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Fox died choking, choked by Anakin Skywalker – what’s left of that wretch inside the suit of Darth Vader, that is – for doing his job. And now here he is: sprawled on hard, dusty ground, grilled by mid-day sunlight, breathing easily. `Is this the afterlife?` The guess is apt, in his own opinion. Because, as he scrambles into a sitting position, he finds that so many of his brothers are just waking up, similar to him. They are those that he has lost throughout the three long, long, long years of him being Marshal Commander CC-1010 of the Coruscant Guard, too. Only, they are all so young, and garbed in the red uniform of finishing-stage clones instead of the armour they have earned on deployment. And, come to think of it again, judging by how more-or-less-of-a-height he is with many of them, he must have been kiddified, as well. `What an afterlife.` Still, an afterlife or not, they cannot stay in the open like this for too long. With no weapon, at that, he finds as he pats himself down. `Can one die in the afterlife?` No, he shan’t chance it. He failed these brothers. Now he vows he will never fail them again. Keeping them alive is the first and foremost priority, given that. `All right. Get out of the open, find weapons, find food and water and shelter, find where we are.` The plan is quick and almost rote. The execution is…. Well, Fox would have berated his brothers if he himself were not still reeling and feeling so clumsy. Just, fortunately, all of them remember the procedure in a situation like this: not to make a noise, to communicate by just handsigns and expressions, to pass along information quickly and as is from brother to brother until it reaches the in-situ authority figure, in this case Fox himself. It’s slower this way, but silent, unnoticeable, and they need it. `A wild-looking wooded area a metre away from the nearest brother. Cultivated. No sign of sentient occupation. Everywhere else on this side is barren and empty. Possibly a better environment beyond the wooded area?` Fox purses his lips. Making a cultivated garden look wild is the art of an eccentric, eccentric-seeming, or would-be eccentric being, or at least ordered so. And an eccentric being is both unpredictable and more often than not viciously creative. He has ample experience about that. Mershko – Thire’s predecessor – even died trying to arrest one: a paradoxical “hermit celebrity” who catered to the morbid fascination and amusement of human-centrallists by keeping and filming young, “exotic” sentient avians, felines, canines, reptiles, insectoids, amphibians and aquatics as pets and attractions. And the aforementioned brother is seated beside him, equally tight-lipped and sickly pale. `But if it’s the only way to get to the other side….` Fox instructs Mershko to take a squad and see if there is another way but to go through the possible trap. He himself intends to go into it, possibly spring the trap, and scout the environment until then. Mershko clearly does not like it. But Fox is still the Marshal Commander here, still the guide and protector of the brothers assigned to the not-army he has been scrambling to manage, still their shield against the outside universe. So, unless Mershko would like to be Marshal Commander instead…? Fox stares quizzically at his brother and fellow commander. Mershko stares back, glaring impotently, grief already shadowing it. Fox lets out a little, rueful huff and shakes his head. `No, it’s not like I want this. But we need this, and who better than me?` The urge becomes even stronger when Forty-One-O-Eight – who died trying to help cool down a riot before he’d gotten the chance to find a name for himself – taps his shoulder then delivers the news that the other commanders are also here. Not just Thorn who died on Scepio. Not just Stone who died in a riot at the Supermax. `Thire and Hound were alive and safe, last I knew!` New grief ambushes him, drowns him, fuels his helpless fury until it snarls and laps hungrily at everything like the engine fire of a crashed ship. All throughout, Mershko anchors him, grasps his hand, squeezes, chances murmured words of comfort in his ear. The nameless messenger – a shiny speedy, punted out of Kamino at six years old and now looking it – even dares to plop himself on Fox’s lap and goes for a cuddle. `Everything stalls, just because of me.` Self-loathing is added to the mix, now. But not for long, no. because Hound has crept up to their huddle and now bonks gently at the side of his head with the aptly named brother’s own temple. “We’re with you,” the said brother signs, even as he glares reproachfully at Fox. “Now move it, boss.” So Fox moves. He gets up, follows Hound to the edge of the sea of brothers, watches briefly as the sergeant gathers up troopers that he knows are also excellent trackers and scouts, then peers into the shadowed underbrush beneath the treeline that is now barely two strides away. The damned thing looks like a very old forest instead of someone’s garden. But the underbrush does not extend even a step past some invisible line. The rich dark soil, likewise, stops at a certain point before it becomes chalky brown. `Some unknown tech? force nonsense?` He consults Hound through looks and signs, under the scrutiny of the other trackers and scouts. Hound motions to his folks, then, and they spread out along the invisible line, analysingly sharp-eyed. Unfortunately, the info they bring back a moment and an age later is disheartening. It’s the same neat line, however far one goes, they report. It subtly curves, though, which makes Fox suspect that this garden is circular. `But with how subtle the curve is, this thing is probably huge. Maybe even as large as a city block… or even a district.` Hound frowns but nods when Fox shares this bit of observation with him. “We need more beingpower,” the sergeant determines. “Maybe bring Mershko into this?” Fox shakes his head. “Only if we really don’t have a choice.” Bluntly and callously speaking, Mershko is not even rated for this mission. He died in a similar one, after all. He keeps the observation behind his teeth, though. Anyway, if they keep the infiltration team at a minimum, there will be less chance of losing brothers unnecessarily. `Ha. What an afterlife. Just replace this bit of wilderness with a senator-backed spice den….` In the end, fed up with the indecision and all too aware of the ever-marching time, Fox just… marches onward. `We’ve marched far, far away, haven’t we? Why not some more?` Just, he fails to keep up the stealth. `Kriff. Kark. Fuck. Karabast. Chaakar.` He did receive training in non-urban stealth and tracking as part of the wilderness survival class all brothers received on Kamino, and he did pass it well. However, apparently, three long, long, long years on Coruscant have rusted his skills up to an embarrassing level. His footfalls and passage are not silent once he enters the wooded area, unlike on the dusty, packed, stoney dirt outside. The underbrush rustles as he tries to slip by, and rustles some more when he detangles snagging twigs and branches from his clothes and hair. The tangled, mossy roots that he can barely see in the gloom under the thick canopy of foliage like to trip him, too, which results in sharper, louder rustling. Even more embarrassingly, Hound and his folks are not much better than he is. `We’re going to be found out soon!` Still, he goes on, and Hound follows, while the others explore separately, after agreeing to meet back up on the same spot if possible with their findings. They manage to be stealthier when the underbrush breaks up a little, allowing a small path to be visible, branching off every so often. Small clearings crop up, soon after, bordering different clusters of trees, but they avoid those spots – and the sunlight filtering down onto them – the best they can. And then, in one such clearing, they find two beings cuddling together on the grass, one huge and the other tiny in comparison, both garbed in form-fitting, single-toned clothes that look suspiciously like underarmour. “We break them up?” Hound asks, his eyes laughing awkwardly. Fox rolls his own eyes. “Not that much of a killjoy,” he retorts. “Unless you think they’d be kind to you after you’ve ruined their fun?” Hound grins ruefully. But there is a streak of mischief there, too, which makes Fox wary. “Remember, we are the trespassers here.” He glares at his brother and sharpens his signing for emphasis. “They look Mando, too.” Just so, Hound’s enjoyment dims, and the grin sluffs off his face. No, they won’t forget their trainers on Kamino and what the latters did to them or fellow clones. Won’t forget, either, how the armourless Mandos shunned the war and categorised the clones of Jango Fett as one of the perpetrators of it. The armoured Mandos severely castigated what Jango Fett had done, too, selling his DNA to the Republic to form a huge army of clones to fight for them, but did nothing to brighten up any clone’s life. Not even the one that Prime claimed for himself as his son. The brothers who dared go into Little Keldabe were shooed away, in fact. Some were even savaged and left in a rubbish bin outside of the enclave. Well, to be fair, some armoured Mandos were kind. In a way that at least they were willing to trade with the brothers for non-reg items such as shig and uj. But they were in a very, very clear minority. And Fox is digressing. But the couple get up on their own, anyway. They fish out armour pieces from beneath the underbrush, which are visible to the two brothers only when they begin to don those pieces with practised ease and swiftness. “Did they notice us?” Hound worries. Fox shrugs. “Let’s follow them. Should be safe enough.” Both Mandos don’t seem to bear weapons, after all. Not visibly, anyway. There is still the danger of hand-to-hand takedown, but Fox hopes it won’t come to that. To that effect, he is already composing an apology for the tresspass and a request for help or at least some barter. Some trainers on Kamino liked that, natborn and Alpha-class alike. But the planning shifts into neutralisation when the Mandos split up, exiting the clearing towards two different directions. `They noticed us.` He exchanges alarmed looks with Hound. Only, when they return their attention to the clearing, there is no sign of any Mando. They have not even heard a rustle. `For such a huge being, that big one sure could move fast and silently. How did they do as well as the small one?` Still, at least there are the exit points to start from and the exit vectors to follow? Not that the latter is easy to execute, it turns out. There is simply no track to follow! “Abort?” Hound asks when they meet up, near where the scouts split up. “For now,” Fox agrees, though his pride would say otherwise. His pride is not worth this second chance of life for his people, his brothers, fellow castoffs and muties and defectives who are scorned and hated by the fronties and civilians alike, anyway. So they make a beeline to where they split up, to where they have agreed to meet back up. And, there, they see the Mandos confronting their little brothers. The composition of whom has somehow shifted and expanded with the addition of Stone, Thire, Thorn and a few other captains, plus select few of their boys each. `NO!!! NOT AGAIN!` Fox chokes back a gasp and forces his all-too-damned-short legs to go faster, faster, faster. The smaller Mando he is aiming for sidesteps when he gets close, but not far enough, encumbered by the tightly clustered trees – though not as tight as in the perimeter, Fox faintly notices, as he leaps and crashes against the… zabrak’s?… chest. He is not the only one. And, nearby, Hound can be heard thumping against the far-bigger one with a yell that is a quarter angry and three quarters fear. A very soft noise travels past the vocoder as the Mando’s back meets the uneven surface of the paradoxically wild garden’s bed, hastened by Fox’s weight on their chest-plate. Fox crows internally, at first. Only, then he realises how tall and burly the Mando now lying beneath him is, especially compared to him. Stars and Deeps, he is trying to put a chokehold on the Mando, and his fingers barely meet each other, forget choking them effectively before they can throw him off. `Wrong move.` He tenses when the Mando’s hands go up. But, bafflingly, they traverse the unobstructed space between the ground and the helmet so slowly, and their owner does not even shift from the no-doubt-uncomfortable position otherwise. And the destination turns out to be the Mando’s helmet instead of Fox’s hand or even Fox himself. It’s to unseal the helmet, at that. And, when their eyes meet without the barrier of the visor, Fox finds that they share the same eye colour: that shade of golden yellow that is not really pantoran, not really taung, and not really zabraki either, and a type that melds all of them, framed by lines that were there on Prime and thus on all his clones. They share the same shade of tanned skin, too. Even the curve of the jaw, he finds when he alarmedly looks away from those eyes. `I am sitting on and trying to choke Prime’s kin. And they are letting me. Why?` He scrambles off, regardless, and immediately babbles apologies, even as he automatically falls into attention, followed by the others. Apologising and behaving soldierly are always the safest option with natborns, whether a Guard has done a wrong or not. And, this time, they have. All the natborn does is only to rise into a cross-legged seated position, however, and the far-bigger one, too. `Lower position. Vulnerable. Why?` Fox falls silent, and now realises that he is the only one out of his brothers that has spoken at all. He daren’t glance and check, however. And, in the next moment, all thoughts of reassuring himself and his brothers are swiped clean like unsecured items being swept off a platform by a wave. Because the Mando he was trying to choke a moment ago is Prime’s parent, so is the bigger one. `If Prime acknowledged us as his, they would’ve been our grandparents.` Fox wouldn’t have bothered about this concept, this old longing, usually. But these Mandos are so careful, so gentle, even though Fox and his brothers are the intruders, the assaulters. And the care unlooked-for digs deep into him, carves out the things he has buried there and brings them to the surface, raw and naked and vulnerable. Maybe it’s what makes him talk, when the Mando that shares his eyes then asks for their names. Not enough to give them the name he has chosen for himself, though. But, at the same time, not enough to conceal the fact that there are more of them, especially given that the Mando claims there is a farm on the other side of this strip of wilderness, and there are possibly other clones there. Which is made more likely when the bigger Mando tentatively inquires after the roll call if these brothers do not belong to the same batch. `They like clones, and we offended them.` The next step is clear, then. “We are the Coruscant Guard, sir. We are not all of one decanting batch. We are placed adjacent to the Grand Army of the Republic, and we are in charge of policing and guarding Coruscant.” `Among others such as being the senators’ servants and toys and guards, and the Supreme Chancellor’s personal spec-ops unit.` “We do not know how we were suddenly here and in these bodies.” `Not that most natborns would believe that, or any other reason we might give them.` “We apologise profusely for our treatment of you, and we will not inconvenience you any longer. We were… malfunctioning. Briefly. If we could… pay for the inconvenience, I am ready to pay it on behalf of the Coruscant Guard, sir.” `Just another day on Coruscant. And, now, just another day in the afterlife, it seems.` Still, surprisingly, the Mandos look upset, and they even show it, clinging to each other like new cadets. Which is most apparent and striking on the bigger Mando, despite their size and fair skin, given their black curly hair and brown eyes and the shape of their face, which Prime took after the most. And then the smaller Mando – `Kote Eldar. Why not Fett?` – somehow reluctantly inquires what Fox will pay with. And doesn’t like the answer of “Everything,” while many natborns would have jumped on the chance and grasped it tightly with all the appendages meant for such action. Not that it’s easy to promise such, or to imagine when he has to fulfil it, and what he will be ordered to do, especially when the natborns then burst into tears. But thankfully Thire more or less smoothly jumps into the gap when he can’t find his voice to answer Kote Eldar’s subsequent question about their overall number. Given all his dark thoughts and no-better past experience, it’s not easy, either, to come over to the Mando when they beckon at him, nor to position himself subserviently when the latter reaches out a hand. But he does. And Kote Eldar somehow reaches for his hand instead of the neck he proffers. Even more marvellously, when they are standing in front of the rest of the Guard, leaving the other snoopers behind with Ruusaan Fett, Kote Eldar offers him – a clone – to ride on the former’s shoulders, purportedly for a better vantage point. `Was Boba ever given such a ride?` Fox has seen it a few times among natborns. He wondered. He wonders still. So he says yes. And even dares to ask that the Mando relinquish their helmet to his custody during the address. And the Mando really does it. All of it. Fox is now perched atop a pair of shoulderplates that in turn sit on the broad, solid shoulders of a natborn. His legs are trapped in the said natborn’s hold by the ankle, but he can feel that it’s for his safety, probably so he won’t accidentally slide off. And his front rests flush against the back of the Mando’s head, rubbing against their thick, straight, blond hair. He can rest his arms atop the Mando’s fluffy head, he’d bet. But… no, this is already intimate enough. He can see and feel many pairs of eyes eyeing his current position with disbelieving startlement and dismayed doubt, and he agrees with them. So, instead, he hugs the Mando’s helmet to one side the best he can with his shortened and weakened arm, and rests his free hand on his own knee beside the Mando’s cheek. `Damn. I can kill them in various ways from this position.` But he doesn’t. and in fact feels himself beginning to list forward when Kote Eldar begins to speak. If he closes his eyes, forgets where he is, forgets who his perch is, he can trick himself and think that his perch is one of the Alpha-class, addressing the rest of his batch. The voice is already similar enough. The feel is already homey enough. So he… does.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Thorn died trying to protect a Republic senator who had more courage and faith in kindness and fairness than sense. Due to a fatally faulty intel, which was somehow unfortunately as prevalent as fungi infestation on a long-unwashed, filth-ridden body. and all who went with him died alongside him bar the stupid senator. A whole company of them. And, now, here he is: lying on some dusty, rather chalky dirt, shying away from an unpleasantly strong sunlight, garbed in cadet uniform, with neither wound nor skar to show the universe how he has survived Kamino and Coruscant only to die on Scepio two years into the war. It hurts, somehow. It’s daunting, too, and disappointing, and he’d run away from it – from the prospect of doing it all over again – if he could, regardless of how cowardly others might perceive it. He simply can’t lose so many of his brothers all at once again, for more reasons than the obvious one. And his brothers are indeed here with him, their sleep-heavy limbs tangled with his, their similar scents undertoning all the dust. `Step 1: Take stock of who are here, where we are, what we have. Step 2: Find out if Fox and Stone and Thire and Hound are here and contact them to coordinate further plans.` The emerging plan, simple and short-termed as it is, assures him nonetheless and gives him the push to get up, to enact it. He is the first to do so, it seems. Wherever he looks, he sees red and brown and black – with some golden and almost-pearly white thrown in – carpeting the ground. `Brothers. Cadets. Unmoving.` The sight seizes his heart with tired dread, with plunging grief, with echoing loss. `Are they all asleep? Or dead?` He drags his gaze away from them with difficulty, like prying a well-soaked booted foot out of deep, heavy, sticky mud. The skylines are next to check. And he finds that, on three of the four quadrons he casts his eyes on, all he sees are more of the all-too-familiar bodies in the all-too-familiar uniform of the finishing-stage cadets. There is what looks like a mountain range on one direction, a hazy silhouette perhaps because of distance or heat or both, and farther to either side are shimmering, indistinct lines of brown and tan, but it’s all otherwise flat and featureless and resourceless. `Are we in hell?` Because he can feel burns where the kill-bolts struck him but cannot find the wounds, and it might mean a second chance to live for himself and others here. But, without resources? Without shelter? Without water? With the sun beating down on them on a dusty, hardened ground like this? Well, there is a thick, bold line of green spanning the horizon on the last quadron, and on itself it looks promising. But, when juxtaposed with this barren land…. `Mershko died in such a place.` Thorn’s fascination with carnivorous, weaponable plants died with the other commander. He even thought of changing his name, which had been inspired by such plants. It was Fox who convinced him not to, telling him that “Thorn” could mean “a thorn in the Senate’s foot,” or “a thorn hedge between the Guard and the Senate,” or even “a thorn-wreathed club to bash against a senator’s head.” Suffice to say, until the moment he died, he tried to embody the alternative meanings Fox had offered him, which was at once all too easy and all too hard when his main job was to neutralise riots and create cordons. And then his brothers begin to wake and get up, and he finds that they are those he died with, and… well, thinking about the far past and plans for the future gets punted to the side for a while, as about a hundred bodies – which he now notices are too small – crowd together in a silently tearful group hug. Not too long, though. Because word – transferred via signs from brother to brother – soon reaches them that Fox and Hound are not only here but also intend to go into the obvious trap that is the green line on the near horizon. “We guard?” Telly, the comm specialist Fox lent him for his Scepio mission to break any comm blockade that might be in place and root out any spying devises, inquires tensely, his signs jerky. Warranted, really. He is one of the few veterans from the very first deployment, who used to serve under Mershko, who was even there when Mershko tried to arrest that sick, insane, speciesist ge’hutuun that kept both a gardenful of dangerous plants and sentient young as pets and died for it. “You stay. I guard,” Thorn decides. Telly scowls. “We have no comm devises for you to operate, hack or protect,” Thorn jumps in before Telly can argue. “I fetch you if we find comm devises there.” In truth, he would like to save telly from any traumatic response to a similar setup to where Mershko died if he could help it. And this time he can, because there is neither CSF nor Senate to force their stupid, wasteful orders on the Guard here, as far as he nows. Telly’s thwarted glare is quite a reasonable price, seen that way. Acknowledging it only with a sad, rueful smile, Thorn turns round and wades among his folks, gathering up a handful of his riot boys for this impromptu save-the-di’kut’e mission. If nothing else, they could act as the thorn hedge between his fellow commanders and whatever dangers lie within this whoever’s lair. Only, when they arrive in the would-be patch of forest, he finds that they are too late to coralle Fox and Hound, and his is not the only unit stuffing themselves in-between tree trunks and patches of undergrowth. Also, before he can do more than exchanging situation reports with Stone and Thire, a pair of Mandos – one huge and one comparably small, if still far too tall and burly for the brothers’ current bodies – suddenly materialise from among the gloom. Not even the huge one has betrayed a sound, while Thorn and his unit made quite a busy rustle coming here. `Natives,` his mind makes a leap of logic. `We’re trespassing in someone’s home.` `It’s within their right to decom us,` his heart laments. `And this second chance has just begun….` But, before he can try to leap forth to act as buffer for his brothers anyway, two familiar red blurs leap up from behind the two and tackle them. And Hound’s unit follow suit, tackling the huge one. Thire’s are helping subdue the smaller Mando, so Thorn decides to join Stone and the latter’s boys to – literally – sit on the huge one. And, from up close as he is seated on their right shoulder as they are face-down on the dirt, he notes that they are more gigantic than they looked, wreathed by the green gloom under the canopy of leaves and interlocked branches as they were. They are allowing Thorn and his brothers to subdue them, then. `Uh-oh.` He yelps and springs away. And nearby, soon after the sound of a helmet unsealed, Fox also yelps and thud-rustles off. Their brothers thankfully follow suit. `But it’s too late! Far too late!` Surprisingly, the Mandos don’t act angry even after two consecutive acts of violation, while they deserve to get angry. It makes Thorn feel more wretched instead of releived, though. And, judging from the feel of everyone all clustered round him, they feel similarly. `Is it delayed anger? Or are they going to blackmail us?` It doesn’t help that, being so close to the huge Mando as he was so recently, something feels familiar about them despite all the concealing layers, and it doesn’t go away even now that he is at least two metres away from them. They do look a lot like Prime, except for the skin tone, now that they are also doffing their helmet like the other Mando apparently did. But it’s not that kind of familiar – not really, not just on the surface. After all, they were helmeted a moment ago. And Prime was familiar but… muted. Dimmed. Darkened. Muddied. Whatever. Though he was literally the sole source of Thorn’s genes. `Prime’s family?` Given the horrible, horrible, horrible realisation on top of everything the brothers have done, it’s just prudent to comply with the two natborns and show them deference. And Thorn is glad that everyone seems to think the same. Just, he can’t be the one who answers their questions. He simply can’t. His throat feels too tight even to let out a squeak. Fortunately, Fox doesn’t seem to be suffering the same malfunction. Unfortunately, apparently even here, they must grovel, and Fox still takes point in it, offering himself as recompense. Thorn hates it. And hates himself even more because he can’t speak quick enough and loud enough to shoulder the burden for them all. And he still can’t speak aloud when the brothers are asked about their “people.” How useless. But, somehow, even then, the attention of the huge Mando – Ruusaan Fett, the smaller one has just introduced them as – is on him, undemanding and patient and soft. He wants, and his throat is now clogged up for a different thing entirely. He doesn’t know what he wants, can’t figure out why he wants anything from the Mando in the first place while he and his already wronged them and the other one, but he wants, and their quiet regard just heightens it. And then the smaller one – Kote Eldar, they said – leads Fox away – by the hand, not by the neck or hair or the like, which is good if odd – and Thorn no longer has “looking out for Fox” as distraction, which makes Ruusaan Fett’s attention more potant. Then, still seated and calm as ever, they disarmour, stacking all the pieces out of the way. And, after that, they open their arms and beckon at him. No, not just him, given the wide gesture of the motioning hands, but their eyes are solely on him, so it counts. Given the assessment, he relaxes his stance and reaches out his own arms to either side, knocks softly at the elbows of his brothers to his left and right with his own, asks them to do the same. “Stay,” he pleads in dadita on the palm of his neighbours’ hands, then, even as Fox’s folks follow their commander, breaking off from the gathering. And they stay. It boulsters him, reminds him that this he can do, gives him the push to step forward, closer to one of the natborns whom they have so recently and genuinely wronged. Ruusaan Fett carefully draws him in when he is close enough, and his soul feels like jack-knifing out of his body with the action, the sensation of living flesh closing in all round him that is not any of his brothers’, the feeling of something else doing the same to his intangible self, cradling him instead of restraining, slotting into place as if it’s an organ that has been missing from his body all his life until this point. He shivers, gasps out a breath that might be a sob or a wondering laugh or both, and decides, `Hells and Deeps – why not?` He sinks into the embrace, tentative and stiff and trepidatious. And Ruusaan Fett – a natborn, who comes with different body temperature and shape and size in addition to the inherent higher status to a clone – turns it into a proper cuddle, cocooning him cosily in safe-home-secure-peaceful-calm-comfy. It’s brand-new, it’s shocking, it’s wonderful, it’s discomfitting, it’s painful. And, without him realising it at first, his face from eyes down is already wet and infecting his cuddler’s underarmour with the same problem. But their response to it is to cup the back of his head with their humongous hand, covering it all in the process, gently, and caress his hair, instead of flinging him away, which makes him just cry harder, which makes them hum something deep in their chest pressed against his ear, also deep in their psyche wrapped round him, which soothes instead of shushes. It’s baffling, but it also reassures. And, before long, even as Ruusaan Fett slowly shifts their body to lie sidewise on the loamy ground without letting go of him, his brothers approach on their own volition. He really has no idea how they have progressed from “squads of clones invading private property and harassing its owners” to “squads of clones cuddling with one of the owners of the private property they invaded.” But it’s happening now, and he has been there for all of it. He can’t say he doesn’t like it, at that, despite the absurdity. Because he is lying on a natborn in a non-violent, non-sexual, non-romantic, non-aggressive way, and Foodie and Bitz are cuddling up at his either side, and familiar bodies and limbs are tangled with his, and their shared “bed” does not seem to even wish to get up any time soon. `I can stay like this forever.` The notion is unrealistic, ridiculous, even egregious – flaunting the kind welcome of this natborn. But still, Thorn basks in it. That is, until those who went away return. Multiplied by a lot. `The others?` Reluctantly, he wriggles out of the cuddle pile and looks up at the newcomers. `Yup. The others. But….` His gaze homes in on the armful of red-uniformed cadet cradled horizontally by Kote Eldar, wrapped round the Mando’s helmet in turn, and alarm zings into being in his chest, stinging his heart and seizing his lungs. `Is he injured? Dead? But no one seems upset….` Before he can ask, however, his newcoming brothers already swarm the cuddle pile and, with a displeased grimace, Kote Eldar hits a button on their left vambrace with a jab of his right little finger, causing the moving holo of another natborn to spring up above it. The holo – `It’s a commcall!` – chirps at the Mando in Mando’a – a language Thorn barely understands, given that his batch was raised by Tavo – Alpha-34 – who was in turn raised by Trainer El-Les, a non-Mando. It seems to displease Kote Eldar more, regardless, so Thorn braces himself for either orders or a stint as an outlet for the natborn’s pent-up fury. He does not brace for a question, however, and it is what Kote Eldar lobes at the watching brothers after what sounds like a heated argument between them and the caller. “Do you permit my friend come here? Or do you prefer they are not here?” Thorn works his throat, his jaw, his lips, his tongue, takes a deep breath, and pushes his words alongside the exhale. “Will they tell about us after that? Or this place?” The caller’s offended squawk sends a jolt and a sting into his heart, as if he got zapped by his own stun baton. But he slogs on nonetheless when Kote Eldar surprisingly genuinely follows up on his stated concerns. “Will they hurt us?” “Will they hurt you?” Foodie pipes in, just as the caller lets out a louder, stronger squawk. Surprisingly, the caller lets out a whimper, to that, and Kote Eldar’s mien softens immensely. Thorn watches carefully, still, when the Mando beckons Foodie to them with a tilt of their head, even when they kiss the first-gen speedie as if he were a natborn child. He only relaxes some when they then explain to the spectators, “Jaster is my old friend. I was… wary, because now I have to protect you, and there are so many of you, while the situation outside is… not good. But I trust Jaster. And if they betray me, I know where they might be.” `Jaster who? The Jaster Mereel Spar rambled about?` Pondering on the person behind the name is easier, simpler than trying to accept the Mando’s belief that the Guard needs guarding. Similarly, arranging for Kote Eldar’s and Ruusaan fett’s safety during the caller’s visit is familiar, unlike the Mando’s serious wheedling begging for permission that is aimed at the brothers. Thorn takes the easy route, in the end. He takes charge in laying out the stipulations for the visit, the arming of the brothers, patrols of the area, the welcoming committee, the hidden guards, even everyone’s positioning. He has a strong feeling that the natborns just humour him and his brothers, complying with the directions, but he can care less about it as long as they do comply. He shall not be the cause of yet another death this second round, whether that of his charge or fellow Guard. To that effect, he coaxes a still-sleeping Fox to relinquish Kote Eldar’s helmet, asks the natborn politely but firmly to don it, and positions them behind a company of his best riot boys… which incidentally comprises the bulk of the Scepio contingent that died with him. He even makes sure Ruusaan Fett is surrounded by the Guard’s youngest and cuddliest, to prevent them from joining their spouse in conversing with this Jaster person. He is dissatisfied with the fact that his boys are armed only with sharpened fallen branches. But at least “Jaster” has agreed to disarm and disarmour prior to the meeting? They have agreed to disembark from their ride at least half a click away from the meeting place, too, so the Guard will have at least a few seconds to react accordingly in case of violence… unless the guest forswears their promise and brings a concealed long-range enhanced pistol with them. And then, not long after both natborns have settled themselves for a frought-sounding chat at the treeline, surrounded by the vigilent but relaxed-seeming Guard, Kote Eldar informs Thorn that they are going to meet their estranged parent at the far fence of the farm. Yet another mission with insufficient intel and prep time and resources, yet another guarding stint, yet another possibly dangerous stranger and situation. Well, at least it’s familiar?