, hands in his jacket pockets. You know, warming them up. It had been a chilly climb up that cliff wall. "Maybe the bucketheads just don't like the weather."

“Weather is pretty crappy,” Kaidan admitted, “I shouldn’t be surprised at the cold, considering where we just came from, but this is kind of bleak.” Rock, more rock, some scrub, and not much else.

You’re lucky Kaidan had cleaned out those pockets before bringing it along or you’d be sifting through an odd assortment of detritus.

Kanan wouldn't have had the foggiest clue as to what to do with pocket detritus, it was true.

"I've seen worse. Lived on worse, even. Doesn't make my fingers less numb after that climb, though." He shrugged. Ambled along. "Still nothing showing up on your Omni, huh? I might have to take a minute and go looking."

The kind of looking a guy did with his eyes closed and a hand outstretched. That kind.

“Not as of yet, no,” Kaidan said, noting, “Your reach is probably longer than the scanner on my arm. You want to stop and check things out?” Wouldn’t be a bad plan. He’d sense anything hinky. The Omni could only pick up heat signatures.

Kanan nodded, and frowned, and pulled in a deep breath.

And then he closed his eyes, held out one hand, and reached out through the Force.

And then his brow creased and he frowned. Lowered his hand. Opened his eyes, and said, "Huh."

“Is that a good ‘huh’ or a bad ‘huh’?” Kaidan wondered, “We continuing or turning back?”

Kanan looked faintly puzzled as he glanced back at Kaidan.

"We're continuing," he replied. "And keeping our eyes open just in case. Should be a pretty clear trek there for the most part."

“You still need to explain that ‘huh’,” Kaidan pointed out, “Did you sense anyone at all ahead? I mean, if they’ve cleared out and there’s nothing up there..”

"There's something," Kanan replied. "But it's a skeleton crew, at best. No idea why, yet, but now I'm curious enough to want to see this for myself even if we get nothing else out of it but answers."

Caleb was alive and well, somewhere in there.

“Glad I’m not a cat,” Kaidan said with a small shake of his head. He couldn’t blame Kanan - now he wanted to see what was going on up there. “Any guess how far ahead?”

"Another... three minutes walk at a steady pace, I think," Kanan said, shrugging. "That's my best guess, anyway. The Force is great for pointing us in the right direction and making us aware of danger, but I don't think it's ever bothered to learn metric."

Kaidan squinted into the distance, trying to see .. anything. There was a smudge behind a rock outcropping that might’ve been a building. “What, did they build it underground?” he muttered.

"Might've," Kanan agreed. "Or in a valley, the same way we found ourselves a bit of a chasm to tuck away in. Going underground would've involved blasting, most likely. This much rock? That would've been a pain to excavate otherwise."

“I’ve given up trying to imagine scope of tasks like that in your neck of the woods,” Kaidan admitted, “I know how long things would take with my galaxy’s normal resources, but the Empire uses theirs differently.” He really didn’t like the Empire. Then again, he wasn’t really supposed to.

“Must not rain much here, or at least not all at once,” he mused a moment later, “Floods would be a thing, they built too far below grade.”

"Chill like this, they're more likely to be buried under snow, if they get precipitation this time of year," Kanan mused. "Which could work in their favor, just so long as whatever they've built can handle the weight. One decent snowfall and they'd have a base that's practically invisible from the air, at least to the naked eye."

“No snow up here,” Kaidan offered, looking around at all of the.. copious amounts of brown. “Not right now, anyway, though if they’re in a deep enough crevasse, might not get warm enough to melt off. If they are snowed in, might make it a little tricky getting through the door.”

"Would explain a skeleton crew, though," Kanan mused, shrugging. "I suppose we'll see when we get there. At this point I'll be happy whatever the case might be, just so long as we get to grab some fuel and go, in the end."

“How much fuel can you carry in the Escape?” Kaidan asked, “Are we topping her tanks or are we filling the hold if we can?”

"We're taking everything we can get our hands on," Kanan replied, grinning crookedly. "I'm inclined to say we fill the hold. If we grab more than the hold can handle, we stash the rest somewhere and I come back for it again later. I'm not going to pass up as much of a free resource as possible just because my freighter's cargo hold is smaller than it could be."

The minor tragedy of having a freighter modified into a fighter, he supposed. It still seemed to work out.

Kaidan nodded his approval. “Good. More fuel means fewer necessary adventures in the near future.” He threw Kanan a slightly wry smile in response, “Then you can concentrate on all the unnecessary adventures.” Priorities.

"The unnecessary ones are just as important anyway," Kanan quipped. "Keep me on my toes. Good way to gauge what the general atmosphere is around the locals. Fantastic reminder that half of what they serve in the cantinas around here isn't anything to write home about..."

“Also they’re more fun,” Kaidan added, because: priorities. After another moment of strolling along, he asked, “So if they have something like a medbay, we’re raiding that for bacta, yeah?”

"If there's bacta to make off with, we'll be making off with it," Kanan agreed. "I'd be willing to leave more fuel hidden away to make room for medical supplies. Maybe not what we came here for, but still too important a resource to risk missing out on."

“Anything else on your shopping list?” Kaidan asked, then gave a small shrug, “I don’t know what else to look for, wouldn’t want to walk by something you could use.”

"We can make use of pretty much anything," Kanan admitted. "If we by some miracle end up with enough time to slice into their computers, any information we can get would be gold. Besides that... weapons, rations, tools... practical things to hand to survivors escaping them. Seems only right that the Empire foots that bill, I think."

“Alright,” Kaidan agreed, filing that away. Fuel, bacta, and basically anything else that looked potentially useful. Hopefully they’d find something to carry things with. Depending how skeleton the crew of the depot was.. “So, if there aren’t many people there and we can successfully knock them all out, any reason for you not to hike back to the Escape and drop her at the front door for easy loading?” Hope reigned eternal.

"If there aren't many people and we can keep them off our case for the five minutes it'd take me to make that run, I don't see why not," Kanan replied with a shrug. "Hell, they might even have a speeder I can make off with, that'll get me there faster still. We'll take in the situation first, and then plan our exit from there. I'm not leaving you to hold your own if there's a chance they made a call for reinforcements."

Kaidan threw him a lopsided smile, “Wouldn’t be the first time I’d held the fort, but thanks. Me plus a whole lot of electronics is a real bad time for anyone trying to chase me through a building.” He huffed something like a laugh, “Who knows, while I’m wishing, might as well wonder if they have another ship parked in there.”

"No better time for a flight lesson with one of my galaxy's ships, hm?" Kanan smirked faintly. "Hell, fine, but you're the one flying the Imp ship if it comes to it. And... I'll walk you through check-in protocols in case we get stopped."

Not much else that could be done if they were stealing ships. They'd kind of be on something of a deadline.

“Who said I’d be flying it?” Kaidan smirked right back, “I meant load it up, fly it somewhere, stash it. Then you could come back and requisition it later. Have Hera drop you off in Ghost maybe.” Kaidan could fly, but these were unfamiliar controls. He’d try if there were no other options. “No ship, no chase right away.”

"No case right away is my favorite way to do this, I'll admit," Kanan replied. "Okay, we'll see what we can grab, see what we can stow. I'm not in the market for another ship at the moment, especially not an Imperial one, but you never know what you can dig out of those things if you have the time and a good data spike. But for now, we're treating fuel as priority, and everything else is just icing."

“It’s only Imperial if the Imperials own it,” Kaidan pointed out, “Steal it, repaint it, it becomes a repurposed pirate ship.” He was mostly making small talk while they walked. “Do you have to use spikes for.. slicing?” That word would never not be weird to him. “Can’t do it just from the console?”

"Could do it from the console," Kanan replied, "but if you want to take any of that data with you, maybe patch Imperial maps in to the Ghost's systems, you get a spike. It's like a..." Kanan waved a hand around vaguely. "Thumb drive? Functionally. For this."

“We have OSD’s where I’m from, but.. uh.. they’re only really for people who don’t have an OmniTool,” Kaidan explained, “I’ve had one since I was 18, so my perspective is a little different.”

"That'll do it," Kanan replied, and then shrugged. "We don't quite have anything like your Omni. I mean, we have plenty of things that, separately, do the things it can do. But you all seem to have it streamlined pretty well, there."

He came to a stop a stone's throw away from another corner, and then held up a hand, signalling Kaidan to stop.

"Speaking of, what's it have to say about life signs now that we can pretty much throw a rock and hit their front door?"

“Yeah, well, your galaxy seems a little less invested in drilling tech into people’s heads with implants,” Kaidan said, “There’s benefits but it’s not something I really suggest as a standard course of action. It didn’t make sense for me to not have an Omni, since by then I already had the other implants.” Though he really didn’t recommend getting them drilled into bone. It wasn’t a fun process.

He stopped, glanced at Kanan, and pulled up his Omni to read biometric data. “Looks like there’s only two on the door.” He frowned at the reading, “I’m only picking up a total of twelve. That.. can’t be right, can it?”

Kanan paused, frowned a little, and then held out a hand and closed his eyes.

"Hm." Kanan, why didn't you just do that in the first place? "Nah, it seems pretty right to me. Either they don't figure whatever they have on base is worth anything, or this area is so low-incident that they've never seen much need to run more than a skeleton crew in the first place." He snorted, and then added with a crooked smile, "or maybe we got lucky and half of them were buried in a landslide or something. Either way, two at the door seems easy."

He'd have to tell Kaidan all about his galaxy's history of implants sometime. They'd had them here longer than the entire recorded history of humanity in Kaidan's galaxy, after all.

Considering Kaidan’s generation was the first to survive biotic implants? Yeah. Others, for things like Omnis and visors, had been around longer, but in general things in a Sol-centric reality weren’t going to have the same sort of age as things in the GFFA.

“How eager are you to test out your Scorpion?” Kaidan asked, tilting his head at Kanan.

"I've had this new toy for far too long without getting to play with it," Kanan said, shooting a sideways grin back in Kaidan's direction. "I think it's about time to change that, yeah."

“If you pop in one of the blue thermal clips, those shoot cryo mines. They’d do a nasty number on anyone not wearing armor, but they should freeze anyone in trooper armor in place. If it’s anything like what Liam’s guys have, anyway. Anything much better than that, it’ll just slow ‘em down,” Kaidan offered.

He read the Omni again. “One of ‘em at the door should be just around your size. The other’s too short even for me.” He threw a glance at the bare rock around. “Though if we’re stealing their gear, can’t leave ‘em out here in their skivvies. Not seeing anyone inside the door. Drop ‘em, haul ‘em inside, strip ‘em out?”

Kanan gave a little grin, slapping in one of the blue clips.

"Drop 'em, haul 'em inside, strip 'em out," he agreed. "Ready when you are, buddy."

Kaidan left his Omni up but didn’t go for his gun. If they were going for stun’n’drop, he was better off using Cryo. To anyone who didn’t know what he was actually doing, it’d look like the shiny orange thing on his arm was firing ballistics. “I’m good,” he said easily, “Lead on, oh leggy one.”

Kanan made a little half-laugh kind of snorting sound, and then in one fluid motion he rounded the corner and fired the Scorpion in through the gate to the supply depot.

And then he tilted his head a little. And then he broke into a grin.

"Oh, you do give me all the best toys."

“Wait until you use the high powered rounds,” Kaidan grinned at him, “But.. don’t, unless you’re real sure you don’t want the target walking away. Because they won’t.” He walked around behind Kanan and checked out the two frosted troopers on the ground. “You get the big one,” he called, walking through the gate and toward the smaller of the two men. Using a foot, he rolled him onto his back and knelt to check his pulse. “Nice and slow. You just go on and take that hypothermia nap, buddy.”

Hooking an arm over his shoulders, he hauled the trooper upright and turned toward the door.

Kanan shrugged, crouched down, and hefted the big guy up the same way. He didn't bother checking the man's pulse, no. He would have known if he was about to haul up a corpse already, after all.

"Yeah, my blaster can't do this," he admitted. "Though it usually leaves a little less room for frostbite later on."

A lot less. By like a 100% margin.

“My gun doesn’t even have a ‘stun’ setting,” Kaidan pointed out, “so..” He paused, a little nonplussed when the door just slid right open for them. “Did they not even bother to lock the damned thing?” He sounded affronted. Because he was. Muttering under his breath, he hauled his guy inside and looked for a convenient pile of crates to drop him behind.

"Welcome to the Empire," Kanan noted, hefting his trooper along. "Their officers are terrifying and their troopers... definitely wear armor." He didn't have much to say about them, really. He couldn't even suggest that maybe they meant well. "It's almost insulting they've managed this much, honestly."

Almost. Like he said... their officers were terrifying. The Empire didn't promote much, but it definitely promoted smart.

“Almost feel sorry for them,” Kaidan said. Almost. “So, what’s the play? Prisoner bit, since this armor definitely won’t fit me?” Not that it was stopping him from shucking the poor trooper right out of it like an oyster from its shell. At the very least, having the guy running around trying to find his armor would buy them some time if this pair woke up before they were done rummaging around.

Kanan tilted his head, considering.

"Prisoner bit might have worked with a larger team," he mused. "Here, everyone's likely to know everybody else." He shucked the bucket off his trooper's head and held it up. "These things distort the wearer's voice, but not enough to really mask mine if it's very different from this guy's."

He smirked at Kaidan anyway, and then deposited the helmet onto his head. Through the helmet's speaker, he added, "so, Spectre," and that would never not be funny to him, "how are you at sneaky?"

“You know I spent some time playing with Liam’s trooper’s armor, right? That absolutely crap voice coil isn’t the surprise you thought it would be,” Kaidan teased him. Rocking back on his heels, he thought about it. “SPECTRE doesn’t necessarily mean sneaky, but hey, I did covert ops before that,” he mused. “Which works a whole lot better when you can actually recon the place first. No help for that right now.”

He frowned at the Omni, “Sneaky shouldn’t be too hard. They’re spread pretty thin. Lot of dense stuff piled up around.” Kaidan looked up, squinting at the top of the wall. “Are the walls actually metal, or is that the plasteel stuff you mentioned?”

"Looks like durasteel," Kanan replied, hard at work shucking the trooper of his gear and pulling it on as he went. He was getting pretty good at this part of the job, if he did say so himself. "Plasteel is this stuff," he knocked a knuckle on his chest, now clad in the stormtrooper white. "Durasteel's everywhere. Doesn't need to be as light. Stronger than steel, though."

Kaidan eyed the trooper’s helmet in his hands, then shrugged and popped it on his head. Standing up, he tried to crane his head back to look up. A slightly digitized but wicked little snicker sounded from the speakers.

He pulled it off and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Well, that’ll work.” He spent a few minutes adjusting Kanan’s coat, folding the hem up twice so he could tuck it under the belt of his holster.

With another thoughtful look at his skint trooper, Kaidan bent down again to go through his pockets. Came up with a few creds and tossed them over to Kanan with a shrug.

Then he walked over to the wall, turned on the maglocks on his boots, and stepped up onto it. Winced a little - this was hell on his ankles - but he was able to get purchase with his hands and gain height. Nodding to himself once he’d reached a point he could touch the ceiling, he back-crawled back down. “Won’t be useful going down a hall, might be if I need to go over ‘em.”

"You really do have all the neat toys," Kanan noted as he tucked the credits away. "Assuming the other people on duty here are also troopers, you have some way to tell us apart once we get going?"

Because Kanan was very much a guy in a bucket, now.

“Walk for me,” Kaidan suggested, “Back and forth for a minute.”

"Sure thing," Kanan replied easily, and began to walk back and forth across the floor, sidestepping his denuded stormtrooper friend in his chilly new armor.

Kaidan frowned a little, “Those ankle joints, man.. Yeah, no worries. Your gait hasn’t changed enough I wouldn’t know it.” Welcome to one of the many creepy things Kaidan’s catalogued, Kanan. “If there’s doubt, I promise to check the biometrics on the Omni before I shoot,” he said - kidding, mostly.

Kanan paused, and then glanced down and tapped the toe of one foot against the ankle joint of his other experimentally.

Well, it would have to do. It wasn't like anybody here was going to get in close enough to give him a good foot-stomp if he had anything to say about it anyway.

"I appreciate that," he settled on. "If you shoot at me, I'm going to be pretty put out."

“Hey, you’re wearing armor,” Kaidan smirked at him, “It could stop.. nah, who am I kidding. I’ll try not to shoot your shiny white plastic.”

Tilting his wrist, he looked at his Omni. “So.. Behind Door Number 1, to our left, we have a wide empty space occupied by two warm bodies moving around. Behind Door Number 2, dead ahead, we have a less empty space with five warm bodies more or less sitting around and not moving much. Barracks, maybe? Mess? Behind Door Number 3, ahead and to our right, we have another less empty space with three warm bodies moving around an awful lot.”

They weren’t actually doorways to the right and left. Not here. From where they were standing, they were openings to hallways. Kaidan moved along the left wall until he could peer around the first hallway corner for a moment. “Windowless corridor terminating in a door. Closed.”

Kanan nodded, looking thoughtful, somehow, even with that damn helmet covering his face.

"Make sure the quiet ones stay quiet, then move on to the active ones? I'd put my money on the prize being where the activity is, but those are the ones most likely to be on high alert, too."

“That was my thought, yeah,” Kaidan agreed, “Make sure they don’t have backup to call. So.. do we hit the two on the left and hope there’s armor that fits me, or do we take on the biggest number first in the hope of catching them by surprise?”

"If we take on the biggest number and it's a barracks, there's a chance they've got their entire kit in there for you to pick apart without even having to undress somebody," Kanan noted. "Easier to take out, too, if they aren't ready for us. Think of it like a warm-up."

He could fire off five shots with his blaster on stun before any of them so much as thought to wonder why their buddy wasn't still standing at the door.

“It would be nice to put on armor that didn’t have that warm ‘someone just sat here’ feeling,” Kaidan mused. “I mean, there’s always cryo grenades.”

"There are definitely those," Kanan agreed, reaching down and dusting some still-clinging frost from the armor he was wearing. "I can vouch for the fact that they'll take care of that 'warm armor' issue pretty much right away."

“You run hot anyway,” Kaidan accused genially, working his way down the hall toward the doors at the end. “A little frost is good for you. Builds character. Puts hair on your chest.” Which.. isn’t something you want under a skin-tight suit, ever, really. “So, you like the Scorpion so far, you say.”

"It's clearly got its uses," Kanan agreed, considering the gun, and then shrugging and patting himself down for a place to dock it. Nothing for that one with this gear; he'd carry it in place of the trooper's own blaster rifle, which he'd sling over his back and hang on to for a rainy day. "Wondering if there's time for me to stow what I've had to shuck to get into this gear in the first place. Somewhere on the way out so we can grab it as we go if we need to hit the ground running?"

“One of the crates back there?” Kaidan suggested, thumbing toward the handwaved crates they’d hid the guards behind. “Otherwise, there’s always the rocks right outside the door?”

Kanan looked thoughtfully at the crates, and then shook his head.

"If we need to go off on a tear, there's no guarantee we'll be able to duck behind these again," he noted. "But there's only the one exit, unless we get to go up and out in a ship. Rocks it is."

Kaidan undid his belt and shrugged off Kanan’s coat. Tossing it to him, he nodded with his chin, “Wrap it in that. At this point, it’s not going to matter if they see my armor, they won’t be awake long enough to do anything about it.” And this way Kanan wouldn’t lose a coat he was obviously fond of.

Leaning against a wall, he re-wrapped his holster belt and did up the leg strap as well.

Kanan nodded, catching the coat and adding the one he'd been wearing to the bundle as he went. It was joined by his usual blaster pistol and his boots, and then he was taking a moment to glance outside again before making his way around to stow their things.

A moment later he was peering back in again.

"And that's that," he replied. "You set for this?"

He was kind of itching to get going, himself.

Kaidan nodded, a little amused, “Hell, buddy, been ready. So, go at the door, you in front with blaster set to stun, me lobbing a cryo grenade to the back of the room?”

"That sounds like the plan," Kanan agreed, and took a moment to adjust the settings on his borrowed blaster rifle before giving a satisfied nod. He took a breath to steady himself - he was pretty sure they had this more than handled, but making certain he was on an even keel when he'd already been steadily backsliding into old habits wouldn't go amiss here - and then made his way for the door.

Kaidan dug a small flat disc out of one of his pants pockets and began popping it into the air and catching it as they walked. A small blue light winked slowly on the top of it. “Can you feel the frost through the plasteel?” he asked Kanan, idly curious about the armor.

"Oh yeah," Kanan replied, lifting a shoulder. "It doesn't feel great, but I've felt worse." Getting spaced would do that, after all. "They don't exactly throw the big credits into making sure their troopers are comfortable."

Any more than they bothered shielding their pilots, apparently.

“You’ve been shot, so, yeah, I’d guess,” Kaidan said dryly. He’d seen your scars, buddy. The visible ones, and a few that weren’t. “You get shot in that crap and we’ll be digging plastic shrapnel out of you for an hour. Unless plasteel fractures at a different rate..” he eyed the armor speculatively. Guess which of your friends was going to take some with when you left and do some testing-to-destruction on it, Kanan. Guess!

It didn’t take much to make Kaidan a happy camper. He began planning a modulated series of tests to run. Since Liam had noped his request to shoot at spare Trooper armor at the station. He continued to follow behind Kanan, letting the armor block as much view of him as it could.

"So I don't get shot," Kanan replied easily. "Easily done, I'm a slippery guy."

He came to a stop outside the door in question, considered the panel to open it, and then looked Kaidan's way.

"Coded locks for the barracks, but not for the front door? What is wrong with Imperials, anyway?"

“Nobody wants their underwear stolen, Kanan,” Kaidan chided him. Then he paused, “Do they wear underwear under the black onesie? … Nevermind. I’m going with ‘yes, they do, of course they do’, and you’re not going to tell me different.”

He examined the lock, “Let me see if the Omni can crack it. If not, we can always shoot the damned thing.”

"Works for me," Kanan replied. "Means I can keep the rifle trained at the door as it opens. One less step before I drop whoever's inside."

Kaidan nodded and moved to the side. He typed something on the Omni’s command console and a set of lighted rings glowed to life over his palm, inner and outer ring moving in opposite directions. He pressed them to the lock and watched the screen.

It took a second for the Omni to handshake with the unfamiliar code. It had an onboard Aurebesh alphabet codec; Kaidan wasn’t sure whether it needed that for this. He’d coded it awhile ago to help him with reading and writing Aurebesh. Regardless, it would record the code it read and he could print it out and examine it later.

The rings moved faster, then began a back-and-forth jigger. When they stilled, it emitted a very soft beep. Kaidan read the display and pushed a button, murmuring under his breath, “Open, says me.”

The door made a mechanical noise and slid apart.

And Kanan stepped forward, blaster rifle held and ready to shoot as five sets of eyes all looked up at him. Not shocked. Not even suspicious.

Weary. And their hands were in shackles.

"Oh," Kanan muttered. "Hell."

He had to put more heists on hold this way...

That.. was not a good sign. Kaidan peered around Kanan and blinked. “What the..” Frowning, he repeated, “Well, hell.” The grenade went back in his pocket. “Do we deal with this or deal with the people probably currently robbing the place?”

Kanan sighed, reached up a hand, and just... kind of rested it on the forehead of his helmet.

There was one way to get rid of his bad habit, anyway.

"Maybe we can... I don't know. Reason with them." Which might be easier to do without the Imperial armor on, admittedly. Well, this was going great. "You," he pointed his rifle at the nearest person in shackles. "What's going on, here?"

“What’s it look like, buckethead?” one of the men ground out with a fierce scowl, “Our orders were to keep the inventory at maximum efficiency, not volunteer ourselves to get shot when pirates decided to pay us a visit. If you sleemos expected us to return fire, maybe arming us and training the young’ns to shoot proper should’ve been more a priority than figuring out which armor fits who!”

Kaidan gave Kanan a wordless look. He figured the less he said right now, the better. Kanan had a vocoder in the helmet and the vocabulary.

"Right," Kanan muttered. "Local conscripts. Never do know what to do in the middle of a crisis situation."

He said this mostly for Kaidan's benefit, not that he didn't think Kaidan could puzzle that one out. But the way it carried, a few of said locals made disgruntled sounds of protest all the same. Kanan shook his head, and then looked back at the man who had spoken to him.

"Well, you lot can just hang tight while we deal with this, then," he replied. "We'll be back around with a key for those once the big kids deal with the problem, and then maybe we'll see about training you properly for the next time." No way in hell was he going to out himself as yet another pirate when he couldn't be sure where the loyalties of these men sat, no. "The graysuits - still at work in the other room?"

He jerked his head toward where Kaidan's sensors had picked up some, but not much activity. If his hunch was right, it meant that those two wouldn't be in armor, at least. If it was wrong... eh. These five were in shackles and weren't going anywhere anyway.

The man who’d spoken snorted. “Thumbs up asses and caf in hand, if that’s what you mean by ‘work’. Probably. Unless the pirates got them first.”

Kaidan gave a miniscule shake of his head, knowing Kanan would catch it. Too much movement, those two weren’t tied up. He casually stepped back, turning a little sideways - toward the corridor on the right, conveniently putting himself further out of line of sight from the people in the room.

"Perfect," Kanan replied, and then he took a step back, and then another. "You five sit tight, let some actual troopers take care of this."

He ignored the answering cuss words as he nodded to Kaidan, and then nodded back to the door panel. Better to lock them back in. The ones they'd knocked out earlier would probably let them go when they came around again, anyway.

Kaidan beeped the door and once it had closed, cutting off the cussing, he used the Omni to lock it - changing the combination for additional security. Whoever’d locked them in would no longer be able to get them out. Not without..he grimaced slightly.. slicing the lock. It would buy them some time. And, because he was a brat, he set the lock to 753366 - which on an Earth-style telephone keypad would read ‘sleemo’. He tried to 31337-speak it in his head but could only get as far as 5133^^0 and the double carat gave him fits.

“Alright, so.. pirates, they said,” Kaidan mentioned, stepping away from the door, “I’m confused, Kanan. Originally, we were going to, ah, redistribute the supplies from this place, but someone got here first - did we just come ‘round to being the good guys? Did that just happen?”

"I have no kriffing clue," Kanan muttered. "I just came here to rob the place," and honestly, he was feeling so attacked right now. "Do we want to take out the officers behind door number one, or skip over to door number three and see if these pirates can't be reasoned with, first? Plan's been up in the air since we took off, we might as well keep up that trend going forward."

“I’m in favor of locking the officers in their room, then dealing with the people robbing the stuff we came to steal,” Kaidan said, “If those are officers, and it sure sounded like they were, they’re not moving like they’re in any sort of hurry anyway, not that I want them able to come up behind us.”

He was affronted. Here he’d been, planning to be some sort of intergalactic Robin Hood, and now he was back to being space cop again. On the other hand.. stealing stuff and letting the jerks already here take the blame for it did have a certain appeal.

"Okay, let's make sure we've got our Imperials grounded," Kanan replied. "I'll watch your back while you secure the door, and then we can figure out who it is we're actually dealing with."

Kaidan muttered to himself, quickly moving down the left hallway toward the door. He gesticulated rudely with his right hand. The door achieved, he smacked his Omni over the lock and let it do its thing. This one he set to 53104558, which every grade schooler with a calculator would recognize simply by turning it upside down. Assholes. Take that, greysuits. That’ll teach you to let people rob things.

Kanan kept an eye on those proceedings for a moment more, and then nodded, satisfied at Kaidan's work, before nodding back down the hallway.

"So," he drawled, "I guess here comes the fun part. Let's see who else decided to crash this party, and if they're making off with anything especially worth having."

“Kanan, so help me, we’re taking them out and stripping them to the skin and if I wind up feeling particularly benevolent, I will not throw them outside afterward,” Kaidan grouched as he walked along toward the right-hand corridor. “Stealing the stuff we came here to steal! The nerve!” Yeah, he was being a little ridiculous, but it was better than getting all agitated about it. He was confident that whoever it was, was about to have their day and their theft ruined. He wasn’t sorry about that one bit. “I don’t care if it’s not worth taking. I say we take it anyway just to make a point.”

"Unless," Kanan replied, "it's a local having a difficult time on account of the Empire. If they're here to stick it to 'the man,' as they say, then I'm all for negotiating who gets a cut."

He came to a stop outside door number three, and he raised his blaster rifle. Well. 'His' blaster rifle.

"Otherwise, yeah, let's leave these jerks sitting around in their underwear, wondering what hit 'em."

“I’d think if they were locals, they might’ve been kinder to the yokels in the cuffs,” Kaidan mused, “I mean, if that were their people. The ones in the barracks didn’t seem all that onboard with the trooper gig.”

He slapped his Omni over the lock and dug out the grenade he’d had ready, “Ready in five..four..three...two..”

Kanan nodded, and, as the door opened on 'one,' he fired a shot set to 'stun' at the nearest person in the room, levelling his blaster at pirate number two.

It couldn't be seen inside the helmet, but his brow furrowed pretty fiercely a whole half-second later.

"Kallerans? Aren't you lot a little far from home?"

He didn't recognize the one still standing, but there was something vaguely familiar about the tuft-sucker whose face was currently one with the floor.

Not troopers. Right. Kaidan stepped around Kanan so he could cover Assole #3. All three of them were a species he’d never seen, though he’d heard Kanan use the word before. He let his mind sift through recall for a moment - right, the friend he’d stolen the Escape from.

He kept his mouth shut and his eyes open, looking around the room. It was definitely a supply depot and equally definitely had been staffed by people with no organizational skills whatsoever. Probably what had kept the thieves busy enough to get interrupted - couldn’t find a damn thing in here without a search. His opinion of the Empire’s work ethic took a further dip.

One of the two still standing, the one who now had his hands up and was fairly certain he was about to be shot, if the fear radiating off of him was any indication, looked at Kanan - looked at the trooper with wide eyes, but said nothing. The other, the one that Kaidan was covering, spat on the floor.

"Told him, didn't I? Told that tuft-sucker Tápusk that we'd want to take out the bucketheads at the door, but no, no, he knows better." He spat again. "Look, don't shoot, we won't give you trouble. Neither of us want to end up like he did."

Kanan looked down at the man on the floor in stunned silence. For the time being, he'd ignore that they thought he'd just flat-out killed him - actual stormtroopers would have, after all - in favor of marvelling, for a moment, at how small the galaxy actually was, sometimes.

And then he walked over to Tápusk and kicked him once in the ribs, hard, for good measure.

Look, he had an old grudge. And it wasn't like it was terribly out of character, for a trooper.

Kaidan was glad for his training. It kept the surprise out of his bearing as Kanan kicked an unconscious man. He looked at the man who’d spat and said calmly, “That didn’t answer his question.” He let his hand tense a little on the grip, though his trigger finger stayed outside the guard.

"What, it wasn't rhetorical? Oh, yes, yes, Mister Imperial, we are as a matter of fact a long way from Kaller," the man replied, curling his lip, his voice dripping with contempt. "You idiots seemed like an easy mark until now, how were we supposed to know they had a competent Imp or two on board?"

Kanan was going to just quietly die inside, now.

“He asks a question, you answer the kriffing question,” Kaidan snapped back at him. He looked at the two men and lifted his chin at the smartarse, “Get your hands behind your back.” Keeping him covered, he began walking around behind him. Mostly as an excuse so he could look across at Kanan. One hand dug in a pocket and came up with his ever present square of duct tape. He waggled it with a raised eyebrow. He hadn’t seen any more shackles laying around in a convenient area.

“Orders, Sir?” Kaidan asked.

Kanan managed to bite back an immediate knee-jerk twitch at that. He had to remind himself that he was the one standing here in trooper gear, 'Sir' was only the sensible thing to call him, here.

"Restrain these two pieces of filth," he said, not quite able to slap an 'alien' on there the way far too many Imperials might. "We'll throw them in the brig," he hoped this place had a brig, "and see what the graysuits have to say about their fates from there."

No, they'd throw them in the brig and then rob them and the Imperials blind, without shame. And then maybe Kanan would kick the unconscious tuft-sucker on the floor one more time for good measure.

Kaidan peeled a long strip of duct tape off the pad, deliberately letting it make a loud sucking graft noise. Taking the man’s forearm in hand, he began winding it around his wrists, giving it the half-twist every few wraps to make it less easy to snap. Based on human strength - he was hoping the psychological factor would apply, here, because he had no idea what a Kalleran’s arm strength was. When he was done, he kicked the back of the man’s knees, dropping him for the moment. It would keep him from rushing Kanan while Kaidan secured the other man.

He noted the trembling - this guy was not putting up even a facade of fight. When his wrists were secured, he knelt on his own, head bowed. Kaidan moved to the man on the floor. The other two seemed to think this one was dead - Kaidan knew better, and didn’t want them to learn different. Taking him by the ankles, Kaidan hauled him back, out of sight of the other two. Taking no chances, he dialed up some Medigel and slapped it over the guy’s mouth. It was a crude but effective temporary gag. Just in case.

Then he looked around, trying to figure out where the hell a brig might be located.

Kanan, meanwhile, was standing guard, keeping his weapon trained on the two on their knees. When Kaidan came back into view, he nodded back toward the hallway. Worst case scenario, they could chuck them in with the local boys, leave them to the tender mercies of the untrained handful in restraints. Either way, they'd be completely karked later, unless they were to cut them loose at the last minute, tell them their buddy was, in fact, still alive, and then take off without them.

Kanan didn't give a womp rat's ass about what happened to Tápusk. These other two? They deserved better than whatever fate the Empire would treat them to.

Damn his conscience anyway. It made everything more difficult than it had to be.

Kaidan nodded. Walking up, he took both men by the restraints and hauled them to their feet with a curt, “Up.” He turkey-walked them forward, toward the door. Leaving room for Kanan to swing around behind them with the rifle.

He got a better look at the hall when they walked down it. What he’d thought was just a recessed accent panel turned out to be a door. He jerked his chin at it to bring it to Kanan’s attention, then threw a questioning look over his shoulder.

Kanan considered that look for a moment. And then considered the door. And then, even though the wicked look that crossed his lips couldn't be seen through the helmet, he gave one quick, sharp nod.

Into the supply closet with you two. That way, you could figure out how the hell to get out of this place on your own, hopefully before the troopsicles awoke from their naps. That would buy them time to grab their get, and assuage Kanan's conscience all in one fell swoop.

Kaidan walked them to the door and then reached out, letting his Omni do its thing to unlock the door. It slid open and he scanned it quickly - no secondary exit, no conveniently over-large air vents, just a mop bucket, floor drain, and a whole lot of dust.

He didn’t have the benefit of a helmet but he had enough training to not smirk at all until he’d shoved them in, pushing them hard so they stumbled toward the back. While they were re-orienting, he let the door slide closed. The mouthy arsehole piped up with an angry, “Hey, this is no br--!” just in time for the door to snap shut. Kaidan locked it, because sometimes he was a petty asshole too. Then he smirked.

“Hey, buddy? What’re the chances these guys came here in a ship that has fuel cells the Escape could use?” he asked, because: petty asshole mode engaged.

"Oh, I would say that's a pretty safe bet," Kanan replied, amusement clear even through the warble that the helmet added to his voice. "I vote we leave enough for them to limp to the next system if they manage to get out of this mess, take whatever else we can carry. The one we left on the floor back there, I don't care about. The two in the closet probably don't deserve whatever the Imperials here would dish out if they were caught. At least this way they have a fighting chance."

He nodded back toward the room they'd been rummaging around in.

"Shall we see if they found anything fun while they were in there?"

“So,” Kaidan began, without any attempt at subtlety, “Friend of yours? That looked like a personal kind of kick you dished out.”

He sauntered back toward the room, “I’m good with leaving them just enough to get out of Dodge, but I have no skin in this game. You want to tie the goomba in the room up and stick him under a rock for the Imps, I’m good with that, too. We can re-purpose those shackles they tagged on the locals.”

It wasn’t like Kanan to kick people when they were down. He had, and Kaidan figured that meant the guy probably had not only earned it but a whole lot more. It took kind of a lot to piss Kanan off that bad.

"Wouldn't be anything worse than he tried to do to me," Kanan growled. "To... the kid."

He wasn't saying that name in this place. Wouldn't say that name in this galaxy if he could manage it.

Kaidan processed that and his expression hardened. Yup, called that one. “I mean, there’s the cliff, too, if he shouldn’t be left breathing.” Not that Kaidan needed a cliff, he was just entertaining a mental picture involving a dull knife and a long drop. He didn’t know this particular part of Kanan’s past, but.. didn’t really need to know the particulars. It took a lot to piss Kanan off that bad.

“I slapped his mouth full of medigel,” he offered, “He’s not going to be talking anytime soon unless you want me to rip it back out.” Or, y’know, slap some more over his nose. “Let’s see what they were getting into.”

"Leave it in," Kanan muttered. "If he comes to, I don't want to hear him talk. Can't guarantee I won't just shoot him again."

And he was trying to avoid acting out in anger. He was supposed to be better than that.

"Come on. Let's just get our cargo and leave. We've got cantinas to hit tonight, too."

Kaidan reached up to briefly squeeze Kanan’s shoulder. He didn’t make the offer. He knew what Kanan would say to it - both what he’d want to say, and what he’d actually wind up saying. Kaidan simply made a silent promise that if that asshole came to and became a problem, it would be the very last thing that asshole ever did.

“Shopping time,” he said, almost brightly. It was false cheer, but it was better than any of the dozen other things he could have said. Kaidan headed back through the door. Checked a scan of the ass on the floor - biometrics still read out cold. Some people could fool a visual but it was damn hard to fool a bioscan. Then he went to see what these sleemos had been after.

It didn't hurt that the trio of Kallerans had already raided a good number of the crates in this room. Meant that all Kanan and Kaidan needed to do was browse the goods that were sitting out - Kanan almost immediately earmarked a good supply of medical supplies, and was making faces at another crate that was full up with rifles.

"Fuel comes first," he said again, "but I want to see if I can manage at least these two. I can think of a few resettlement zones just off the top of my head that can use both of these things tonight."

Sorry, Mitsutada, you'd have to wait a little longer for your bacta.

“Fuel likely to be in this room, or should we go check with our other friends in grey?” Kaidan asked, looking around at the other crates. Something tucked into a corner caught his eye and he ambled over. It was a flat floating cart. He gave it an experimental nudge. It moved and then stopped after drifting a little. With a shrug, he moved behind it and pushed it toward Kanan.

“Useful,” he noted.

"Hm?" Kanan glanced that way, and then nodded. "Oh, good, you found a hovercart. I was hoping they had one of those around here." He gestured for Kaidan to bring it up alongside the medical supplies, which he was going to single-handedly heft up onto it. The weapons would be soon to follow. "Explosives would be useful too," he added, "but they're lower priority. I'd rather not have something too volatile to get onto the ship on top of the fuel if I can help it. Those two troopers won't be unconscious forever."

Probably.

Kaidan nodded and went to tear open the crates their little green buddies hadn’t quite gotten around to yet. Some form of worker uniforms, nope. Box of metal widgets that looked like an odd form of plumbing. He set that crate aside for Kanan to look at. After a moment of thought, he dug out a small metal washer and fed it into his Omni’s reclamation port. Couldn’t hurt to figure out the composition of the metals here. Crate of boots. Crate of what looked like ratbars - could be food, could be something like C4. Kaidan leaned back and shoved that one across the floor toward Kanan with his leg. Another crate held what looked like ammunition, or batteries. “Score,” Kaidan said, shoving that crate over too.

The next crate was odd. It was packed with densely layered foam padding. Kaidan began removing it to see what was underneath. He thought maybe explosives. Eventually he dug down to a small metal box. He tried to run a scan with the Omni. “Huh. That’s weird.” The Omni couldn’t read anything through the metal at all.

Well, there was one way to find out what was inside. Gingerly lifting it out, being very sure to keep it stable, he rested it on the intact half of the crate’s lid. It had a very simple latch, not even a lock. Wary at the simple catch to something that had been so well padded, Kaidan hooked out his knife and flipped it open with a metallic snick. He used the blade to gently pry the latch loose.

Nothing happened.

Wiggling the blade into the crack between lid and lower half, he raised it slowly. Nothing continued to happen. The lid came up to display more foam padding inside. Nestled into the padding were about a dozen clear crystalline objects. Kaidan blinked at them and called out, “Buddy, I need you to come take a look at this.” That much padding, these were either very volatile or very fragile - and in either case, probably very expensive.

"Hm?" Kanan finished loading the weapons onto the cart, gave the crate a pat, and then turned on his heel to come investigate what it was that Kaidan wanted him to see.

...

And then he reached up and pulled off his helmet so that he could have a better look.

He was frowning, deeply.

Kaidan eyed the frown and then ran a scan. Not a mineral or element known to the Omni. Very odd crystalline matrix. “What am I looking at, here? They’re not like diamonds or any other crystals from my galaxy.”

Kanan swallowed.

"These come with us," he said, his voice quiet, breath strangely absent, as though he was trying to speak in spite of being utterly winded. "I have no idea what the hell we do with them. Maybe they just sit on the island for safekeeping. But these... the Empire doesn't get to keep these."

Kaidan’s gaze traveled from the crystals to Kanan’s face and back again. If he hadn’t just spent a weekend hearing the word, he might not have made the connection. He gently - very gently - closed the metal box. “They’re clear,” he said quietly, “You said they .. choose a color. Is this.. Are these a before or an after, can you tell?”

Because, so help him, if this was some sort of sick Empire trophy, he was going to burn this fucking building down.

Kanan swallowed, and then inhaled. Exhaled.

"These are pure," he said, finally. "They probably came directly from Ilum. They'd have a color otherwise."

That answer came with its own pain behind it, sure. But at least these hadn't been somebody's. He didn't have to stand here wondering if that one belonged to one of the Initiates he'd grown up alongside, or a Master, or maybe an old sparring partner.

"Most lightsabers were burned on the front steps of the Temple, kyber and all," he added.

At least the answer wasn’t ‘after’. Kaidan exhaled slowly. At least Kanan wasn’t looking at that. “You’ve said,” Kaidan agreed quietly, “but there aren’t many here, so I wondered. I’m glad it’s not.. that.” He took the box of lightsaber seeds and gently handed it to Kanan. “I’ll keep looking.” And then he turned away from his friend to give him at least a moment of privacy.

Kanan stood there in silence, staring down at the box in his hands. Losing himself, if only for a moment, in his own head.

Who might these have belonged to, if the Order hadn't fallen?

Whose stolen future would these have been a part of, had things gone differently?

His grip on the box tightened for a moment, and then he exhaled slowly and went to set the box reverently inside the crate of medical supplies, so there was no chance it would slip away accidentally along the way out of this place.

Kaidan, meanwhile, was tearing some more crates open with a little more force than was strictly necessary. A lot of the stuff was just .. stuff. Things any outpost would need to keep the lights on and the crew clothed and shod. He was a little amused to see that military toilet paper was the same terrible stuff no matter which reality you were in. He left that crate alone. That junk didn’t even burn well.

A lot of it was distraction. There was a small, angry burn in the back of his mind. They’d been sitting in that crate for who knew how long, like they weren’t anything. Like they were just more stuff. He dumped the emotion into the dark locker in his mind, refusing to feel it right now because the very last thing Kanan needed was him resonating at high frequency. It could live there, in the dark, until he needed it. He’d hold that anger there until it had a target, and then? Then he would utterly ruin someone’s day. Someone who deserved it. Someone who’d kept them in the dark like they didn’t mean anything. The kyber crystals were Kanan’s now. He’d take care of them. Kaidan had no idea what that actually involved, yet likewise had no doubt at all that it was absolutely the truth.

So he continued tearing through the crates, dismissing most of it and kicking one or two more crates toward the hovercart for Kanan to check out. One of the crates had .. looked like what passed for books here. Vid tablets? Holobooks? He wasn’t sure what they were called. It was one of the things he punted to Kanan. If they were books, at least one of them was coming home with him. “Not finding much else,” he admitted after he’d opened everything, “You having any luck?”

"Outside of what's already on the cart?" Kanan shook his head a little. "You already found the most valuable thing here. It'd be hard to top even that small amount of kyber."

He leaned his head back for a moment in thought.

"The fuel's probably out by the ships," he added. "Maybe there's a storage shed or something."

“Bets that was what our little green tuft-sucking buddies were looking for?” Kaidan asked with a frown. “The rest may not be valuable, but is it priority-level useful?” Then he pointed at the box of maybe-books, “And are those books? If they are, I want one.”

He eyed the guy on the ground, and then rather grimly walked over and began to truss him tighter than a Christmas goose. He didn’t care if he was cutting off circulation. Hell, right then, Kaidan wouldn’t have cared if he was cutting off oxygen. Some of that spare worker drab was getting sliced and twisted into rope with the ease of something he’d done many times before.

"This guy's the kind of sleemo who'll sell his own mother for a handful of credits," Kanan replied, frowning at the bound Kalleran on the floor. "Not saying he actually did, but I wouldn't put it past him, either. They weren't here for rifles and bacta, is what I am saying. If they weren't here for the kyber, I'd be shocked. It's the only thing here worth that much trouble, monetarily speaking."

He shrugged, and then glanced at the box.

"And those are books. My guess is they're manuals for whatever equipment they're running here. Weapons, speeders, maybe. You can bring the whole damn box, if you want. If it fits on the hovercart, it'll fit in my cargo."

“Wasn’t sure if we were trying to fit the fuel on the cart too,” Kaidan explained as he finished tying a whole bunch of knots. Standing, he brushed his hands on his pants like he was trying to wipe filth off. Cut a glance at Kanan, “Do you want to know for sure, or would you rather not? Because I can go have a chat with Talky McArseface in the closet if you do while you go look for a storage shed.”

Kanan considered that for... all of two seconds. And then he nodded.

"Yeah," he replied. "Even if all we get out of him is whether this was all the kyber that's here or not. I'd rather, uh, leave no stone unturned, so to speak."

“I want to know how they knew it was here,” Kaidan said shortly, “Someone told them. Someone knew. If that person’s one of those two greysuits? You’ll need to take a slightly longer walk, buddy.” Because he had a few things to say to them and he wasn’t planning to do it with words. He imagined Kanan would have more things to say - but Kaidan was going to try to avoid giving him the opportunity to say it - that way, at least. It’d be bad for him. Strong negative emotions wouldn’t do more than give Kaidan a headache. They could destroy Kanan.

He lifted the crate of books onto the hovercart. They could ditch it if they needed the space. “Go check for a shed,” Kaidan said quietly, looking over at Kanan, “I shouldn’t be long.”

Kanan paused a moment, picturing an actual interaction between Kaidan and one of the Imperial Officers that they'd locked in their room. And then, with a nod, he reached to pull the helmet on again.

"Yeah," he replied, and patted the side of the crate with the medical supplies - and kyber - in it. "You won't let this out of your sight?"

He was welcome to turn his back on the crate if need be, but even bound up like he was, Kanan wasn't going to trust that tuft-sucking sleemo Tápusk anywhere near them alone.

“Not taking it into the closet with me,” Kaidan shook his head. He lifted his chin at the sleemo, “Take him with you. Stick him under some rocks somewhere he won’t be found for awhile. His buddies think you dropped him. They can keep on thinking that.”

Kanan glanced back toward Tápusk, and then made a soft sound of... amusement, maybe? It was something ugly, whatever it was.

This wasn't stopping him from making his way over and grabbing the Kalleran by the ankle. Why yes, he was going to drag him along. For starters, he didn't deserve that much respect.

Kaidan would have done the same damn thing. Face down across the rubble. When Kanan started down the hall ahead of him, Kaidan detoured to the closet. He unholstered the Scorpion. Looked at it contemplatively for a moment, and then racked out the blue thermal clip and slapped in a red one.

His Omni worked the door, unlocking it and letting it slide open. Before the two Kalleran men could do anything, he sighted and fired, sticking a mine to the chest of each of them. In a voice colder than the air outside, he said, “You don’t want to move. You don’t even want to breathe too deeply. Those are proximity mines and they have four-directional tilt switches. Too much movement and you’re liquid.”

There was a sudden stench of urine. Kaidan didn’t even have to guess which of them that had come from. Good thing there was a drain in the floor. The mouthy one scowled at him, face twisted and ugly. “You’re no Trooper!”

“No,” Kaidan said, stepping into the room and closing the door behind him - and locking it, “I’m really not.” He eyed the men, lips tight, and asked shortly, “Where is it?”

Scowly McArseface growled, “Why should we tell you? What’s keeping me from giving a real good shake and blowing us all to hell?”

Kaidan smiled coldly and gave a small waggle of his Omni-clad arm. “Shielded. I might smack into the door and fall on my ass on the way out, but the only danger to me is that I’d be washing bits of you out of my hair for days.” He touched a key on his Omni, which did nothing more than make a small ‘beep’ noise. The noise made both the Kallerans flinch. Imagination, best weapon in an arsenal. “Don’t make me ask again.”

“Will you let us go if I tell you?” asked the nervous one in a trembling voice. Kaidan eyed them and answered honestly, “No, but I will deactivate the mines and remove them. I’ll even leave you breathing and the door unlocked. You’ll have a fair shake at getting out of here before an interrogation team arrives.” It was more or less true. He’d leave them breathing. He had no intention of leaving them conscious.

“We didn’t find it,” the nervous Kalleran admitted, “Intel had it in that store room. If you didn’t find it, then.. then I guess the intel was bad, maybe.”

“Do you expect me to believe that?” Kaidan asked coldly, “You came all the way out here to this backrocket world on a maybe?”

"We came all the way out here to this backrocket world on a certainty," Scowly snarled. "You think we'd come this far on anything less than a guarantee? We're businessmen. We do business."

Nervous turned wide eyes toward him, as best as he could without actually craning his head that way. Scowly made a face back at him that suggested that he'd be spitting again, if only to rid the supply closet of some of that piss stench, if it didn't involve choosing between spitting on himself or blowing himself up.

"Don't look at me like that, Klemmisk. We're in it for the credits, but credits aren't worth a heap of muunyak dung if we end up as worm food like Tápusk back there." Evidently more of a daredevil than his urine-soaked companion, he pointed with his chin toward the room that the Officers had been locked into. "Why the hell else you figure the only trained guard was on front gate and we haven't seen anyone actually in charge here, yet?"

Nervous - Klemmisk - made a soft worrying sound in the back of his throat that suggested very strongly that he wished he had never left Kaller.

“Who gave you that guarantee?” Kaidan asked flatly.

"Who the hell do you think?" Scowly's lip pulled back in a snarl. "There's one man in this outpost with the power to assign troopers to where they're most convenient. You might want to take that one up with him."

“Then I’ll go do that, and if I find out your intel’s just as worthless as his was, I won’t even have to come back here to paint this room with you,” Kaidan said, calmly looking at his Omni and making it beep again.

"You go right ahead," Scowly growled, not bothering to hide his wince all the same. "We'll be here."

Wasn't like they had anywhere else to be, anyway.

Kaidan silently unlocked the closet and quit the room, relocking it behind him. He spared a moment to walk back to the front entrance to make sure those two troopers were still out cold - and supply a short, sharp punch to the bundle of nerves behind their ears to keep them that way for awhile longer.

Then he went outside and borrowed Kanan’s regular blaster. Holstering the Scorpion for now, he set the blaster to ‘stun’.

He strode purposefully back toward the locked room on the left. It didn’t stay locked for long. When the door slid open, the two men turned toward him. Kaidan promptly fired at the one who didn’t have pips on his chest. The man dropped face down, cap rolling off his head. The remaining officer stared at his fellow for a moment before turning an anger-suffused look on Kaidan. “How dare you! Do you know who I am?”

Kaidan kept the gun trained on him. He ignored the question. “Where is it?” he demanded instead. Always good to start with that demand and let their brains fill in the blanks.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the officer snapped immediately. The tenseness of his lips, the sudden pinched look around his nostrils, as well as the immediate way he’d snapped off the denial told Kaidan he was lying.

Striding forward, Kaidan grabbed the officer by the front of his uniform. Snapping a kick at the man’s shins, he all but threw him to his knees and pressed the blaster tight to his ear. “Don’t make me ask you again,” he said, staring down into the officer’s eyes with an expression gone flat and implacable.

The air rushed out of the officer when his knees impacted with the concrete floor, a noise of pain and denial. Kaidan pressed the blaster a little tighter. “It’s in the store room,” he blurted. “No,” Kaidan informed him, “It isn’t.” “Then the Kallerans took it! Moved it! It was still there as of yesterday!” the man argued, “Nobody’s been in that section for months!”

“Was that the only one?” Kaidan asked coldly. “Of course it was!” the officer glared up at him, “It was a fluke that one ended up here. You think they’d send an asset as valuable as that to somewhere like this?! It wasn’t even documented on the manifests! Nobody knew it was here until I ordered the audit!”

“And instead of reporting it to Command, you decided to sell it,” Kaidan accused. “Imperial Command wouldn’t have given me so much as a commendation letter,” the officer spat bitterly, “Why should I send it back? Do you know how many credits those are worth?”

Kaidan looked at the man. While he couldn’t really complain about an Imperial officer being a complete sleemo, it galled him to his military soul to see a bad officer in the chain of command anywhere. “Oh, I know what they’re worth,” Kaidan answered him conversationally. “Then.. then maybe we can work something out,” the officer began in a rush, “I could help you find them in there..”

Kaidan didn’t let him get much further. He wasn’t sure what a blaster bolt directly to the brain would do, long term, but short term it dropped the man instantly. Kaidan let him fall to the concrete and stared at him a moment.

Then he kicked him onto his back and dialed something up on his Omni. Pressing it to the unconscious man’s forehead, he branded the word ‘TRAITOR’ deep enough to scar. Considered shooting him - decided that was more mercy than he was feeling at the moment. He’d let the Empire take care of their own. He spent a moment rifling through both the greysuits’ pockets. He took their credits and their IDs. Another moment of reflection and he stripped both men down to their underwear and bundled up the uniforms. Might come in handy later. He duct taped them and left them laying on the concrete.

Then he began a swift and thorough search of the room. The very first thing he found was a package of cards, dealt out and game in progress. Those - and the credits on the table with them - were swept right into his pocket.

Back outside, Kanan was having a much more subdued time, meandering the grounds, making his way to the landing pad that, apparently, the Kallerans had been brazen enough to use on their way in. He didn't even want to know how the two troopers who had been at the door hadn't seen them coming in. Changing of the guard, perhaps. Or maybe they were just that clueless in the Empire, after all.

At any rate, after a few minutes he'd secured a second hovercart and was loading up most of the Kallerans' fuel, then topping the load off with as much as he could find in the nearby supply shed.

Was he vaguely aware of some very strong emotions going on back inside? Absolutely.

Was he acknowledging them? Not a chance.

Kaidan finished his ransack and came up with not much. A few more stashed credits, some form of key card for something, and a datapad. There was a computer on the other side of the room, a large table-like terminal. He wasn’t going to touch it in case it set off some sort of alarm. Kanan would have to take a look at it. His haul was stashed back with the coats.

He went to check on the Kallerans and to retrieve the mines. Both of them cringed back a little when the door was opened this time. Kaidan was silent as he moved in and set his Omni to retrieve the mines.

“It was like I said, right?” Mouthy McArseface challenged, “He stashed ‘em somewhere?” Kaidan looked at him and answered flatly, “He lied.” “WHAT?!” the Kalleran spluttered, “Whaddaya mean, he lied?!” “It was all a ploy to bring him to the attention of Command. Draw some pirates in, make a big show of taking them out. Show he was promotion material. There was nothing in that room but some rifles and a bunch of terrible toilet paper,” Kaidan answered calmly, undoing the other mine.

“He sent pictures,” came an angry protest, “We saw ‘em!” Kaidan shrugged, “They weren’t here.” He quoted what the officer had said, “What, you really thought something that valuable would wind up here? You’re dumber than you look, pal.”

That earned him narrowed eyes. “Yeah? Well you came here for it too, what’s that say about you and your friend, huh?” Kaidan looked at him and let a small amount of amusement show. “I didn’t come here for that. I came to plug a leak. It’s been plugged.”

The Kallerans exchanged a look. “So what about us?” asked the nervous one, Klemmisk. Kaidan stepped back and smiled a tight, angry smile when he raised the blaster. Two sets of eyes went wide. “You said..!” That was all the time Mouthy had before Kaidan stunned them both. “Said I’d leave you breathing and the door unlocked,” he said to the limp beings on the floor. It was the work of a moment to go through their pockets to find the shackle keys. And a few more loose credits. He walked out and shut the door behind him.

Leaving the building, he gathered up the coat-wrapped package of stuff and went to go locate Kanan.

Kanan was still outside loading the hovercart up with fuel by the time Kaidan made his way out.

He wasn't going to ask what had gone on in there. Nobody had died.

That would do.

"Hey, buddy," he said, setting his armload down before turning to look his way. "Things go well in there?"

“About as well as that sort of thing can go, yeah,” Kaidan agreed. He put his bundle of stuff on the cart, tucking it in the crate of books. “Everyone was in it for their own skin. Kallerans sold out the greysuit who gave ‘em the intel. Greysuit in charge said he found them during an audit, claimed nobody knew they were here. Decided to cash in his bit rather than get an Imperial pat on the back, so he sold the information to the Kallerans.”

He began helping load the fuel. “Left them all taking a nap. Found a computer in the command room, so if you have one of those slicing spikes, you may want to have a run at it. Keycard of some sort’s in the bundle.” He gestured with his chin at the bundle he’d just tucked away. “Datapad, too.”

Kaidan loaded a few more fuel cells before adding, “Gave that asshole something to remember me by.” The greysuit. Because if Kanan went in that room, it wasn’t like he could miss seeing it. “Didn’t go back into the barracks. How do you want to play that? Leave them? Let ‘em go? Shake ‘em down for whatever credits they have?” He really wasn’t feeling too charitable toward anyone in that building right now.

Kanan fell quiet for a few minutes before heaving a sigh and looking back toward the barracks.

"If the Officer orchestrated all of this, they're going to be the first ones that get tried for treason," he mumbled. "Nobody in that compound is going to get out of this with impunity except probably him. They weren't even trained in how to use the damn blasters. Maybe the Kallerans knew something that made their jobs easier, but the fact is, those three sleemos took out five armed Imperial troops and left them locked in their room like younglings being punished for not finishing their brekka beets. The Empire doesn't smile on incompetence. They'll be easy scapegoats."

Kanan maybe had a thing about the Empire's tendency for scapegoating.

“I made sure he won’t skate,” Kaidan answered him, “The Empire’s going to have a few questions for him.” He looked over at Kanan, slightly worried about him. “You’re the one the armor fits, you want to be the one to unlock them? Or do you want me to go deal it while you..slice.. the computer?”

Thought about it for a minute, “If you can get into the computer, we could always make it look like he sold everything he could sell.”

"We could," Kanan replied, looking thoughtful. "But they won't care about most of what hasn't been nailed down. It'll be the kyber they'll kill the man for."

He wasn't even going to pretend they would do otherwise.

"Here," he said, "I can do either. Send the shinies on their way or slice into the computer, but probably not both. Do you have a preference?"

“Since I don’t know how to use one of your spikes, probably best if I deal with the shackles,” Kaidan said, “If you wanted to pull any of the data from the computer. I can probably read it but unless I can display it, won’t be able to record. My Omni can handshake and read code, but if the data’s something other than straight code? No joy.” Things he’d learned in the library at Courscant.

Kanan nodded for a moment.

"I'll pull what I can from the computer. At best, we'll find out some kind of particularly juicy plan or something. And least, we'll get access codes, maybe something we can use to travel through their checkpoints a few times without raising suspicion." He grinned faintly. "Besides," he added, "I'm not the people person here today."

“Not in that uniform you’re not,” Kaidan agreed, “Alright. I’ll go be scary.” Again. Not that it really took much, here. He headed back into the building, making sure the troopers at the door were still nice and asleep.

Reaching the door, he held up his Omni and unlocked it. Opening the door, he gave everyone in the room a hard look. “Fall in.” There was some grumbling as the five men formed a more or less even line. Kaidan walked along, silently undoing the shackles. When he was finished, he stepped to the side and stood almost to attention. “This building is going to be locked down while the investigation is underway. You are dismissed but ordered not to leave the vicinity and to report when the Empire calls for you. An inquisition team is on the way.”

He had no idea if the Empire had such things, but there were always rumors of such things about any branch of military. By the sudden paleness of the faces around him, he could see he’d hit that one in the bullseye. If these guys were like any other average people, they’d be long gone, down the darkest hole they could find, sooner rather than later.

“Who are you?” one of the men asked. Kaidan gave him a hard stare, as if memorizing his face. One of the other men hissed something under his breath and all but dragged the speaker away. Kaidan stood and stared at them all until they’d bustled out of the building. He noted, almost with approval, that they stopped on the way out to haul their unconscious door guards with them.

When they were out of sight, he gave the room a quick pilfer. Another deck of cards went into his pocket. Nothing really more of interest, he headed back toward the officer’s room to wait for Kanan.

Kanan... wasn't exactly a slicer, no. There had been a few odd jobs over the years that had given him cause to be fairly handy with a computer all the same, and with actual equipment right there in the room for downloading what he could, it wasn't actually all that difficult to get into the system and pull a few files at random. He didn't figure they'd have the time to grab everything, and he especially wanted to be gone before his old Kalleran acquaintance managed to rid himself of his mouthful of medigel and start yelling - of everybody here, Tápusk was the one in a position to mess him up the most if he realized who he was - and so he was prioritizing tarnishing the Officer's record over clearing the computer's entire database, this time around. Better to implicate him hard than let five others - five who were already annoyed at this situation and how they'd fallen into it - fall in his place.

"Remind me," he said conversationally as Kaidan made his way into the room, "to never get your input if I ever consider a tattoo."

“It’s a brand,” Kaidan said conversationally, “A tattoo can be removed or covered up easily enough.” He looked a the example on the floor, “That sleemo sold out the men under his command, and if what you said would happen to them was likely?” Kaidan made a low, ugly noise in his throat. “Bullet’s too good for him.”

"Vindictive," Kanan observed. "I can appreciate that."

He stared at the console a few moments more, and then hit a button and a little disc slid out. He grabbed it, looked at it thoughtfully for a moment, and then took a few steps back and levelled his blaster rifle at the computer, giving it a few superficial shots before nodding back to the Officer on the floor.

"He have a weapon on him? It's more incriminating if it looks like he tried to destroy the evidence."

Kanan was sometimes perfectly capable of being an absolute asshole.

Kaidan shook his head, “No, but one can be arranged.” He took a stroll back to the barracks. The boys in cuffs had left without taking theirs. He gave it a good wipedown on the way back. It was a handgun, not a rifle, but blaster burns were blaster burns up close and personal.

He checked the officer’s hands, looking for the trigger callus. Then he snorted loudly. “Soft hands,” he noted. Found a pen or stylus callus on the right hand, so he went with that as the dominant. Wrapped the man’s hand around the grip and made sure there was a nice clean print on the trigger. Then he wrapped his own palm around the business end of the blaster and harshly yanked it out of the man’s hand and tossed it into a corner of the room.

Shrugged at Kanan. He had no problem being an asshole, either. Not to this guy.

Kanan nodded his approval. Soft hands would explain why he didn't know how the hell to shoot to cause actual damage, either.

Honestly, how the Empire managed to promote people who only ever sat at a desk... Even the Order's librarian had been an unstoppable terror with a lightsaber in her own right.

"I think that's about all the damage we can cause, here. Want to help me get our hovercarts back to the ship?"

He was here for the fuel, but there was cargo on the other one that was suddenly far more important.

“As long as we’ve stripped all their fuel, yeah,” Kaidan agreed. “Everything else is already on the first cart. If there’s more to be loaded, I can haul that and follow if you want to take the first and go stow it?” Because he knew Kanan would feel better once he had the kyber crystals locked up somewhere safe.

Kanan considered that for a moment.

"It'll be a hell of a trek with that fuel across this terrain," he settled on. "The hovercart is good for some of it, can your biotics account for the rest?"

Or would they be better off relying on the Force instead?

“Might be better off if you do it,” Kaidan admitted, “Biotics are less trained for control than sheer power. I could Pull it, but stopping it suddenly if I had to? I can turn it off, but it’s a hovercart, it’s going to keep going unless something physically intercedes.” He thought about it, “The hard part’s going to be the cliff. If you were below, could I drop them to you and have you catch ‘em?”

Kanan grimaced a moment at the thought.

"Better not to chance it with the fuel cells," he decided. "The medical supplies, hell, even the blasters, sure. But with the fuel, odds are just as good that what's 'physically interceding' is the giant explosion if one jostles the wrong way."

And Kanan really wasn't in the market to die in a large fuel explosion today.

“Can you float the whole cart down?” Kaidan asked.

Kanan smiled wryly.

"Yeah. Watch my back, have that Omni out to make damn sure we weren't followed, and I'll float that cart down."

Kaidan nodded, “I can do that. Might be better if you can do it from the bottom, it’d be less visible if we were followed.” He looked at the box of kyber crystals and frowned slightly. “Put those with the fuel, take that cart down first? Then we can pitch-and-catch the other stuff, all of which is ditchable if we have to take off? I assume you’re going to just stow’n’rope the entire cart in the hold, what doesn’t go directly into the Escape?”

"Pretty much," Kanan agreed with a nod. "Keeping it on the cart means I don't have to spend hours unloading once we get back to the island, either. Anything to make this easier down the road." He nodded toward the cart with the goods on it. "Books go on last," he added, "but if it doesn't fit in cargo, we can probably haul most of that box into the cockpit and keep it in there with us."

“Eh, if we have to ditch it, we ditch it,” Kaidan shrugged. He went to take charge of the cart that didn’t contain the kyber and began pushing it back the way they’d come. His Omni came to life to both provide a map and to scan the area around. “Where’d you stash the other Kalleran? Somewhere unpleasant, I hope?”

Kanan smirked faintly.

"Found the brig."

Turnabout was fair play, Tápusk.

Kaidan chuckled a little. “Well, that’s more pleasant than if you’d found the latrine?” He really wasn’t above being an asshole to that guy in particular, after what Kanan had said.

"Here, we call it the refresher," Kanan supplied, helpfully. Because no moment was a bad moment for a vocabulary lesson. "But that was plan B."

“Yeah, we use the same word, just not exclusively. I thought it was only a ‘fresher if it had like, plumbing,” Kaidan mused, “I was thinking more a pit latrine. This far out, wouldn’t surprise me if there was one, or at least a convenient pile of rocks used as such.”

...

"And now I'm picturing the suits in there, squatting. Thanks for that, buddy." Yeah, Kanan's trash mode had engaged hard. "Considering the rest of it, I suppose not much would surprise me about this place."

And he would absolutely toss somebody in there if he was feeling vindictive enough.

Kaidan smirked at him. “Hey, man, you can’t blame me for your imagination.” You totally could. Pit latrine conjured only one mental image, really. It wasn’t like most men would bother to find a latrine just to take a piss, after all. Not when they had the entire outdoors to mark as their territory.

He continued pushing the cart along. “If they fit, we taking these too?” Kaidan asked, throwing him a glance, “Hera’d probably love ‘em.”

"The carts? Sure," Kanan replied, nodding. "She's got a couple for the Ghost already, but given the way people keep volunteering to come along on these idiot misadventures of ours, we might need a few more anyway. Besides," he patted the side of his own as they went, "these come in pretty damn handy at the scrapyard."

“Scrapyard’s where I was thinking,” Kaidan admitted, “I haven’t seen the Ghost. Good you can put ‘em to use. I’m mostly just irritated enough that if I could’ve found a way to liquidate everything in that building down to the paint on the walls, I’d have done it.”

Grinned a little, “But hey, at least now I probably have at least one decent beginner Pazaak deck!”

Kanan gave a small snort of a laugh in reply to that. "Well, we can play Pazaak on the way back, if you're ready to throw in the towel on Sabacc already," he teased. "But yeah... we can fit these carts on, we'll take these carts. Should be able to make it work, especially after I refuel. It'll just take some creative organization."

“Nah, I’m fine learning Sabacc. That doesn’t seem like a game I could really play on my own anyway. I’ve made kind of a bastardized form of solitaire Pazaak. Mostly just to get some pattern recognition down, but it also gives me something new and sort of interesting to do when it’s 3am and I can’t sleep,” Kaidan answered. Threw Kanan a lopsided smile, “Of course, I’m kind of already wondering if I could bastardize a Sabacc deck into a Pazaak deck and add the switch factor into it to make it a little more interesting when I’m doing it solitaire.” Because no, I am not typing ‘playing with myself’. So there.

So help him, Kaidan, if Kanan wasn't wearing that stupid bucket on his head, he'd be giving you the most amused look right then.

"Could probably be done," he replied. "Knock out the special cards, for starters..." He shrugged. "It'd definitely add some flavor to the game, I'll give you that."

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” Kaidan said, “Except if it switched from a numbered card to a special card, though that’d be easy enough to work around by just declaring all non-numbered cards to be null, or wild.” He threw Kanan a grin, “Looking forward to you playing Sabacc against someone who knows how, buddy.”

"Hopefully it entertains you half as much as the trip has so far," Kanan replied, glancing back over his shoulder to see how much distance they'd gotten, and then reaching up to pull off his stolen helmet, tossing it onto the top of the pile on his cart. "Can't see poodoo in those damn things."

“Considering your gripe a few minutes ago about picturing people squatting, that sounds like a benefit of the bucket,” Kaidan teased him. He relaxed a little though. “I prefer your regular voice over the one through the vocoder,” he admitted. “I get why they do it, to depersonalize the soldiers, but.. ugh.”

"Yeah, make 'em all the same faceless white monsters and nobody in command has to feel guilty about orders that leave these guys face down on a battlefield," Kanan muttered. "Not that most of them ever feel guilty about much of anything at all." He shook his head. "At least our generals and commanders encouraged individuality, even among clones. They'd paint up their gear and everything."

“Ours too,” Kaidan agreed, “Not that we had clones, though I’m sure if they could’ve afforded them, the Alliance would’ve gone that route. Soldier’s armor is their property, they can paint or enamel it anyway they want.” He gave a wry sort of smile, “It’s one reason I don’t wear the hardsuit much back home. It’s what I was wearing during the Spectre ceremony. It got televised. The black is more anonymous.”

Kanan nodded.

"Harder to blend if everyone knows what to look for," he replied, wryly. "I get that."

And how.

"Looking forward to getting back onto the ship and pulling off the rest of this garbage. Can't hurt to have a spare, but I'm not a fan."

“What?” Kaidan said in a voice chock full of mock surprise, “You don’t want to wear plastic armor that wouldn’t stop a good hocked spit much less a bullet? Can’t imagine why.” Not to mention the other reasons - which he was, in point of fact, not mentioning. “You could always change into one of the grey uniforms,” he suggested, kidding.

"Nah," Kanan replied. "My hair's not regulation."

His nothing was regulation, really.

“You could bun it up under the hat,” Kaidan said. Helpfully.

"Are you just looking for an excuse to play with my hair again, buddy?"

“Do I ever need an excuse?” Kaidan asked, raising an eyebrow, “But a bun you can do yourself. You just put the ponytail higher on your head and then twist it until it wraps on itself.” Yes, Kaidan was in fact a 13 year old girl. Also: shut up.

"Should I be taking notes? I feel like I should be taking notes," Kanan noted. "Maybe I'll just cut it all off. That'd make the hat fit, too."

And it would look like a disaster. Unless Kanan wanted to look fifteen again.

Kaidan paused long enough to lean a leg over and kick Kanan in his armored shin. “I will tease you mercilessly if you cut it off,” he warned, “Because unless you shave your head or get a brush cut, it’s gonna touch your face and that will drive you nuts until it grows out again.” He smirked a little, “Christmas is coming up. Maybe I’ll get you a book on hairstyling.”

He absolutely would not do that. That was not a thing he would do.

"See how much use I actually get out of something like that," Kanan replied, amused. "I have had short hair before, you know."

It had been a while, but even in his Kanan days, he'd worn it short once or twice.

“I know. I’ve seen you with short hair before,” Kaidan reminded him, “Which is why I’m gonna tease the hell out of you if you cut it. Your hands would never leave it.” You can’t win this one, Kanan. He teased you for sticking your hands in your ponytailed hair, it wasn’t gonna get any better if you cut it.

“They make electronic devices for little girls to make their hair spin up all pretty,” Kaidan added, “So, y’know. Options.”

"Now I know that wouldn't be Imperial regulation," Kanan quipped. And then he smirked and shook his head. "First cliff is coming up. Wanna check for eavesdroppers and we can go from there?"

“Especially not with beads or glitter straps or anything in it,” Kaidan grinned at him. He pictured it and the look Kanan would likely have on his face, and snickered to himself. A glance at his Omni and he shook his head. “Nothing bigger than a bunny,” he offered, then asked, “Do they have bunnies here? There is something over there,” a gesture off to the Northwest, “Heat signature, size about a kilo.”

"We have... things we call rabbits," Kanan supplied. "Not anything I'd say is comparable to the ones you're used to, though." He glanced the way Kaidan had indicated. "Heat signature, huh? At that size, I wouldn't say it's anything to worry about, unless the Imperials have a pet Kowakian monkey lizard on hand or something." He paused, and then added, "not likely. No chance it's a droid, is there?"

Kaidan kicked off the biometric reader, gave it a moment, and shook his head. “Nope. Not unless they build droid power packs to pulse like a heartbeat?” Stranger things had happened.

Kanan frowned a little, and then shrugged and shook his head.

"Probably a bird or a rodent or something," he settled on. "Nothing to worry about." He nodded toward the cliffside. "So, me first, and I lift the cargo down from there. How are you getting down?" He smirked a little. "You can hitch a ride on one of the hovercarts, if you really want."

Peering in the direction of the heat signature, Kaidan frowned a little and shook his head. “Too far away to get a look at.” He was a little disappointed.

“I can downclimb it,” Kaidan assured him, “From up here, if something goes wrong, I can Pull it before it falls. Or you.” Not that Kanan wouldn’t just .. float down or something. He honestly expected another impossible leap. They had, after all, met.

Kanan just turned a smirk Kaidan's way at that.

"You won't have to pull me anywhere," he informed him. And then, true to form, he just jumped over the edge.

Jedi. Honestly.

And there he went. Kaidan grinned and rolled his eyes. Not that Kanan could see it, but it was the expected response here and he wouldn’t want to disappoint. He glanced over the edge just so he could watch the hero drop pose at the end of it, and, because he was a brat, clapped loudly and held up seven fingers before leaning back out of sight again.

Then he began pushing the important hovercart over the edge. He kept hold of it, waiting for Kanan to take over.

This, Kanan could do. He'd spent a long time avoiding exactly this, in this galaxy, but for the sake of expediency and with Kaidan's assurance that there were no witnesses nearby? He could absolutely close his eyes, hold out his hands, and focus on carefully guiding the hovercart down to him. The mechanism in the cart itself would handle the brunt of the weight, he just had to make certain it didn't plummet that first several meters, or tilt or hit the side of the cliff along the way.

Easily enough done. A careful minute later, and he was giving the cart a pat and nodding back up to Kaidan.

Cart number two. The fun one.

Kaidan doublechecked to make sure there were still no heat or electronics signatures. The small signature from before was even closer. He pushed the second hovercart over the edge and looked toward the animal.

Just in time to see the small Nexu leaping toward him. He had no idea what it was, all he had time to really see was a very wide mouth with very, very many large teeth. “Shit!” he blurted, dodging. He saw a blur of a somewhat catlike body with multiple hairless tails when it landed and almost instantly turned and pounced again. “Buddy!” Kaidan yelled a warning, “Incoming biotic!”

The hovercart had just begun its descent. Kaidan dodged the Nexu again and bolted for the edge. Barrier up, his legs windmilled a step before he landed on the cart. Instantly splaying himself to reduce the impact over a wider surface area. He wasn’t certain if it was the cart’s hoverlifts or Kanan, but it didn’t pitch and roll - which would have been kind of bad.

The Nexu didn’t try to follow him, but it did walk to the edge and hiss at him with an awful predatory ripping noise that hit him right in the hindbrain. And, because he was curious what it was, he pulled out his camera and got a snap of the disgruntled face far too full of teeth.

It was a small miracle Kanan hadn't let that cart tilt. Catching Kaidan and a cartload of fuel with a sudden jostle of impact partway hadn't actually been the plan, but it was fortunate that it seemed to have worked out, anyway.

By the time he'd lowered the cart, cargo, Kaidan, and all, down to his level, he was giving him such a look.

"What the hell was that about?"

“The heat signature turned out to be mostly made of teeth and decided it wanted a piece of me,” Kaidan said, letting barrier drop when he hopped off the cart. “It moved faster than I could.” He pulled up the picture. Enjoy the sight of a very put-out Nexu kitten hissing over the edge of a cliff, Kanan.

Kanan squinted at the picture. And then squinted at Kaidan.

"Couldn't get its mother in the frame too, huh?"

“That thing’s a baby?” Kaidan asked, squinting right back at him, “And no. Because she wasn’t showing up as a heat signature. Just this one and then suddenly half a meter all made of teeth.” He looked at the picture and then put his phone away. “That thing is damned fast, Kanan.”

"And they can climb," Kanan offered, helpfully. And then he sighed. "Almost got us blown up over a kitten..." He shook his head, and then closed his eyes again, reaching out through the Force. Was that somebody's pet or an orphan cub? Because if it was one of those things, he'd have to talk himself from going right the hell back up there. And then Kaidan would have to live with a half-meter of teeth (and quills, and claws) hanging out in the cockpit with them until they could find somewhere to hand it off.

“I had faith in you, buddy,” Kaidan replied. The tone was facetious, the words were nothing but stark truth. He watched Kanan go into classic ‘Force’ pose and frowned a little, “I swear to god, if you float that thing down here just so it can chase me around some more, I’m kicking your ass.”

"Oh no," Kanan replied, eyes still closed. "I wouldn't float it down. I'd go back up to get it." He fell silent for a few seconds, lowered his hand, and sighed. "It's half-starved. No wonder it came at you." He glanced at cart number one. "There any meat rations in that pile at all?"

Kanan Jarrus, gunslinger, Jedi, absolute soft touch.

Kaidan eyed him for a long moment, then he turned and walked into the Escape. He had no idea if there were meat rations in the pile. He, however, never went anywhere without a decent pack of jerky with him. That was dug out of his duffel and brought out to Kanan.

“Abandoned kitten?” he asked, because it’s not like he was any less squishy than Kanan, “Orphan? Or is its mother just out of scanner range?”

"I couldn't find a mother," Kanan sighed. "Either it's an orphan or a pet somebody realized was too big a handful. Either way, it's too small to take out a muunyak on its own and probably hasn't eaten anything in days." He lifted his chin. "Once it has something in its belly, it'll be a little less fierce."

And, you know, once Kanan reached it through the Force and made a connection with the little guy.

Kaidan nodded. “Go get it.” He knew Kanan wasn’t going to leave it, and, truthfully, he wouldn’t have left it either if he’d had the means to get it down to them without losing something he’d rather keep. A limb. Some internal organ or another. His entire face. Things like that.

Pushing the jerky into Kanan’s hand, Kaidan clapped him on the shoulder. Kanan was a big squish when it came to animals, but Kaidan kind of approved of that trait anyway.

Kanan smiled wryly as he accepted the jerky, tucked it into his armor for safekeeping, and then after drawing in a deep breath, he turned and scaled that cliff a little bit like a nexu, himself. At the top he was greeted with that big little nexu mouth and yes, it did give a fair shake at trying to gnaw at his arm, but at least stormtrooper armor was good enough for that.

After a minute of reaching through the Force and reassuring it that he was safe, he took a seat on the edge of the cliff, kitten climbing into his lap, and sat there feeding it where Kaidan could watch. See, buddy? Not dead. He even paused to wave down at him as the kitten attempted to lick his face.

He... didn't let the kitten lick his face. Even he wasn't crazy enough to let that mouth get that close.

Kaidan’s reply gesture had significantly fewer fingers showing than the wave. Look, he had no weird empathic cosmic bond with the universe, and he was pretty damned happy not to, considering all the other headache - literally - that could go with it.

He began pushing the hovercarts into the Escape’s hold and looked around for how best to secure them. And, because he knew Kanan, he located a beat-up cargo blanket and hauled that up to the front of the ship, making a nest behind Kanan’s seat. It sure as hell wasn’t going behind his, and he’d prefer it where he could see it.

Solid decision, really, because another three minutes later, Kanan was landing on the ground nearby again, this time with a little purring passenger in tow.

"It followed me down here, Kaidan. Can I keep it?"

He was not going to keep the nexu. It would eat Stance.

“No,” Kaidan answered without missing a beat, “and you’re not convincing me to keep it, either.” Not.. that it would be hard, considering it was purring and looking a little contrite about having tried to eat him. “My apartment isn’t big enough for a standard-size cat, and if the paws on that thing are any indication, it’s gonna get a whole lot bigger.” He looked at it, noting the duplicate set of eyes and tail. “What is it?”

"At least three meters," Kanan agreed cheerfully. "It's a nexu. I don't even know if they have nexu here naturally, but he wouldn't be terribly happy on the island." He paused. "Well, maybe he would. After eating the squirrels, the deer... they're pack hunters, I don't think it'd have much luck with an alot of anything..." He frowned a little. "The gremlins might give him trouble."

He was overthinking this.

"Anyway," he added, "he's not coming home with us. This just helps me make up my mind about the world we're headed to for drinks later. Guy I used to work for lives near a decent cantina," that had kind of been a prerequisite for most jobs he'd kept, "and usually keeps one or two carnivores on hand as guard animals. Owes me a favor, but I think he'd take this little buddy for free."

“Not to mention what happens when baby grows up and figures out there’s a bridge off the island,” Kaidan said wryly. And, yes, of course he was getting pictures of Kanan holding the baby murdercat. “That’s the creature Hera turned into? The time she chased Seivarden?”

"Yeah," Kanan agreed, "sort of a mostly-grown awkward teenage years version of this little guy. Seivarden wasn't even running from a fully-grown nexu, either." And it still amused Kanan to this day. He could add 'Kaidan leaping off a cliff to escape a hungry kitten' to his list of amusements now, too. He shifted the cub so that it was half-draped over his shoulder, and then made his way up the ship's hull to deposit it in the cockpit. "Anything left to load up here, or is it just fuel and flee, at this point?"

“Look, that thing is made of teeth and it’s a baby. I can understand why Seivarden would run, especially if she gave Hera reason to chase her,” Kaidan said, absently taking a picture of Kanan with a shoulder Nexu. Look, buddy, you get your amusements, he got his. At least there were no pictures or video of Kaidan bolting from the murdercat. “At least the little guy was just hungry, not pissed at me.”

“Everything on the one hovercart is strapped in pretty good,” he acknowledged, “Not sure where the fuel should go. Didn’t strap that down because I figured you’d be loading some of it.”

"Good call," Kanan agreed, nodding down at the cub as it settled itself into the cozy place behind his seat. "You wanna keep an eye on him while I fuel up and load what's left? Make sure he doesn't start eating the safety restraints or anything? I think he's settling in for a nap, but I'd feel better if someone was watching him while I work anyway."

Kaidan eyed him. “Sure, I can watch, but what do you expect me to do if he does start eating anything? Because right now, my plan of action is to yell for you. I’m not sticking my hand in his mouth to get anything out of it.”

"So yell for me," Kanan replied easily. "Or distract him." He tossed what was left of the jerky back. "It isn't difficult, trust me."

It was meat. And it was chewy enough to keep him gnawing on it for a minute or two, at least.

And now Kaidan smelled like food. Thanks heaps, buddy. Kaidan simply eyerolled and plopped his ass in the seat to look at the kitten. It seemed pretty content at the moment, and even he had to admit it was pretty cute now that it wasn’t trying to eat his face. That blanket was absolutely not going to survive the biscuits those giant kitten claws were making.

After a minute of watching it, Kaidan reached out and, very warily, pet the baby on the non-quilled portion of its face. It didn’t try to eat his hand and the noise it made was probably a purr. Or a very sleepy growl. But in either case, it didn’t try to bite and that made him relax at least a little.

Kanan watched for a moment, and then smirked and made his way back around the ship to refuel and load up. Hey, happy kitten, meet big ridiculous squish man. See how well Kaidan could resist the little guy's charms when it was a tiny ball of content quills, making little kitten snores on the floor behind them.

Refueling the ship didn't take long at all, and loading up what was left took less time still, though by the time he'd gotten the hovercart in there along with the first one, he did end up carrying the box of books back around and hauling it up into the cockpit with him.

"Little more cargo than we'd planned on," he noted, "but these can go on the floor between us, and they shouldn't disturb little Cliff there."

Yes, he'd named it.

You're welcome, Kaidan.

“You are not naming him Cliff,” Kaidan responded immediately, “Because I already named him Murderbritches.” And then he filled in the rest of the name, “Murderbritches Pennywise the Third, Esquire.”

Someone had been spending way, wayyyyy too much time with Sparkle. Also: shut up.

“Are we dropping off the rifles and med supplies today? If so, that’s a self-correcting problem,” Kaidan noted.

"Cliff for short," Kanan replied easily. "But really, it'll be up to his new caretaker when we hand him off."

And Kanan intended to plant the 'Cliff' bug in his ear first. So.

"We might be able to drop off the rifles and med supplies today," he added after a moment. "They can always use the med supplies in Tarkintown, at the very least. I'd have to touch base with Hera about the guns. I might just park the Escape in the junkyard and unload things directly onto the Ghost, since she's the one with the contact."

Not that Kanan didn't have contacts, per se. It was just that Kanan's contacts were generally... less reputable sources. At best.

“I am not calling Little Mr. Murderbritches ‘Cliff’,” Kaidan informed him with a small frown. Someone was getting attached, yes.

“So, cantina next? Or stopping back on the island to drop stuff off, or.. plan C?” He had no idea what plan C might be.

Leaning over the arm of his seat, Kaidan dug out one of the books and tucked it next to him. It’d give him something to glance at during any slow moments. Not that they really ever had any.

"I dunno, I think Cliff suits him. It's an homage to how you first met," Kanan teased, sliding into the pilot's seat and closing the canopy over them. He'd start shucking that crappy armor once they'd hit hyperspace. "And the plan for the time being is to hand him off, hit the cantina, and then find somewhere to bunk down for the night. We could sleep in here, but it'll be tight."

And the whole point of this trip had been to get the hell away from the island for a few days. He wasn't in a hurry to get back there, either.

He started the ship's engines, and then carefully guided her up off the ground.

"If you have anything else you'd rather be doing, now's the time to let me know, buddy."

“You’re terrible with names,” Kaidan accused, “And you’re not up to date on modern Earth pop culture or you wouldn’t name him Cliff. Cliff’s a character that occupies a bar stool and complains about life because he thinks he knows better than everyone.” A beat, “So, basically Seivarden. We’re not naming Murderbritches after someone like that.”

Just no, Kanan.

Kaidan relaxed back into the seat and did up his restraints. “I’m good with that plan as long as we can agree that ‘passed out on the floor of a cantina’ is not an option for where to bunk down for the night.”

"But some of my best sleep happens passed out on the floor of a cantina," Kanan deadpanned. "And Cliff does no such things in this galaxy. Cliff just chases grown men to their near-doom. Obviously."

And up they went, headed back up toward space.

"But there's probably an actual bed somewhere, if it comes to that. Picky."

“Hey, man, if you really need to be blacked out, happy to just punch you on the chin,” Kaidan offered with a small smirk. “And I was nowhere near doom. I had you there to catch me. I mean, granted, you kind of had to, or all the fuel canisters would have fallen down on your head, but I had faith that you’d live up to the challenge.”

He had faith in Kanan, full stop. He was just being a brat, because that was how they rolled.

He glanced back at the Nexu kitten, “He’s passed out. Murderbritches, I mean.” NOT CLIFF. “Guess we don’t have to worry about finding a bed for him.” He’d legit been about to say ‘the little guy’ but he knew exactly where Kanan would go with that and wasn’t going to give him the opening.

“This is a vacation,” Kaidan deadpanned, “We’re vacating. There’s supposed to be fruity drinks with umbrellas, pretty sunsets, and cushy hotel rooms involved. Or so I hear.”

"Nah, Cliffany's pretty easy to please," Kanan chuckled. "Meat, a safe place to sleep. Something to gnaw on. He's good. The guy I know'll be happy to have him, and then we can look into getting a room or two before we hit the cantina. Easy done. Let's vacate."

“You are not, I repeat: not, portmanteauing ‘Cliff’ and ‘Tiffany’,” Kaidan said firmly, rolling his eyes because honestly, Kanan, “Get that right out of your mouth, Jarrus.”

“So who is this guy you know?” he asked, throwing him a questioning look. “Dude who owns a cantina and collects predators? There’s a story there.”

"Smugglers need a place to drink," Kanan replied levelly, flicking a few switches on the ship's console. "Smugglers' drinking holes need a little extra security." He turned a glance toward Kaidan, and then added, "but mostly, the carnivores are for warding the local fauna out of his garden."

It took all types, sometimes.

Kaidan had sat up sharply, about to protest using kitten Mr. Murderbritches as security. Kanan’s addendum had him relaxing back against the seat with a small glower. “Good. The goal is to not let Murderbritches become a people-eater.”

Then he processed what Kanan had said. “He runs a smuggler’s retreat and he gardens? Sounds like quite the fellow.”

So help Kanan, he was smirking.

"I was the extra security," he clarified. "He defaulted on my last pay, so he owes me one. It's not a safe planet, though. Not because of the sleemos the world attracts, but because of the local wildlife. Which is why it's so appealing to smugglers in the first place. One more thing for the authorities to deal with, and harder for, say civilians to settle down on. Hence the garden."

Nobody was bringing regular food shipments into this place.

The shipments that did come in regularly were anything but regular.

Kaidan processed that and then asked, “Just so we’re clear - you were human-shaped security, right? Not an angry tooka-shaped Kanan?”

He listened to the rest of it, and had more questions, “Local dangerous wildlife? Wait, do I finally get to see a bantha?”

"No, Kaidan," Kanan sighed. "I was not a tooka. And--" He looked faintly amused, "bantha are huge, but harmless. No, you aren't going to finally see a bantha, buddy. Unless he's taken up ranching these days... anything's possible, I suppose."

Livestock was always fun, right? Eh, he was probably raising nerf, if anything.

“I know they’re harmless,” Kaidan said, “You said they were herd animals. I thought maybe they were a food source for the more dangerous animals.”

He was a little disappointed. No bantha?

“You made a pretty great tooka,” he said without even the smallest trace of sarcasm. “A little distractible, maybe, but it was damned adorable.”

"There are hundreds of thousands of worlds with life on them in this galaxy," Kanan chuckled, "banthas don't live on all of them. But I'll tell you what... we can go specifically looking for banthas another time, if you really want to see them that badly."

Better them than rancors.

He’d seen a drawing of a rancor. An adorable, child-safe chibi drawing, but still. Rancors were covered. Bantha and nerf, not so much. “Ok. I mean, really, you can’t take me to a whole other reality and not expect me to play tourist a little,” Kaidan grinned at him. “Especially not when I finally have a chance to see some of the animals you keep naming. Mynock, bantha, nerf..”

Little did he know just how very not did he want to see a mynock.

And yet it would probably happen sooner or later.

Hopefully later.

"Well, make me a checklist," Kanan replied. "Maybe I'll take you to a zoo for your birthday."

Kanan would for sure have some fun explaining the mynock, and by fun, not really. Kaidan shrugged, “I don’t have a checklist. You’ve only mentioned like five animals that have been identified as animals. A zoo’d be nice, but waiting out another ten months for it’s a little long.” He’d probably forget about it by then. There were a few other things on his plate at the moment that were using up brainpower.

“Wouldn’t mind going somewhere to see tooka in the wild, though,” he mused.

Aw, come on. Some of Kanan's favorite people were mynocks.

"Maybe Lothal, at some point," he mused. "The Loth-cat subspecies is the stupid little thing I keep turning into, unless you had your heart set on the purple ones."

Yes but the explanation that a hideous, ship-eating vermin was what you’d been calling him wasn’t going to go over very well.

“Didn’t even know they came in purple until the doll showed up,” Kaidan shook his head, “Honestly, I’d rather have one that looked like you, and you weren’t purple.” He considered it for a second and grinned, “I mean, we could always dye you next time.”

Considering the kitten snoozing in the back of the cockpit at the moment, the explanation for most things in this galaxy involved something hideous and vermin-adjacent.

"Please don't dye me next time," Kanan muttered. "I'll go for the eyes, I swear it."

The only critter from the GFFA he’d seen so far had been a tooka, and tooka were cute. Gizka were also cute, and someday he was going to wind up conniving to bring at least one lizardchicken home.

“I wouldn’t do that unless you wanted to be purple,” Kaidan assured him, “I mean, you were pretty put out about the pink when you went back to you-shaped. An entire head of purple hair might be a little startling.”

He looked over and tried to picture Kanan with purple hair. Kanan with neon violet punk rock hair. His lips twitched with amusement when he looked away.

... The island was going to be overrun with gizka by the new year, wasn't it?

"The pink was fine," Kanan sighed. "The blue was okay too. It's still damn hard to blend with a head of either. I'm not a Theelin, you know."

Yes. Clearly Kaidan would know this.

Probably not, since he had no plans to head back to the GFFA before January 1. Though stranger things had happened.

Kaidan asked automatically, “Theelin?” Then after a moment, “People here don’t dye their hair fun colors?”

"Theelin," Kanan supplied. "Yet another sentient race. Near enough to human to be able to interbreed with them, but they come in all kinds of different hues." He shrugged. "And sure, people here dye their hair. Most of those people aren't trying not to be noticed, buddy."

He reached over and started punching coordinates into the computer, preparing for a hyperspace jump.

"Sabine, one of my students, dyes her hair all the time. Sabine also isn't neck-deep in an anti-Empire movement or..." He shrugged. Kaidan knew the rest.

“Just kinda strange to me that in a galaxy with people of different entire hues, hair color would be the thing to notice,” Kaidan said and then lifted a shoulder apologetically, “It’s not the kind of thing I notice at all unless I have to.” He automatically cataloged the features of the people around him but it was all just data unless he needed to reference it for something. “Guess I’d expect.. I dunno.. feathers or something.”

"Hooves and horns," Kanan supplied. "Theelin have hooves and horns. Omwati have feathers. Mirialans are green, Chiss and Pantorans are blue, and you've met Twi'leks already." He cast a sidelong glance at Kaidan. "But so far as humans go, vibrant hair isn't the norm. I want to be as close to the norm as possible. Being otherwise is being dead."

Kaidan processed all that. “Heard about the Chiss before,” he noted absently. Namely, that Sparkle wanted to lick one. “It isn’t really the norm where I’m from, either. Milspec regs aside, mostly humans have gone for tattoos instead of hair. On island-Earth, across the causeway, colored hair seems to be prevalent enough that it’d be hard to catch comment on it.” No, Kaidan, you were wrong about that because you were giving people the benefit of the doubt again and people were, in general, awful.

“You’re not allowed to be dead. We’ve discussed this,” he said, “So I guess that gives you a pass on dying your hair violet. Not when there’s a chance you might have to bolt on a do-gooder run.”

"You say 'a chance' like that isn't pretty much the norm," Kanan laughed, shaking his head. "Tell you what; I ever have to do a dangerous run on a world where purple hair is commonplace, I'll consider it. Easier to blend in that way. Otherwise, hate to disappoint, but it's staying brown." There was a pause, and then he added, "hitting hyperspace now. Hopefully Cliff doesn't puke in my cockpit before we come out of it again."

“Well, that’s kind of what I meant - There’d have to be no chance at all before you could do it safely,” Kaidan clarified. Then he piped up with, “But if you ever do, go with a metallic teal and match your eyes. Violet would look fantastic but the matched pair-up would really be something.”

He relaxed further into the seat and watched the window as the stars seemed to pause and then stretch. Never got old, ever. Wary after Kanan’s warning, he left off after a moment to turn and watch the Nexu kitten. The kitten didn’t seem to even notice. He was curled up asleep with his front paws over his face and his tails wrapped around him.

And, jump achieved, Kanan reached up and started to peel his way out of his armor.

... Quietly. Didn't want to disturb the nexu. Didn't want to show up in pirate territory wearing 'Stormtrooper casual,' either.

"Kind of looking forward to just settling in for the night, playing a few rounds of Sabacc, maybe wrestling with an akk dog or something," he admitted. "Today's been... an event." Running into an old acquaintance hadn't helped that in the least. "Let's save any cantina brawls for tomorrow and just worry about keeping our glasses full and our card hands good."

“Our glasses full of.. completely non-alcoholic fruity drinks,” Kaidan grinned. “Cards in your hands, buddy. I plan to play observer only. Though I guess if I did want to play, the credits I’d lose wouldn’t exactly be mine.”

Well, they hadn’t been his but finders keepers.

“Relaxing would be nice,” he admitted after a minute, “For a thing that wound up not really being a thing, it sure did get the adrenaline going for a bit, and now I’m on the come-down side of it.”

"I jumped over a cliff twice today," Kanan noted. "I'm pretty sure that's two times more than I've done in a decade. I'm set for life, now."

He settled back in his seat.

"But you know? This turned out better than I figured it might."

Paranoid Jedi was always going to be paranoid.

“You enjoy jumping off things,” Kaidan accused with a smile, “You’d jump off them more often if you had the opportunity.” He’d met you, Kanan.

“Wasn’t that bad, was it?” he agreed after a moment. “Other than being startled by Bitey Murderbritches over there, all in all, things went pretty smoothly.” Kaidan.. Kaidan why? You use the word ‘jinx’, do you not know what that means?

He threw a glance back toward the cargo area. “What’re you going to do with ‘em?” Obviously, he didn’t mean the rifles.

Kanan paused. Pulled in a slow breath. Exhaled just as slowly.

"I don't know," he admitted. "If the Empire hadn't destroyed Ilum strip-mining it for kyber in the first place, I'd take them back there. Maybe someday, they could sing to someone, they way they were meant to." He glanced back toward the cargo, himself. "But Ilum isn't an option."

Hell, Ilum was barely a planet, anymore.

"I'll figure something out. There's time. And for now, they'll be safe on the island."

“I’m about to say something you might not like,” Kaidan warned him quietly.

Kanan cast a sideways look toward him and simply waited.

“Your Ilum isn’t an option,” Kaidan said simply.

Predictably, Kanan looked away.

"Yeah," he agreed, finally. "You're right. I don't like that."

Kaidan kind of figured he meant both the reality of that fact and that Kaidan had reminded him of the alternatives. He’d brought it up because sometimes Kanan didn’t remember.. Well, remember wasn’t the correct word.. want to acknowledge the other realities, because it made the difference of his all that more stark.

“For now, they’ll be safe on the island,” Kaidan agreed with his friend’s earlier statement, “Until you figure out what you want to do with them.”

He knew absolutely nothing about the crystals other than the small bits Kanan had told him. Singing? That was new. If that was the future for them that Kanan wanted them to have - there were options. Kanan would make the decision he felt was right, and Kaidan trusted that.

"They belong in my galaxy," Kanan said, softly. "The island... isn't quite right. But for now, it's the best I have."

There was Atton's, fine. He could even just dump them on Mical and trust he'd do right by them. But what was Coruscant except a disaster long in the making? And if these crystals hadn't found the Jedi they belonged with in all their time on Ilum before, they'd simply end up patiently waiting again for Ilum to once again fall to the Empire.

The past wasn't the answer.

The trouble was, the present wasn't all that great, either.

“I meant as a place to put them until you knew what you wanted to do with them,” Kaidan clarified apologetically, “Not to leave them behind for good. You’re right - they do belong in your galaxy.”

Lightsaber seeds. Maybe. Someday. That was the hope that Kaidan was stubbornly, and somewhat desperately, hanging onto. That, someday, Kanan wouldn’t be alone. Realistically, with a galaxy this size, he couldn’t be - but as yet, there was nobody else he could feel. Just the aching, empty void he’d described. That wasn’t something Kaidan could wish on anyone, much less someone he considered family.

The kyber represented hope, in a way. They were empty, but..waiting. And now they were no longer lost. They were in the best hands Kaidan could imagine them in.

Half-trained, uncertain, quietly terrified hands.

"I'll figure it out," Kanan said quietly, and then settled in to watch the quiet blue vortex of hyperspace, a hand falling down to idly stroke the sleeping feline on the floor behind him. "I'll just add it to the list."

The list got longer every day.

“I know you will,” Kaidan said, giving him a glance. For all they might be half-trained, uncertain, quietly terrified hands, they were still the kind who saw the crystals as more than something to power destruction with. More than something worth only money. Better hands than the ones they’d come from, in so many ways.

“Kanan, they’ll keep until you do. You know that. You’ve got this.”

"Yeah, I know," Kanan sighed. "Kyber doesn't exactly come with an expiry date."

He fell quieter as he watched the hyperspace blur pass them by.

"I just need to trust the Force knows what it's doing."

“Hey, if it’s good enough to work the Sabacc cards,” Kaidan said lightly, referring to Kanan’s earlier terrible joke, “It probably has this handled.”

"I dunno," Kanan replied, giving a crooked little answering smile. "I'll believe it after I win a few games tonight. It's not just enough to shift the cards. It's got to shift them to the right ones, too."

“Thought you said you were decent at the game,” Kaidan teased him, “You’re gonna win, right?” Come on, Kanan’s ego. Get him out of the deep water.

"Well, I'm going to do my damnedest to not lose, anyway," Kanan replied. And then broke into a small, wry smile. "I dunno. All the luck we've had already today, maybe I should quit while I'm ahead today."

“But then I wouldn’t get to see a real hand of Sabacc,” Kaidan pointed out, “How am I supposed to bet on you behind your back if you don’t play at least one round?” [ping]

"Well, there's your first mistake," Kanan teased. "Assuming I'll ever give you the opportunity to get your revenge for that one time? Tsk."

Kaidan eyed him, “I’d completely forgotten about that, but now that you mention it..” He smirked a little, “And hey, it’s not even my own credits I’d have to bet with.”

"Convenient thing about pickpocketing Imperials, hm?" Kanan grinned a little, shaking his head. "No better credits to bet in situations like those than ones belonging to somebody else anyway. Really, there's nothing for you to lose."

“Not really, no. Especially not if you win,” Kaidan pointed out, “I mean, it’s not like when you bet on a sure thing..” No, Kanan, he wasn’t letting you live that down anytime soon, now you’ve reminded him of it. “But I guess we can see what kind of moxy you can bring to the Sabacc table.”

"Well..." Kanan smirked and shook his head a little, glancing up and reaching for his ship's controls, and then a moment later settling against his seat as they slipped back out of hyperspace, the vastness of a large, almost entirely green world spread out before them. "... No matter how I do at Sabacc tonight, you'll definitely be in for a show.”

Grinning and putting on a TV announcer voice, Kaidan intoned, “And here we have the wily Jarrus, transplanted to an urban environment. Let’s watch as his stunning array of social camouflage allows him to blend in with the natives..” He threw Kanan a grin, “This is going to be great!”

[Preplayed (post-played?) and backposted with spectre_alenko! What these idiots got up to that weekend.]