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"Got a new slicer for me?" A vod with hair longer than regulation length asked. His hair was tied back with a pink.. bow. CT-13-5309 was officially confused. Though he had been before. Now he was baffled. He didn't allow his sabacc face to slip. The vod was sitting on the floor of what was essentially a supply closet, a cup of caff in one hand and a data pad in the other. He hadn't looked up at their arrival. The beaming smile when he finally did look up was nothing like what O'nine had come to expect from the Wolfpack. There was sarcasm around every corner, not this.. sunny disposition. He hadn't fought to be assigned here to be dragged into cuddle piles and forced to talk about his feelings. The vod chuckled. "Not what you'd expect from your commanding officer, huh?" He placed down the cup of caff, carefully stacking the data pad onto a literal tower of them. "I'm Sergeant Cloud." He greeted, holding out his hand for him to shake. "Pronouns they/them, and I like caff." O'nine blinked before hurriedly shaking the Sergeant's hand. "Right, um.. I'm CT-13-5309." The trooper that had brought him to this supply closet office thing saluted. "I'll leave you to it." "Thanks, Ajoxx." The Sergeant chirped. O'nine couldn't help but feel a bit of betrayal. Ajoxx was leaving him alone with Sergeant Cloud, who seemed way too chipper. Though he didn't have much choice. He liked slicing and this would be his superior. He looked after Ajoxx before turning back to the Sergeant. "Don't worry, I don't bite." Cloud assured with a grin. They turned thoughtful. "Though my slicers might. Don't keep them from their coffee." They brightened up. "Got a name yet, shiny?" "No. My batchmates called me O'nine." He explained. Sergeant Cloud chuckled. "In a language, that means something like 'oh no'." O'nine felt his face heat up. "Ah." "Other important questions; are you a zombie in the mornings?" O'nine stared at his superior for a moment. "I.. no? Why?" He felt a dash of dread creep up on him when Sergeant Cloud beamed at him. "I won't be alone anymore!" They cheered, reaching out to grab O'nine's hands. "I'm so happy! We're gonna do great things!" If O'nine didn't know it any better, he would say that his Sergeant was bouncing in excitement. ... no, they were bouncing in excitement. What had he done. "Oh, I need your pronouns!" Sergeant Cloud remembered. "He/him." O'nine mumbled, trying not to shrink in on himself. He wanted to sink into the ground. Cloud nodded, still holding onto his hands. "Thank you, how do you like your caff? Or do you prefer energy drinks? We get hypos sometimes, they're wonderful." O'nine stared at the Sergeant. They got hypos from the medbay?Cloud scanned his face and chuckled. "Shinies. Hilarious. So, caff? Energy drinks?" O'nine shook himself out of his stupor. "I prefer sleep." His hands were finally released as Cloud broke down into hysteric laughs. "Sleep. Kid wants to slice and get sleep." Cloud wheezed out. It took the Sergeant a moment to reign themselves in. O'nine did not know what to do. A hand fell onto O'nine's shoulder and he stiffened, barely suppressing a flinch. "Kid. Kiss your sleep goodbye." ~~~"This is where the magic happens." Cloud announced as they stepped through a door. The room was a lot more what O'nine would have expected from a room where slicing happened. There was technology strewn everywhere. Maybe his imagination had been fueled a little by naivety since he hadn't thought it would be that messy. But he guessed it was alright. Though the sheer amount of caff mugs and energy drink cans were.. appalling. That might be his future. It was the present of all these vode. A chuckle sounded out from beside him. Cloud looked immensely amused. "Don't look so put out, shiny. We take care of our own." The Sergeant stepped into the room and clapped their hands loudly, startling the poor vod who had been napping in the corner, and the other who had been sucked into their work. "Look alive, vode! We have a new recruit!" O'nine fought the urge to step back when all eyes landed on him. He carefully stepped further into the room. "CT-13-5309 reporting for duty!" He snapped into a salute. Cloud grinned. "Cute, ain't he?" They put a reassuring hand onto O'nine's back. "You'll be shadowing us for now to see how we work. Tomorrow you'll be assigned a trial project so we can see where your skill levels are-" "Oi, Cloud! Don't make the shiny hack into the mess hall!" A vod partially hidden by a stack of data pads warned. "The Commander doesn't like it." Cloud beamed. "Of course not, Jass." There was not an ounce of sincerity in their voice. They looked at O'nine. "Make yourself at home. Oh, and will you still go onto the battlefield or stay here?" O'nine shifted. He didn't actually know the answer to that. He decided to shrug. Cloud nodded. "I'll always be there if you have any questions or need help." They promised. O'nine thanked them, and then he was left alone. He spent his first day walking around, trying not to get in anyone's way. The slicers of the 104th worked quite differently from how they'd learned it on Kamino. He hoped things would turn out alright. ~~~When O'nine stepped into the slicer room the next morning at 0500 sharp, he hadn't expected the room to still be filled by the three other slicers. Clacking rang out through it, originating from the vod who worked on an analogue 'keyboard'. Something about the pressure she had to apply to the buttons helping her focus and be more productive. O'nine thought her name might have been Jass. "Caff delivery!" A vod called out from behind, shouldering past him with a tray loaded with caff. They couldn't all still be working, right? They must have slept at some point. But the room looked very much like how it had when he'd first stepped into it, safe for the fact that Dust wasn't sleeping in the corner anymore. Dust had been the shiny before him and was 'still adjusting to slicer time'. O'nine took a moment to silently mourn his sleep, then stepped into the room. Cloud was immediately there to meet him, beaming like life day had come early. "Slept well, shiny?" They chirped, not reacting to the groan Dust let out. "Please just don't do this to us." He mumbled, staring into his caff like it held the solution to all his problems. Cloud grinned. "I have no idea what you're talking about." They made their way towards a newly cleared desk, something that was almost a skip in their step. "This is your desk, shiny. We'll get you your supplies when the need crops up. For now, you'll just need a datapad." Cloud pulled a fresh, new datapad from their belt. "Shiny, just like you." O'nine accepted it with a mumbled thanks and sat down at his desk. "So.. the assignment?" He asked. "The shiny doesn't even need caff before working." Dust gaped at him like he had eyes pouring from his ears. O'nine decided not to react to that, instead setting up the data pad in a way that didn't melt his eyes. "Nice choices, shiny." Cloud hummed from where they were leaning over his shoulder. "Very slicer-like." O'nine hummed noncommittally. There was a suspicious lack of clacking now. A glance over at Jass showed..Well, she was asleep on her fancy keyboard. Cloud followed his gaze. "Kriff's sake." They muttered and crossed the room to carefully lean Jass back in her chair. "I knew that requisitioning comfy chairs would bite us in the shebs. Of course General Buir managed to find the comfiest chairs in the whole Sith damned galaxy." Dust snickered. "General Buir is way too nice. Wonder how he ended up with the most sarcastic battalion." "We actually feel safe to be sarcastic around him." O'nine spoke up. Cloud hummed in agreement, struggling a little as they dragged Jass over to the napping corner. Dust got up to help, swaying a little and clutching the edge of his table to steady himself. "Cloud, when's the last time we ate properly?" He gritted out. "Fifteen." Cloud replied. "Twenty for you." They placed down Jass while O'nine's brain struggled to comprehend. Dust laughed as he caught his facial expression. "The medics hate us." "They would. If we didn't fix their technology." Cloud corrected. "Let's get some grub. You've eaten yet, shiny?" O'nine nodded. Of course he had eaten. Eating was important. "Hold down the fort and keep an eye on Jass. Send her to eat if she wakes up before we get back. Assignment is in your messages." And then he was left alone, with only the quiet breathing of a passed out Jass to keep him company. O'nine glanced around the room for a moment. It was so quiet now. Being here all by himself seemed.. wrong. He shook his head. Sergeant Cloud had sent him his assignment. He should focus on that. O'nine opened his inbox and started working. ~~~It took him several hours to have the program up and running. By then, Jass had woken up and Cloud sent her to get some food.His assignment had been to slice into one of the newer droid models and extract the coded list of orders, before decoding them and giving the droid his own orders. He was a little disappointed that it had only been a simulation. He would have loved to work with a real droid head. Though he might get the chance if he was accepted as a proper slicer. "Um.. Sergeant?" He called out, scanning the room to figure out where Cloud had gone. Jass looked up from her datapads. She grinned in a way that did not seem friendly at all and spoke of way too high caffeine consumption. "We locked them in their closet." Dust rolled his eyes when O'nine jolted and made to get up. "They get annoying quick. So they have that office." "We'd probably resort to murder otherwise." Jass confirmed. "Did you finish?" O'nine sat back in his chair, not sure what to do with that information. "I did, yeah." Jass beamed at him. "Great, just send them a comm and they'll find a way to get here." Then both of them went back to work. As if the whole interaction was normal. Or as if it hadn't happened at all. O'nine shook himself out of his stupor and looked back at his datapad. He sent a comm to Cloud, then went over his assignment to check whether there were any glaring mistakes. ~~~Sure enough, not even ten minutes later, there was a loud clatter. O'nine knocked his chair over as he jumped to his feet, whirling to face the noise, his datapad raised and ready to throw. Cloud was crawling out of the vent, the grate that had been covering it on the floor beside them. "Oops." They said, entirely unapologetic. O'nine slumped a bit and took a deep breath. Jass was laughing. Great. He felt heat rise to his face and sat down. He still had a lot to learn about how the slicers operated. Cloud walked up to his desk and beamed at him. "You're pretty quick." They held out their hand, and it took O'nine a moment to realise they wanted his datapad. He handed it over. He just sat there while Sergeant Cloud looked over his work. There wasn't really anything he could do. Though he was a little hungry. It was nearing ship time noon. "Sergeant?" He spoke up, a little hesitant. Cloud looked up from the datapad. "Just Cloud is fine. What's up?" O'nine nodded. "Can I get some lunch while you look over that?" "Sure." Cloud chirped. O'nine hadn't known their voices could sound like that. "One condition, take the other two with you." A groan came from Dust. "We're so close to getting this done." "Yeah, let us finish our assignments, Sarge." Jass chimed in. Cloud fixed them with an unimpressed stare. O'nine hadn't thought them capable of such an expression. "Fine." Dust grumbled. As they headed to the mess hall together, O'nine couldn't help but wonder whether he'd fulfilled the assignment to Cloud's satisfaction. Despite what he'd witnessed from the other slicers so far, he would really like to be a slicer himself. He was good at it. And slicing was just.. something he enjoyed doing. He took a deep breath. "Can you tell me something about the Sergeant?" He asked as they waited in line together. Jass looked back at him and grinned. "First, they'll hit you with a datapad if you keep calling them Sergeant." O'nine stared. He didn't know what to make of the sage nod that Dust was giving to confirm Jass' statement. Okay then. He did not want to be hit with a datapad. "There's a bit of a grace period for shinies." Dust assured him. "Just try to call them Cloud." "Right." O'nine replied, grabbing his rations and heading to a table with the other two. He greeted a couple of the vode he knew. Jass and Dust boxed him in between them and shared twin grins. Not unsettling at all. "They got promoted because they single-handedly saved a whole campaign." Jass told him. Single-handedly? His disbelief must have shown on his face since she laughed. "Really. All slicers were down for the count, but they, with their aggravating positivity and ability to still function after only an hour of sleep, dragged up all the other slicers and got to work slicing into the building General Buir and his team was trapped in, getting them out within five minutes." O'nine didn't have anything to offer other than a hum. Dust clapped him on the back with a smirk. "You get used to it. If they bother you too much, ask them to go to their office." The word office was pronounced in a way that let everyone know it wasn't an office. Even if they hadn't seen the poor state of the supply closet. He wondered if only the slicers and Ajoxx knew how much of a not-office it really was. ~~~It didn't take long for O'nine to be properly integrated in projects. His days were spent in front of screens and datapads, with the occasional break of dragging his fellow slicers to the mess hall. Two days in, the chief medic showed up and hugged him while crying and thanking him profusely. Jass teased him relentlessly about it for days.