VENTRESS AND THE TAUNTAUNS
Beasts of Hoth were too much trouble then they were worth, in Ventress opinion. Look at all the trouble those Tals caused the Jedi a couple of weeks ago!
And if the beasts of Hoth were trouble, then the beasts of Hoth called tauntauns were especially troublesome.
They ate too much, they slept too much, and they smelled.
And of course, Ventress had been elected by popular vote (which consisted of Anakin, Ahsoka, Kit, Ki-Adi and Padme) to feed them.
The shaggy mounts that the Tals had loaned the Republic for their use were housed in a stable portion of the landing bay.
That was where Ventress stalked through now, food bag slung over her shoulder and a thundercloud slung over her head.
Obi-Wan was working on his fighter close by somewhere, and the last thing she wanted him to see was her marching to work like a common stablehand.
She ducked her head and tried to scamper across the landing bay as quickly as possible.
"What's with the bag, sweetheart?" Rex asked, catching sight of her as she tried unsuccessfully to hide behind his fighter's landing gear.
Ventress found a pebble of rubber on the runway and flicked it at the clone. It popped him between the eyeballs and he fell back into his cockpit with a grunt.
She ventured forth again, maneuvering between ships like she was on a covert spy operation instead of a trip to feed some stinky animals.
The stable was in sight! She breathed a sigh of relief and fairly skipped to the door. Never had she been so happy to have her olfactory senses obliterated by the stench of the tautauns.
Obi-Wan hadn't seen her, and now she wouldn't have to deal with his reinforced ribbing for another month and a half.
When suddenly the Jedi master himself swung upside down from the rafters, scaring her half to death. He wore a wide grin like he had just discovered the last caldermelon in the cafeteria.
"A little bird told me that someone very special would be doing the feeding today," he snickered. "But it couldn't be you, could it Ventress? Certainly not you."
The assassin moved the Jedi master to the top of her list of death, a position that had previously been occupied by Ahsoka Tano. Other than that mental note, Ventress gave no hint that she even observed Obi-Wan's presence. She fed the first tauntaun without even glancing at him.
Obi-Wan gave a frown. Was she deaf? Here he was, trying to be as inhumanly annoying as possible and she wasn't even going to acknowledge him? If it was one thing the master was not going to stand for, it was being ignored.
He swung down, grasping the rafter with his hands and gave a smirk again. "But you are the one with the feed sack, are you not, my darling? Does this mean that the great Ventress the terrible is actually stooping down to the lowliest job?"
Ventress was doing her best to ignore the arrogant little snot, but it was proving increasingly difficult. She grasped a pitchfork in her hand, and imagined the pile of grass was Obi-Wan's head. She speared it rather viciously and piled it into the first tauntaun's stall.
"Doest my eyes deceive me?" Obi-Wan continued to follow her as she went, stall by stall, giving the tauntauns their grain and their grass. "Ventress, surely you are ashamed, are you not? Humiliated by the menial task that was assigned to you by your companions?"
She ignored him still, coming to the last of the tauntaun and finishing him too.
"You, the Goddess of War, doing a job so low even the janitors leave it till last." He grinned with satisfaction as a vein throbbed in her temple. "And what's worse, you're so good at it, I just might sign you up for this position…permanently."
That did it. She snapped.
Quick as lightning, Ventress' pitchfork flashed out. She scooped up a nice, fresh, steaming pile of tauntaun scat and, without a second thought, hurled it at the Jedi.
The missile made contact with his face with a sickening SPLAT!
Anakin and Ahsoka, wandering into the landing bay aimlessly, watched with confusion as Ventress tore out of the stables, her face grimly triumphant, her lips pressed together to keep from roaring with laughter.
And behind her, stumbled a wretched Obi-Wan, trying unsuccessfully to wipe the mess out of his eyes.
"YOU INSUFERABLE, IMMATURE, UNGRATEFUL, HEARTLESS…" But then Obi-Wan became too furious to speak, and he stalked off in the direction of the showers.
He passed Anakin and Ahsoka, who were looking at him with cocked eyebrows and smiles.
"Wipe those smirks off your faces before I do it for you," he growled, before vanishing into the hallway. Several clones came out after he had disappeared, holding their noses and glancing behind them with strange looks.
Anakin and Ahsoka glanced at each other grinning ear to ear.
"Whaddya say we make Ventress do the stables from now on?"Anakin asked his Padawan.
FIN.