They called her the Scavenger, for her ability to pluck jewels (sometimes literally) out of junkyards, scrap piles, and miniscule collections where the owners often didn't know the true value of their items.

There were a thousand and one rumors about her. She was trained by the greatest thief in the world. She studied under ninjas in Japan. She could rewire security systems with a wave of her hand.

In the last few years, she's upped her game, stealing from museums and millionaires, selling a few pieces and returning stolen artifacts to the families and countries they were taken from, which earned her both internet fame and international attention. The week she stole a Gustav Klimt from the Krennic family, she jumped onto Interpol's most wanted list, got a personal FBI task force, and her file landed loudly on Kylo Ren's desk.

As IYS's best insurance investigator, his job was to find and recover art stolen from their clients before IYS had to pay the claim. If he was successful, he saved the company millions of dollars and earned himself a handsome commission. If he failed… well, Snoke had made it very clear that failure was not an option.

"Good luck catching a ghost," Hux taunted as he walked out of Kylo's office.

"At least Snoke knows I have a better chance than you," he responded, and was rewarded with Hux's face turning a bright, angry red.

The man sputtered a bit, then marched away, knocking an intern's pile of cases onto the floor with stream of insults at everyone's general incompetency.

Kylo's amusement faded as he opened the unhelpfully thin file. There were copies of possibly connected cases, some grainy security video snapshots of black blurs, and virtually no personal information. Apparently it wasn't even confirmed that the Scavenger was a woman.

Letting out an annoyed huff, he pulled up to his computer and began searching through archived cases with an emphasis in security circumvention going back five years, something that the idiots who put together the file should have done before they handed it to him.

Taking a sip of his coffee, he muttered, "Have to do everything myself."

"Rey, please, you have to do something for yourself." Finn told her as he pulled up a chair at their favorite restaurant. "Look, I know this whole Robin Hood thing is doing great things for your rep, but you have to sell something so you can buy me brunch once in a while."

Rey, who was already three bites into her pancake, waved nonchalantly at him. "Yeah, yeah."

"I mean it, Rey. What's the point of stealing a six million dollar painting if you're just going to give it away and go hungry?"

"The Krennics stole that painting from Holocaust victims! You want me to steal from Holocaust victims?"

"Of course not, but can you steal something that I can fence for you so you can at least afford to eat for a while?"

Rey rolled her eyes. "Fine. Find me something expensive that wasn't stolen from a dispossessed nation or family, and I'll think about it."

"Whatcha talkin' about?" Poe asked as he spun a chair around and stole a slice of Finn's bacon.

"Finn wants me to steal something he can sell." Rey answered around her bagel.

"That we can sell. So we can have money. And so I don't have to pay for your meals. Hey!" He protested as Poe stole another piece of bacon.

She and Finn had been friends since she was a runaway foster kid, picking pockets to survive on the streets, selling anything she could grab to the pawnshop Finn worked at. Poe joined their unlikely friendship a few years ago when Finn had been tasked with finding the best crew to break in and steal a priceless gold dagger from one of the most impenetrable collections in the world. By that time, Rey was infamous for getting around the toughest security systems, and Poe's wheelman skills were close to legendary.

Stealing the dagger was both challenging and thrilling, and even though her smokescreen hadn't lasted long, Poe had out-maneuvered both the private guards and the local cops in record time, all of them whooping with glee the whole way back.

"He's got a point, sunshine. I have a solid fee for driving, Finn gets a commission, you should make something too."

Sighing heavily, Rey conceded. "Alright, alright. It would be nice to have something saved up."

"Exactly! Let me know if you need a getaway car." Poe told her, then drank the rest of Finn's coffee.

"C'mon man! That latte cost four dollars!"

Poe made a face, then handed back the cup. "You overpaid."

"Well now I did! Go buy me a new one!"

"Can't. I have to… drive somewhere."

"Oh really? Is it to a pool? Because your pants are on fire!"

"That doesn't even make any sense!"

Rey shook her head with a fond smile as she finished Finn's eggs. She had nicked many things in her life, but she wasn't sure she could ever top the fact that she had stolen herself a family.

Kylo was half-way through a completely different case when Hux stormed in (not that he ever entered any other way) and slapped a newspaper onto his desk.

"The Scavenger broke into General Canady's personal safe last night!" Hux shouted, pointing dramatically at the headline. "Guess how much was stolen!"

Glancing at the article briefly, Kylo turned back to his computer. "Over a million dollars in gold and jewels."

"Over a million-" He stopped, slightly derailed. "Yes! Everything insured by us! All because you can't find one lone cat burglar!"

Kylo leaned back in his chair. "How do you know it was her?"

Hux tossed him a photo of the safe, partially open with a small note left on top.

Your mistress' birthday? Really? Pick a better combination next time.

Scavenger

Biting back an odd impulse to chuckle, Kylo asked, "I assume Mrs. Canady is not to know about this?"

"She's the one who discovered the break-in!"

Shrugging, Kylo continued to type on his keyboard.

"Understandably, the General is taking this quite personally." Hux attempted in a calmer tone. When Kylo ignored him, he stepped closer and hissed, "So is Snoke."

The typing stopped long enough for Kylo to shoot him a dark look.

"He's… curious as to why you haven't come up with anything yet."

"Perhaps because the morons who put together this file were completely incompetent." He retorted, then grabbed a sheet of paper from the printer as Hux flushed angrily. "But despite that, I have come up with a list of commonalities and possible targets."

He crossed off a section with a dramatic flourish before handing it over. Hux snatched it out of his hand, then glared as he noticed 'Canady residence' now had a dark line through it.

"Fine. I will bring this to Snoke, and you better hope-"

Kylo rose to his full height, then plucked the paper from Hux's grasp.

"I will take this to Snoke myself, and you will stay out of my business." He interrupted with a low, dangerous tone, then turned on his heel, leaving Hux fuming behind him.

"Pick a better combination next time? Damn girl!" Poe clapped her on the back with a grin. "He's going to need some aloe for that burn!"

"Look, I'm just saying, if he doesn't want to be robbed, make your security secure! He might as well used 'password' as his password."

Finn snorted into his coffee, then added, "Did you hear about her FBI task force?"

Poe looked up, clearly impressed. "You've got your own task force?"

Rey shrugged modestly. "It's just a bunch of probies straight out of Quantico. Gotta give them something to do right? Other people's tax dollars at work!"

"Still! You okay with that amount of attention?"

"All she's gotta do is lay low for a while, and they'll get bored and move on to something else." Finn replied as he added more sugar.

"Or…"

Both Poe and Finn glanced up to see Rey looking a little sheepish.

"Or what?" Finn asked suspiciously.

"Well, they just came out with a new upgrade to the Kirsch security system and no one's beat it yet."

"Uh-huh."

"And there's this great gallery downtown that uses it in their special exhibit room, so I was thinking…"

"Rey, no. You need to lay low long enough for me to sell Canady's stuff one at a time. If you steal something big again, there's going to be even more heat and I won't be able to fence anything!"

"Aw, c'mon! Just one little gallery. No one will even know I'm there! Poe, back me up on this."

Poe shook his head. "Sorry, sunshine, I'm with the naysayer on this one."

"Hey!"

Ignoring Finn's protest, Poe continued, "Part of big scores is big heat, and you need to wait til it cools down." His phone beeped, then he threw a couple of bills on the table. "Alright, I'll see you kids later. The Ace is needed!"

"No one calls you that!" Finn shouted after him.

Sighing, Finn collected his stuff and jabbed a warning finger Rey's direction. "I'm serious, peanut. Lay low. Explore the city. Buy groceries. Normal people stuff."

Rey rolled her eyes, then conceded, "I guess it would be nice to pay Chirrut and Baze back for some of my classes."

"There you go. Pay your bills. Be a tourist. Just don't do anything… big."

"Alright, fine."

"Promise?"

Rey placed her hand over her heart. "Promise. Nothing big."

Satisfied, he nodded and waved as he headed out, missing the smirk that slowly appeared on Rey's face.

After all, she did say it was a small gallery.

"You're going where?"

His patience already wearing thin, Kylo grit his teeth and repeated, "The D'Qar Gallery."

"That's ridiculous! It's a miniscule collection with nothing matching the Scavenger's MO. She's much more likely to go for a higher profile target, like the Coruscant collection. You'll be wasting men and time on a worthless-"

"Take them. I've never needed an army to do my job, but you apparently do."

Hux scowled. "Snoke wants real leads, actual targets. Not whims and wild goose chases!"

Kylo pulled on his jacket and resisted the urge to strangle the other man. "If anyone's on a wild goose chase, it's you."

As he pushed past Hux on his way to the door, he could hear him shout, "You best not be wrong!"

"I'm not." He growled, stalking out of the office.

Shaking his head at Hux's idiocy, he hailed a cab and made his way towards the D'Qar Gallery. His instincts were telling him that the Scavenger wasn't interested in creating more headlines. She wanted challenges. And with the D'Qar Gallery being one of the beta users for the newest Kirsch systems update, it was the most tempting challenge he could think of.

This moment, hanging silently in the air, floating between ground and sky (or rather, polished tile floor and exposed beams, but same difference) was her favorite part. There was a combination of peace and thrill in the seconds before she stole something, the nervous anticipation balanced by pure joy.

Taking a slow, steady breath, she reached out to touch the display case, baring her teeth in a victorious grin as the alarms stayed ignorantly silent. Gently squeezing the plastic explosive onto the glass, she blew the rising smoke away through her ski mask before it could trigger the infared sensors. Just as she completed the circle, she heard distant, measured footsteps slowly coming closer.

She frowned in mid-air, her pulse picking up a bit, trying to think of who it could possibly be, since the single guard on duty still had forty more minutes on his route until he passed by this room again. Perhaps he changed his routine? Maybe it was another burglar? Or the owner coming by for a surprise inspection?

The steps paused at about the right distance of the next gallery's entrance, then continued approaching her direction, and Rey suddenly got a bad feeling about this. Reminding herself that she couldn't be seen from the windows, that whoever it was probably wouldn't actually come in to the exhibition room, she nevertheless willed the explosive to dissolve the display case glass faster.

She listened to the footsteps draw near, then suddenly stop. The silence stretched on long enough that she wondered if she had possibly imagined it. The second before she dismissed it as an echo of the guard's steps across the gallery, the door to the far right suddenly swung open to reveal a dark-haired man who glanced around the room, then looked up, almost on a whim, and locked shocked eyes with Rey; both of them frozen at the improbability of the other being there.

The first thing Rey noticed about this mysterious stranger was that he was tall. Absurdly tall. So tall that she was hanging from the ceiling and it still felt like he was looking down at her. She could barely make out his broad shoulders and narrow features in the shadows, but it was his eyes that caught her gaze. Dark, wild, clearly taken aback, and almost… haunted.

Silence stretched between them, and too late Rey remembered that plastic explosive was past done eating away at the display glass below.

Shattering glass startled both of them out of their paralysis, alarms blaring loudly around them. As the man ran towards her, Rey released the tension on her rig and landed on the floor, bolting as fast as she could towards the window. Unfortunately, the ridiculously long legs that contributed to his absurd height gave him a significant advantage over her, and within seconds he was within arm's length.

He reached out and grabbed her rope, yanking her back towards him. Rey decided to use his strength against him, and let his momentum propel her elbow directly into his nose. Despite his eyes watering and blood running down his face, he hooked one of his arms around her and growled, "Stop moving!"

Rey, who was never one to obey orders, reached for a piece of glass on the floor, then turned in one fluid motion, slicing at his face and wiggling out of his grasp. Her mask slid off as he tried to tighten his grip, and as Rey stumbled back, he snapped up his head and froze.

As they stood, staring at each other face to face for the first time, Rey suddenly felt the world slow around her, his eyes widening as he locked onto her face, how his stance started to shift backwards, the way her breath caught in her lungs at the intensity of his gaze.

Rapidly approaching footsteps finally snapped her out of it, and while the man seemed rooted to the floor, Rey spun on her heel and dove out the window, the loose rope fluttering in the wind until she grabbed the back-up line, flinching at the heat of the rope skidding in her hand.

Once she hit the ground, she had the wild impulse to look up towards the gallery window. There, leaning out with a dark red trail running down his cheek, angry smears under his nose, was the shadow of the man who had come closer to catching her than anyone in her entire thieving career, watching her with an unreadable expression.

Overcome with what she could only later describe as "stupidity borne of pure adrenaline", something possessed her to meet his dark look with a mischievous wink of her own before giving him a sardonic smirk and hightailing it out of there.

And as grateful as she was to be breathing free air, she had a powerful feeling that this was not going to be the last she had seen of her mysterious pursuer.