Author's Note: Thank you to everyone who left a review or added this story to their favorites! It really means a lot to me! Just as a note, updates will be less frequent for a while since I'll be busier than I've been this past month. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this next chapter. I'd love to hear what you think!

Chapter 2

Misery Loves Company which is not Something Kylo's Into

"What the hell is this?"

Hux had encountered some pretty bizarre reports during meetings (the Maniacal Ironing Board blueprint was a particularly memorable one), but what Kylo had brought him was something else.

"Research," Kylo snarled. "I thought you'd know research when you saw it, you with all your science fair trophies."

The commanding officers in the room sniggered. Hux stiffened. So what if he had a twenty-year-old plastic trophy or two in his office? A man was entitled to keep a few tokens of pride, and no matter what the Kylo said, at least one of them had to be real gold…

"Research," Hux said, "is an organized, methodical set of results that can be analyzed in some way, not a collage that looks like it was made by a stalker."

"It's not a collage." Kylo rolled his eyes. Sometimes he wondered why he had to be the one to explain everything remotely intellectual in the First Order. "It is a compilation of the scavenger girl's appearances in the Resistance ads."

"May I ask why your 'research' required that you cut all the photos into hearts?" Hux inquired.

"That was the only shape that my broken scissors would cut!" Kylo shouted. His hand moved towards his lightsaber. "And thanks to your Starkiller base disaster, we don't have funds for me to get new ones, so if anyone needs to explain themselves here, it should be you."

Hux opened his mouth to argue the case further, but found that it was rather difficult to make a point with the Force constricting his throat.

"Can we move on with the meeting then?" Kylo asked, unclenching his hand.

The officers nodded emphatically. Hux was too grateful for oxygen to voice his dismay. If Kylo had been the type to smile, he would have smirked. This was how a meeting was meant to go after all: everyone agreeing with him and Hux somewhere along the spectrum of mild discomfort to excruciating pain. However, Kylo had never caught onto the whole smiling fad, so he banged his fist on the table and pointed at the pictures in front of him instead.

"After repeated analysis of the Resistance propaganda," he said. "I've come to realize their secret. It's her."

"The scavenger?" one of the officers said, perplexed. "Are you really sure that's it?"

"And could you please stop dimming the lights whenever you talk for dramatic emphasis?" another officer asked. "It's kind of distracting and I can't see anything."

Kylo glared at the dissenting officer, who conveniently sprang five feet in the air and flew backwards out the door and over a ten-story drop. The lights flickered off and were replaced by an eerie red glow.

"Anyone else want to argue with dramatic emphasis?" Kylo growled.

"No," said the first officer. "Actually, I much like what you did with the lighting."

"Yeah," said another, nodding. "It really brings out the color in Hux's hair."

"It kind of adds a kind of highlight to his unnervingly pale skin too," a third officer chirped in.

"Okay!" Hux seethed. "Now, getting back to the project at hand which, if I recall correctly, has a deadline that is nearly impossible to meet but which we need to work with, or else the Supreme Leader will snap all of our necks…"

"I'm not done showing my research," Kylo said. He held up a picture of the scavenger. "As any reasonable person would conclude by looking at these, the scavenger is the appeal of the entire Resistance. Literally nothing else that they do matters. People just see her on the screen and they don't even care what the commercial is advertising for. So…"

He paused, hoping that the others would be smart enough to fill in the blank.

"So what?" Hux sighed.

"So, if we get the scavenger girl in our ads," Kylo said. "Our recruitment problem is solved."

"Sir, I unfortunately don't think it's that simple," said one of the officers. "There are…"

In an inexplicable turn of events, the officer promptly fell over the nearest railing in the same manner as his colleague.

"This is not helping our lack of workers," Hux muttered. "Look, Ren. Saying as we can't exactly buy ourselves a clone of the scavenger to appease your pathetic affections, can we please start discussing practical solutions?"

"Yes, we can," Kylo said. "It's called kidnapping, and it's a very reliable method of landing a date once the girl stops doing silly things like shooting at you."

"Isn't it a bad sign if she's shooting at you?" one of the two remaining officers said to his companion. The latter didn't get a chance to reply before they both took their final journey over the railing. Hux took a long, horrified look at the empty seats before him before turning to Kylo, fuming as usual.

"Would you stop doing that?!" he shrieked. "This is the fifth set of commanding officers we've gone through this month!"

"It was mercy killing," Kylo replied. "Now they don't have to listen to your shrill voice at work every day. Their ear drums are finally free."

It was moments like these when Hux wasn't sure whether to sob or scream. The result of this conflict was a cry of exasperation that sounded like a demonic porg. The sound echoed throughout the Finalizer.

After a good five minutes of therapeutic hyperventilating, Hux sat down and resolved to approach this matter like he usually did most unideal situations in the First Order – with bitter resignation.

"We're going to need to change our angle," he muttered.

"I thought about that," Kylo said. "But I still think that kidnapping is the most promising solution until she realizes out that it's best for us to rule the galaxy together. Women are weird that way…"

"I'm not talking about your love life!" Hux said. "I'm talking about our advertising campaign. We need to see what we've been doing wrong." He stalked over to the projector in the corner of the room and typed something into its console. "Last night, I compiled a collection of our previous commercials for reevaluation."

The projector now displayed the LightTube website.

"How did we get 12 billion dislikes?" Kylo gasped.

"Apparently a whole bunch of haters from the Hosnian system disliked all of our videos when they saw the ominous red beam approaching their planets," Hux replied.

"Stupid internet trolls," Kylo muttered. "Play the video."

"It's buffering," Hux grumbled.

No sooner had the video loaded than an advertisement began to play. The grinning face of Poe Dameron appeared on the screen.

"SKIP IT!" Kylo ordered.

"It won't let me," Hux said.

"Hi, I'm Poe Dameron," the Resistance pilot introduced himself. "On the behalf of the rest of the Resistance, I'd like to thank all of our supporters for their generous donations."

The camera zoomed out to show Poe standing on Ahch-To, surrounded by a flock of porgs. The birds turned to the camera, their enormous eyes twinkling in the sunlight. There was something mesmerizing about those eyes. Even the Supreme Leader's two right-hand men had to look away.

"In the previous month alone, our Adopt a Porg program raised over 24.5 billion credits," Poe proudly announced. "That's more than double the number of dislikes on a typical First Order video announcement, which believe me is a lot."

The pilot winked at the camera. Kylo gripped his lightsaber. If he had to see that kriffing pilot wink one more time, he was going to take down both the projector and the rest of the meeting room.

"Rest assured that your money will go to a good cause," Poe continued. The commercial switched to a nest of porg chicks. "Thanks to you, the Resistance will soon organize a fleet to protect Ahch-To, the only planet on which porgs can thrive, against the destructive, animal-hating First Order."

The scene cut to a line of AT-ACTs trampling a coral reef on Scarif.

"That footage is from the days of the Empire," Hux said. "They're not even bothering to be factually accurate."

"The remaining funds will go to ensuring the safety and wellbeing of the brave rebels dedicated to protecting our galaxy." A line of X-wing pilots waved at the camera. The ubiquitous BB-unit rolled across the screen and beeped in support. "Our humble beginnings allow us to appreciate the value of your hard-earned credits. Unlike our elite and conceited foe…"

The scene blurred to a video of General Hux spreading a thick black paste from an expensive-looking bottle onto a sandwich, subtitled with the words "Armitage Hux – First Order General and Spoiled Gourmet with Expensive thought Disgusting Taste."

"We do not operate on the principle of unearned privilege. Help the fight for equality and justice. Join or donate to the Resistance now."

The ad concluded with the Resistance logo.

"Pause the video," Kylo said. He turned to Hux and saw that there were beads of sweat dripping from the general's brow. "Was that Rayshonian marmite?"

"Yes," Hux hesitated. "But I don't see why it should be any cause for criticism. It's only a few credits a bottle, all of which I pay with my own salary. It adds a nice flavor to the bread…"

"Look at what you've done!" Kylo roared. "You've singlehandedly disgusted everyone with your eating habits while painting the First Order as a bunch of snobs!"

"Well, what about you and your inexorable avocado toast and protein bar addiction," Hux retorted. "And for your information, Rayshonian marmite has been exceedingly hard to find ever since we destroyed the planet of Raysho along with the rest of the Hosnian system, but I was willing to sacrifice my favorite condiments for the greater glory of the First Order!"

"You can't argue with avocado toast, general," Kylo said, drawing his lightsaber. Hux eyed the weapon and decided that defending his personal dislike for avocado toast was not worth his life.

"Shall we resume the video then?" the general asked. Ren nodded.

The First Order commercial began with a slow, dismal series of piano chords. The camera zoomed in on Kylo Ren, sitting on a bench. Neither Kylo nor Hux could remember which planet they'd shot the video on. Whichever planet it was seemed to have very little sunlight and an abundance of storm clouds.

"Before I joined the First Order," Kylo narrated. "I felt isolated and hopeless. It was as if my life had metamorphosed into an endless trek of misery on which I was the only desolate traveler. I think the only thing that kept me going was the innate fear of the unexplored void of death, which is something I'm sure a lot of us ponder about when we're bored."

A close-up shot of Kylo's face revealed a single tear rolling down his cheek.

"My father used to tell me that sometimes life doesn't go smoothly," the narration resumed. "Like the time he accidentally ended up getting frozen and woke up blind when my mom defrosted him, which led to him inadvertently shooting a man into a Sarlacc Pit. That man was actually the person responsible for my father getting frozen in the first place. I think that what my father was trying to tell me was that sometimes your enemies get the easy way out of a monotonous existence by falling into a Sarlaac Pit where they sit being digested for millennia, laughing at your emotional agony."

A disclaimer at the bottom of the screen, the font-size for which was oddly large for a disclaimer, read: "Kylo ran a lightsaber through his father recently. He would like to assure you that although the Resistance tried to make this incident look like murder, it actually wasn't because Kylo never hated his father, and you have to at least kind of hate someone to murder them in a technical sense."

A TIE Fighter flew across the sky. The camera followed its graceful movements in the air. However, this sequence quickly concluded when the TIE Fighter was blown to bits by an X-Wing. Kylo gazed up at it from his bench and sighed heavily.

"I feel like that TIE Fighter is a metaphor for my childhood memories," he said. "At first, they seem beautiful and innocent, but then I remember how all my early dreams blew up in my face as time progressed. I think the X-Wing is probably a metaphor for my Uncle Luke. He used to fly an X-Wing, so I guess that's kind of like a metonymy too. In fact, the entire First Order could be used as a metaphor for my childhood when you view it from that angle. Always blowing up just when you need it most.

"Speaking of the First Order, I joined that thing recently. It hasn't really cured my endless misery, but I can say with certainty that I am not miserable and alone anymore. There are plenty of miserable people here for me to talk to, though I don't really do that because I'm not into socializing, but you know what they say, 'Misery loves company'… if you're into company, which I'm not, as I said before."

The First Order logo appeared on the screen with the words, "Join the First Order – Misery Loves Company" below it. The video cut to General Hux, seated at his desk, his face covered in claw marks.

"I'M GENERAL HUX AND I APPROVE THIS MESSAGE!" he barked at the camera.

The video took an abrupt downward turn as the camera fell to the ground. The new angle provided an excellent view of Hux's shoes. It seemed that the general had decided to wear heels that day.

"What are you doing, you imbecile?!" the general's voice screeched off-screen.

"I'm sorry, sir," said the camera man. "I dropped it when you screamed at me. I got startled."

An orange tabby sauntered into view. The cat gave the camera a few inquisitive bats before picking it up in its mouth and carrying it away.

"No, Millie!" Hux cried in the background before the video went black.

"Please tell me we didn't actually air this," the live Hux said.

"It was okay until you and your cat ruined it," Kylo replied.

"You were the one who brought the audience into a state of despair with your whole Woe-Is-Me Manifesto!" Hux shouted. "And don't you dare blame my cat. Millie is a furry ginger angel!"

"You're all so cold and unsympathetic," Kylo said. "No wonder you scare all the potential recruits away."

"And what was the music at the beginning?" Hux moaned. "It sounded like a funeral march!"

"I forget the name of the composer. I think the piece was called the 'Call of Desolation'. I chose it because it was my alarm clock for a while."

"Oh, for the love of…"

Another video had begun to play on the projector. There was another ad, and of course, it just had to be a Resistance ad starring Poe Dameron.

"I bet he thinks he's so wonderful," Hux said, glowering at the pilot. "Look at that tangible cockiness! He probably expects the whole galaxy to fall to his knees just because he has a handsome smile and perfectly-toned muscles from all of that flight training."

The general's commentary received a very confused look from Kylo.

"Are you curious about what the First Order is hiding from you?" Poe asked. "Well, wonder no more with the Resistance website's newest feature: KyloKam."

"KyloKam?!" Kylo exclaimed.

"They don't even know how to spell 'camera' correctly," Hux sniffed.

"KyloKam allows you to monitor Kylo Ren and other leaders of the First Order live 24/7!" Poe said. "Simply visit the Resistance website and navigate to the KyloKam tab. It's an easy way to see everything the enemy has to hide."

The commercial included sample KyloKam footage of Kylo holding a cell phone to his ear, before smashing the device on the ground and yelling, "Why does the kriffing service on Jakku have to suck so much?!"

A disclaimer at the bottom of the screen read, "Warning: KyloKam not suitable for younglings under the age of 13."

"Now, that's quality intelligence, isn't it, BB-8?" Poe said.

The droid rolled onto the screen, adorned with shades that looked like they came out of a low-budget spy movie. The pilot laughed and winked at the camera.

"That's it!" Kylo said, swiping the projector off of its stand with his lightsaber. "They will pay for this! I will make them…"

"Hold on," Hux said.

"What? I was in the middle of a proclamation of vengeance!" Kylo complained.

"The staircase in the video from KyloKam," Hux said at length. "That's the same staircase you so rudely pushed me down the other day. That means we know roughly where the camera is, so we should be able to find it and destroy it."

"I'll handle this," Kylo said, storming out of the room. The general hurried after him. Neither of them were too fond of working together, but the secret camera was a pretty convincing common enemy.