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“This is-” Hound grumbles, and spits out a string of words. Thorn is quite sure some of them are swears. There’s at least two, he thinks. “Stupid.”
That’s a pout, most definitely a pout. Hound wears a little pouty glare, and crosses his pouty arms, and throws little pouty legs out in front of him, and slouches in his seat. Poutily.
The nicest thing about Hound is that when Thorn pats his pouty little head, he’ll just turn his pouty little glare up from ‘beset tooka’ to ‘bedraggled massif’. Stone, by contrast, would try to do his sweet little growl thing and Thorn would be contractually obligated to put him in a loving headlock and knuckle his empty little skull until Fox yelled at them both.
Hound glares bedraggled massif under Thorn’s patting hand. “It’s not that bad,” Thorn laughs, only mostly teasing.
Bedraggled massif descends to woeful nexukit. “It makes no sense. We aren’t selecting sources, we’re selecting things!”
“We can’t call it Thing Selection, that would sound stupid.” For that, Thorn gets a poutier glare and a whiny huff. There’s a laugh brewing in his belly, the kind that booms through the room and would immediately bring Fox’s Wrath of Vod down on him. He gamely squashes it down.
“But we’re not selecting sources. We don’t care about the sources, we care about the things.”
Thorn snorts. He gives in to temptation and hooks an elbow affectionate-tight around Hound’s neck. He scrubs knuckles hard against that grumbly head. “I guarantee that the Government cares a hell of a lot more about the sources than the things, Hound.”
“It’s for rations,” he persists stubbornly. “They can just go order from a-” he signs index-cost-sheet-catalog. “-menu.”
“The source is more important than the stuff,” Thorn repeats. “They need to be completely sure that only the most desirable provider gets the billions of credits of sales.”
Hound gives both Thorn and the stack of contracts lurking ominously on their table the same sour look. “Politics,” he spits, the way he might say ‘tapeworm’.
Thorn tries very hard not to roll his eyes. “Oh Prime forbid there be politics in a GAR contract award,” he drawls. “Imagine, needing to read between the lines on Coruscant of all places! Subtext in the Senate?! What next? Trandoshans on the Trandoshan Inter-Planetary Wrestling team!?”
“You gentlemen have something you’d like to add?”
Fox looms.
Bral might have been intimidated by him once. Maybe for a day, or so. It didn’t last. It couldn’t: Fox is a cussy spikey clone-of-an-ass until you get up close and realize that the spikey hides a puffmallow fluff center. And the spikes are made of candy-pink sugarfloss.
Fox looms, and it’s early enough in the day that he’s still decently pretending that he doesn’t find every single member of Bral entirely too amusing. He’s got the glower on nice and set. Thorn gamely bland-faces back.
Hound though, Hound straightens suddenly. It’s almost like a snapping to attention and he knows better than that. Sudden movement like that, and Fox won’t pretend he doesn’t notice.
“Commander,” he says in a voice Thorn has heard before, one he knows well. That’s a vod’ika prepared to make a brassy karking play. It takes Thorn long fractions of seconds to parse it, because it’s Hound. Hound, to this point, has always been the easiest of Thorn’s morons to wrangle. “Commander Fox,” Hound thunders insistently. “May I be excused?”
Across the room, Stone’s head snaps up in righteous fury. “Oh no you don’t,” he barks with all the indignation of a vod’ika who didn’t think of it first.
Fox struggles not to smirk at them. “Alright then Hound, I’ll fucking bite. Why the hell should I cut you loose?”
“I can not read this Basic.”
Thorn is. He is completely, entirely stunned. This right here is a beautiful, glorious, tubie-butt-smooth massive steaming turdpile and he just a little wants to stand and applaud the shear beskar pair on this vod. Stone, expectedly, veritably combusts.
“The kriff do you mean you don’t-”
“Watch the fucking language, Stone,” Fox scolds idly. He shifts his weight to one foot, cocks a hip and rests a hand on it in true-predator ease. “There’s a shitton of impressionable CTs around. Hound.”
“I know the words of Basic,” Hound says, entirely unbothered. His accent is suddenly a bit thicker, Thorn thinks. His words a little slower. Phrasing just south of correct. That little sithstain. Who the hell knew he’d been hiding this devious side all along? Fox smiles that creepy smile. Hound pretends he doesn’t see it. “But I do not know how I read the subtext. Or where do I should find the Trandoshans.”
“What kriffing Trandoshans you conman-”
“Stone, be nice to your brother,” Fox oozes. “He’s trying his best.”
“Commander!”
“You know what? I’m in a great mood. Sure Hound, sure you can go. I have an alternate assignment for you.”
That’s a trap. That there is a trap and Thorn did not have to have a lifetime of Scout training to see that thermal detonator on the magrail line. “Fox,” he tries, and Fox gleefully talks over him.
“Ponds has been annoying me for extra hands,” he says idly, like he’s only just thinking of it now. “Though it’ll involve a shitton of exercise. The little bastards are slippery at the best of times, and it’s somehow worse this time of year. Think you’d be up for that?”
Clue the second: Fox. Gleeful. He’s only this giddy when he’s about to give someone a real bad day. Hound is a moron.
But off Hound goes: that’s one of Thorn’s morons bouncing out of the room, awash in the glow of victory. The noise Stone makes can only be deciphered by Wookies.
“Commander Fox, can I-”
“Nobody else is excused,” Fox declares. Stone collapses in his seat with a truly pitiful whine. Thorn eyes the sharps of Fox’s grin and doesn’t groan.
His baby vod’ikase really are actual idiots.
“Fox.”
Fox taps a bracer to his shoulder guard and grins. “Nothing for it, Thorn. The man can’t read The Basic.”
“You’re an asshole,” Thorn says. He tries to sound neither amused nor admiring. Fox smiles at him, that half-tilt smirk that only suggests serial killer, instead of outright stating it.
“Thanks,” he drawls. “I’ve been practicing. Now watch your fucking language.”
It’s less than an hour after dusk and the lights of nighttime Coruscant flicker on.
Corellia Comestibles has rented a billboard right outside and to the left of their window. Blue and green washes over the dark-windowed building beside it, creating a sparklingly reflective feast for the corneas. It flashes through reminders of just how reliably it has partnered with the GAR in years past. Subtle. Really.
“Gonna go out on a gangplank here and say that’s probably cheating.”
Stone shoots Thire a look that’s pure vitriol. Thire, unconcerned, sips at his caf.
Someone has fingerpainted I DO NOT KARKING CARE with lukewarm caf on the magboard. It’s right underneath where they’ve tried ranking the midichlorate content by volume, and also price, and then again by whether or not DANTOO Trading conflated midichlorates and midichlorites. And whether or not anyone actually needs either of those in their heat-n-eat-grain-n-meat paks.
Thorn guesses that’s when someone summoned Thire. Poor bastard. Probably thought he’d escaped, what with being on actual active command. “Everyone’s cheating,” Thorn reminds him.
Outside, another ad-board flickers to life with a something-or-other cereal younglings apparently are incurably addicted to, while their progenitors enable so they can get some karking peace. Sounds more like a public health crisis than a reason to buy it, to Thorn. Also the kids may be hallucinating a green-furred talking rarbit in a vest. What a perfectly garbled storyline.
Huh would you look at that. Sponsored by Soron State Suppliers. Thire checks the magboard. Yep, that’s them, currently ranked first in “volume of fresium per kilo” in their dessert offering. It’s bangcorn, which, ugh. Uninspired. Then again, tonight’s Sponsored News playing loudly from a breakroom a floor down seems to be an expose of a quality-drop coverup at their fresium refineries. Sponsored by Galactic Citizens United For Responsible Food Sourcing. “Everyone’s cheating,” Thorn repeats. “All the time.” He steals Thire’s cup. Pauses. “Tea?”
Thire steals it back with pointy-elbowed adroitness that he’s never bothered trying to grow out of. “Alder,” he agrees. Does a chin-point to the corner where there’s a spread laid out. “Sent up to support our hard-working clone troopers.”
Thorn grins. Little gods bless Bail, the man’s got sense. After all, everyone’s cheating. If you’re not, it’s suspicious. If only Padmé would get that message …
“Someone measure how long the noodles are in Alderaan’s pasta bowl,” Thorn calls out.
“25 centimeters,” a voice calls back immediately. One of Thorn’s own Scouts, if they were already ready with an answer. “And 0.25 inches wide. And as you most certainly already know, that is a very lucky ratio in Mandalorian culture, sir!” Mack, then. Thorn swears that man can read minds.
“Sounds to me like that gets them a point in ‘other features: intangible’, doesn’t it?”
“And quality, sir. The corrugated edges appear as though they’d hold sauce very pleasingly.”
“Good man.”
“You are perpetuating a cycle of corruption,” Thire observes, ever bland.
“The cycle is self-perpetuating,” Thorn rebuts. “I’m just taking advantage of the parts that line up with my own interests.
“I see. Innovative.”
“Why thank you.”
“I hate this squad,” Stone declares. “I bet Chekar doesn’t have to deal with this.” Thire and Thorn have both worked with A’den. They both pat Stone’s shoulder. What a cute, naive vod’ika they have.
“Huddle up,” Rys calls over the susurrus of idle conversation. “Everyone doing the par-baked bread portion ratings, we’re starting now.”
“Any chance this one had a requirement for ‘doesn’t taste like a skid plate’?” someone hollers back. Laughs ring the room, because they all know.
“They could have at least required everything be digestible,” Thire sighs, wistful dreamer that he is.
“We’ll add ‘will give a vod the runs’ under the ‘requires additional logistical infrastructure’ demerit,” Thorn replies. He’s, admittedly, a little distracted. The office windows directly facing theirs remains dark. Un-advert-ed.
Kriff’s sake, Padmé. She’s as stubborn as her tent skirts are stiff. And sometimes, Thorn suspects, as deliberately thick as her gods-damned wigs. “Someone get me Sabé on the holo,” he grunts. Honestly, the things he has to do himself around here.
“On call with Rabé,” Mack, Thorn’s favorite, calls back. “She’s trying to get a sky-writer short notice.”
“Tell her Bail sent up tea service.”
“She says to say ‘what is she, derivative?’. She’s sending bread bowls anyway. She says get your own damn soup for them.”
“How is this not solicitation?” Thire wonders, idly as though discussing historical changes to boot polish pigments. “Although … I suppose we’d first have to have legal agency, before we could stand trial for that.” He makes an excellent Medic, Thorn knows, but he’d have made an incomparable Scout.
“Which means we can’t be guilty of soliciting bribes,” Thorn confirms.
“But Naboo can still be guilty of offering one.”
“With any luck.”
Everyone’s cheating. Better Naboo get caught out delivering fresh bread to the source selection evaluators, than some of the other kosk they might or might not be up to. Better inquiries start looking hard at their contract awards, than maybe getting interested in potential unmanifested extra passengers or unscheduled stops in their flights out to the Rim worlds.
That’s just business, in Coruscant.
“Pantora called. They’re generously offering the soup,” Mack calls.
Huh. They didn’t even put in a proposal. Late, maybe? “Are we clearing up a system error and finding their proposal got stuck somewhere?”
“They are entirely independent and have no financial interest in these proceedings whatsoever.” No, nope. Come on Riyo. Do better. “But.” There. “They were wondering if you’d seen reports that Thisse’s factories were actually subsourcing to Cato Neimoidia. Just from an uninvolved party voicing some idle concerns.”
“I suppose we’ll have to take another look at them,” Thorn grins.
“I’m off,” Thire cuts in hurriedly. He meanders briskly to the door. “Someone’s probably been murdered somewhere. No Stone, I don’t need help. Have fun!”
Stone shrieks something offended at his back.
Fox marches Hound back in after latemeal.
“Good news gentleshits.” Fox swans through the door with his own personal Bral thundercloud in tow. He parks Thorn’s pissiest brother down at his table and beams with fiendishly innocent pride. “He can read the Basic now. It’s a karking miracle.” Fox slaps both hands resoundingly hard on Hound’s back, hard enough the table jumps with the force and Thorn has to scramble to rescue his chai.
Hound slides one cutting eye Thorn’s way, then towards Stone. “Do not. Ask.” He snarls, nearly entirely subvocal. Fox bounces away, smiling all teeth. Stone glitters, ungracious in his victory.
Victory? Communal defeat, more like. Thorn’s vod’ikase are cute, but occasionally not very bright.
“We’re about to judge the macronutritional value of the veg scoops,” he says instead.
Hound slams a stack of pads closer to him and sets about them scowlingly. Thorn is very generous, and doesn’t giggle at him.
Thorn: So how’s tax season going?
Ponds: Terribly! \O/ \O/ It’s a total circus
Ponds: Receipts are suggestions, and what counts as a receipt can only be decided by how The Force leads you
Ponds: Also legibility is a social construct perpetuated by commercialism
Ponds: \O/
Ponds: You should send Hound back tomorrow
Thorn: Really??
Ponds: Really really!
Ponds: He can’t actually help this mess
Ponds: But it was very funny to watch him at it
Thorn glances up. Hound’s stinkeye is palpable.
Thorn: He might actually throw himself off the plate
Ponds: Well catch him first
Ponds: Obvs
Thorn: I can try
Ponds: I have another broken caf machine you can swap out for Fox’s
Thorn: Sold!