Author's Note: This chapter references characters from Karen Traviss' RepCom series. No copyright infringement intended.

The Fluffy Conspiracy

Ranklinge, Shelsha sector, Colonies Regions

"No." Ro crossed her arms over her skinny chest, doing her best to act as a road block to the entire Patroller contingent - and failing miserably. "You're not doing this."

"Padawan-" The Patroller in charge trailed off. He didn't quite seem to know how to address Ro past her formal title. Not surprising, really. An older man, somewhere in his mid-fifties, he must have felt ridiculous trying to justify himself to a pint-sized nineteen-year-old dressed as a ring girl in the requisite metal bikini and see-through skirt. The hair didn't help matters. For this particular undercover assignment, Ro had dyed her platinum blond hair a garish rainbow array of pinks, blues, greens and one extravagant shade of magenta that could have stopped traffic.

For his part, Wren was just as happy that his disguise had warranted nothing more outlandish than a set of fangs stitched to his gloves and bracers - customary wear for creature tamers. Though he could have done without the leather pants. Fardling things chafed like his first set of armor.

The Patroller cleared his throat, glanced at Wren, then tried again. "Padawan, there are rules-"

"Mynock muffins!" If she puffed herself up anymore, Ro was gonna pop right out of that metal bikini and give half the Patroller force an aneurysm. Wren quickly bit back a laugh.

"Enough of those around," someone muttered. Wren reluctantly diverted his attention from the confrontation towards the speaker and saw three Patrollers trying to maneuver a gravsled loaded down with a caged nexu out of the rundown warehouse. The nexu paced restlessly in the cage, snarling and leaping at the bars, and consequently unbalancing the cheap gravsled. One of the trio of Patrollers had the unenviable task of keeping the cage from tipping off the gravsled without getting mauled by the hysterical animal, while the other two did their best to push at double-time.

Wren wrinkled his nose at the stench wafting from the cage and hastily stepped out of the Patrollers' way. Giddo hadn't exactly run a clean operation. All the animals the Rodian had smuggled were half-starved creatures, mad with confinement and rampant with diarrhea. Clearly Giddo's clients hadn't been overly concerned with the state of the animals they'd ordered. All they'd been looking for was cheap meat for the fighting pits.

The nexu turned on its tail-tip and tried to rip off the head of the Patroller closest to the cage, claws raising sparks off of the durasteel bars. The movement pushed the creature's ribs against its filthy coat. For all its ferocity, the nexu was little more than bones and scarred hide.

"...downright cruel!"

Ro and the Patroller chief were now nose-to-nose, though judging by the older man's expression, that was entirely Ro's doing. The Jedi was nearly as scarlet in the face as one of the streaks in her hair. In stark contrast, the Patroller chief was growing paler by the second as he tried to hold his ground while confronted with a Force-empath on a tear.

"Of all the barbaric, clabber-clawed, vile standing tucks! You're no stellar-prime better than those eel-skinned, stockfished loathers." This was said with a contemptuous toss of rainbow-colored hair in the general direction of Giddo, his cronies and customers, all cuffed and awaiting their trip to Patroller HQ in the cruisers.

"Padawan Arhen." The Patroller chief lifted his hands, made as if to put them comfortingly on Ro's shoulders, then seemed to think better of it. "The law is very clear on the matter. Dangerous animals - especially illegally imported dangerous animals - are to be put down. It's a matter of public security."

"Public secur-" Ro sputtered, then suddenly whipped around, snatching something up from a passing Patroller's arms. "Does this look like a threat to you?"

The man flinched back. Wren couldn't blame him. The stench coming off of the creature was foul. Grey and squirming, the thing had obviously shat itself and been left to sit in the mess for who-kriffing-knew how long. Wren couldn't even identify the animal's species from where he was standing, several steps away from the brewing argument. Whatever it was, it was small enough, he guessed, to fit comfortably into his cupped hands and looked oddly shapeless, as if its skin was sloughing off its bones.

The animal wriggled in Ro's grip, then suddenly hung limp, panting heavily. Two bloodshot, golden eyes peered out of the loose, dirty-grey skin, first at the Patroller chief, then at Ro. It whined, a high-pitched, feeble and pathetic sound.

Despite the grime, despite the fact that she was showing more skin than sense, Ro cuddled the little animal to her chest, crooning in-between shooting death-glares at the Patroller chief.

"It's just a baby," she declared. "Look at it. It probably isn't even weaned yet. How is it a danger to anyone?"

"Padawan...Ma'am..." The Patroller glanced at Wren again, no doubt hoping for some support. Wren met his eyes impassively and began stripping off his gloves. It was far too crinking hot out here. The warehouse had been fraggin' stifling, not to mention saturated with the stench of animals kept in close confinement and under unsanitary conditions. The stink of shit and slobber and blood had worked itself into his clothes and skin and was giving him a fekking headache. All he wanted was to get back to the vaping ship, strip and hit the kriffing showers until the steam cleansed his nostrils of the zoo smell.

"Just give him the fekking beast, Commander." It was always difficult to take her seriously as a Jedi officer - particularly for him - but in that getup, the sarcasm was practically a requisite.

Ro turned on him, a cheerful smile splitting her face from ear to ear. "Cookie, wise sentient once palavered that if you can't say something nice, you should blow it out your diddybag." And she promptly stuck her tongue out at him.

The Patroller chief coughed, perhaps in consternation at the childish display or maybe in an effort to hide a chuckle. Either way, Wren felt his temper flare at Ro's off-handed dismissal of him.

"Listen, cheeka, don't you fekking dare-"

"You know, Cookie, I've just about had bucket-loads of your-hey!"

The Patroller chief had capitalized on her momentary distraction to pluck the little animal out of Ro's arms. The man held the creature gingerly by the scruff of its neck, an arm's length away to keep the filth from rubbing off on his uniform.

"As I've said, Padawan, the law is clear. These animals will be destroyed."

Ro made a lunge for the little creature, but the Patroller chief quickly snatched it out of range. The thing began to whimper and squirm again in the Patroller's grip.

"That's barbaric," Ro spat.

"Quite the contrary." The Patroller chief remained firm. "The process is very humane. Certainly humaner than anything these," he gestured at the growing line of cages and their frantic occupants, "savaged creatures have ever experienced." Then his face softened incrementally. "It is a kindness, Padawan. These animals have been brutalized and trained to kill. They cannot function anymore in their natural environment and they're as like to attack the hand that feeds them as the one that beats them. Even this..." He peered uncertainly at the grey bundle of skin dangling from his hand, "...little fellow? Gantry!" He jerked his head at one of the Patroller's walking the row of cages, then, with another careful look at the animal, muttered, "What is this thing anyway?"

Gantry came racing towards his chief, panting and clutching a datapad to his chest. He nearly bowled right into Wren.

Wren stepped back just in time to avoid a collision, sneered at the young Patroller and promptly stuck his foot out. The man yelped, stumbled, and only Ro's hasty intervention kept him from falling on his face.

Ro threw Wren an exasperated glance, which he answered with a smirk. She rolled her eyes and retrieved the datapad Gantry had dropped in his near-fall.

The man's stuttered thanks were interrupted by his superior, who thrust the little animal at his Patroller.

"Gantry, what the fardling blue blazes is this thing?"

Whatever it was, it'd obviously had enough of being shoved around like a hot topato. The whimpers suddenly turned a pitch darker, a strange sound caught somewhere between a growl and a hiss. Where before it had hung curled up in the Patroller chief's grip, now it unfurled to swipe at the hapless Gantry, revealing six legs and a ridiculously long, whip-like tail.

All the hairs on Wren's arms rose and he took an involuntary step back. No. Fek, no. It couldn't be...

Gantry hastily ducked the animal's clumsy swipe, pushing a pair of specs up his nose. He looked a little pale, maybe from getting a face full of animal reek, but sure of himself as well. "Sir, that's a..."

Wren finished for him in a hiss, not unlike the sound the little animal made. "...a fekking strill."

Kamino, seven years ago...

"This," Walon Vau said, "is a strill."

Lord Mirdalan leaned forward slightly on its haunches, skeins of drool falling onto the floor as it bared its teeth at Wrench and made a noise deep in its throat, something between a growl and a hiss.

The ARC cadet's skin prickled, his short-cropped hair standing on end. His body wanted to crouch, to make itself as small a target as possible, like when he heard the sounds of incoming fire. Instead, Wrench grit his teeth, balled his hands into fists and stood his ground, forcing himself to stare first into the strill's golden eyes, then the dark, T-shaped visor of Walon Vau.

Wrench tilted his head back, trying to make a virtue out of necessity by putting as much arrogance and casualness into the gesture as he possibly could. He would. Not. Be. Cowed. "I know that," he drawled.

The fist flew at him too fast to see.

Wrench was thrown back, head cracking hard against the floor; flares of light exploded clear across his vision and blood filled his mouth.

He was still trying to get his wind back, when he was grabbed by the front of his fatigues and hauled unceremoniously onto his feet. Wrench gasped as his world tilted dangerously on its axis, the blood welling in his mouth suddenly sliding back down, into his windpipe. His first gulping lungful of air turned into a cough, then a helpless spluttering.

"You'll talk when given permission, soldier," Vau growled. "And then, the only words I want to hear out of your shabla mouth are, 'yes, sir,' and 'no, sir.' Am I understood?"

Wrench glared at the Mandalorian, then smiled - a ghastly affair showing off his bloody teeth and twisted into a mad smirk by the angry red line running from the right corner of his mouth up into his cheek. He spat a bloody glob right onto Walon Vau's black boots.

"Yes, sir."

Vau didn't strike him again. He didn't shout, or curse, or order Wren to drop and give him a hundred-twenty. In fact, when the Mandalorian did finally speak, his voice was eerily calm and inflectionless, like the white walls of Tipoca, closing in on Wrench every day.

"Fett was right about you. You need to be broken, you little chakaar. It's past time you learned your place - at the end of the food chain." He snapped his gloved fingers and the strill sprang forward.

Wrench had just enough time to bring his arm up to shield his face before razor-sharp fangs tore into his flesh.

"But they didn't do anything!" Ro shouted in frustration. She was still trying to get her hands back on the strill pup; still trying to shout down the Patroller chief and stop the inevitable. By now, the latter at least was more of a token effort. Five hovertrucks had been loaded to bursting with cages, carrying everything from a swarm of panicked mynocks to an acklay missing one claw and frantically stabbing at everything and nothing with the remaining three.

The noise was unbearable.

Giddo and his crew had long since been packed off - no one had tried delaying their inevitable fate. Now the remaining Patrollers were just waiting for word from their chief before shoving off and putting the fraggin' beasties on their last ride to extinction.

Wren just wanted off this fekking rock. The headache that had been threatening was now pounding away in his temples; the sun didn't help, nor the shifting wind, which brought with it the ripe smell of animal dung from the warehouse. This entire effing planet smelled like a whole herd of bantha's backsides.

"I am quite through discussing this with you, Padawan." The Patroller chief was reaching the end of his rope as well. He'd thrust the strill pup carelessly into Gantry's arms before squaring off against Ro. His earlier hesitancy in shouting down a Jedi had completely disappeared. "In fact, there is nothing to discuss. You have done your part, now step aside so that I may do mine."

Ro's hands balled into fists at her sides. "Killing helpless animals? That's in the Patroller-how-to manual these rotations? Got all the right flimsies aligned, signature waiting?"

"Helpless?" The chief repeated, incredulous, before waving at the row of hovertrucks. "Padawan, these creatures might be many things, but 'helpless' they certainly are not. They are killing machines, bred and trained to fight. If anything, it is the general populace that is helpless against them. Should they be allowed to run free, chaos and casualties will follow. Which is why," he shouted above Ro's protests, "they must be put down. For the safety of others."

Ro ran her hands through her hair, and the sunlight caught on the streaks of color, making them flash and dazzle in the light. Wren had to look away quickly, before the garish display turned his headache into a full-blown migraine. As he did, he caught sight of Gantry.

The younger Patroller was standing slightly off to one side of the argument, close enough to be uncomfortable, but too far to really lend his superior any support. He held the strill pup awkwardly in his arms, as if what he really wanted to do was throw it as far from his nice, clean uniform as possible. For its part, the crinking strill looked ready to croak. It wasn't even struggling anymore, just lying passively in the Patroller's arms, long tongue lolling, waiting for the Humans to decide its fate.

It really was a scrawny thing. Beneath the filthy folds of loose skin, Wren could count every one of its ribs. It must be dying of thirst; it was sweltering outside and the warehouse had been like Tatooine at high noon. Giddo hadn't exactly struck him as the kind of barve to remember such niceties as watering his animals.

"Is that what the Republic has come to?" Ro demanded. "Get inconvenient for society and next tick you're looking down the sharpie end of a hypo filled to brimming with dead end?"

"I do not have to justify myself-"

"We're responsible for this!" Ro shouted. "For them!"

Something in the air snapped. It was like a downpour after days of unbearable humidity, but without the relief. The warmth that flooded Wren hit him like a slap and his hands flew to the blasters at his sides. The two Patrollers rocked back on their heels, while the cacophony from the hovertrucks ceased altogether. In the silence that followed, Ro's gulping breaths were as loud as blaster bolts.

Fek it. What the gfersh did she do?

Whatever it was, Wren had the distinct feeling Ro hadn't done it on purpose.

Though her hair hid most of her face, what was visible was contorted in consternation and alarm. Her hands flew to her temples, her face twisted in pain, then smoothed out as the Jedi began to breathe deeply and evenly.

"Alright," she said after a few moments, and it was like the sun was slowly coming out from behind the clouds again. "'Kay, gearing back into sublights."

Another shuddering breath on her part and Wren felt his guts untangle. Slowly, very slowly, sounds from the animals began filtering back in.

When Ro spoke again, she did so slowly, enunciating every word carefully. "What I meant to say, Chief, was that this is a problem society created. The laws are insufficient and the public improperly informed and it's the victims that are being punished, which really just primo gets my mesa goat."

"And what would you have me do, Padawan?" The Patroller chief's voice was tight, barely controlled. "There are no institutions, no contingency plans, in place to care for these creatures. Rehabilitation, even if it were possible, is an expensive process. Will you cover the costs? Will you take all these animals in?" He waved at the hovertrucks with their cages in an expansive gesture, nearly hitting Wren in the process.

The trooper took another careful step backwards, then swiveled his head to the side as he felt eyes on him.

It was Gantry. The younger Patroller was staring at Wren as if he'd never seen him before. Wren, his hands still on his holstered blasters, curled the scarred corner of his lips into a sneer. To his surprise, the Patroller blushed and suddenly found something very interesting to look at in the dirty folds of the strill pup's fur.

What the fek was that about?

"I'll take this one." Ro made a grab for Gantry and the pup, but the Patroller chief hastily stepped between them.

"No."

Ro stomped her foot, the heel clacking loudly against the ferrocrete. "What? It's a killer already, too? Gonna tear into the next juicy civvy with its baby teeth?"

"I don't appreciate your sarcasm, Padawan."

"I don't appreciate your attitude, Chief. Now I'm not leaving without that pup, so either hand the fluffball over or watch me grow roots."

What little patience Wren had evaporated. Snarling, Wren pushed Ro to the side, grabbed Gantry and tore the strill pup out of the Patroller's arms. The pup yipped and tried to claw at his arm, catching on his leather bracers instead. Wren shook the animal once, hard, before shoving it at Ro.

"Now wait just one blasted minute!" The Patroller chief moved on Wren, recognizing in the trooper someone he finally outranked and could order about. "You can't-"

Wren turned to stare at the man, a smirk tugging at his lips. "Oh," he drawled, "just fekking watch me."

Ro'd had a lot of surreal moments in her life, but watching the Patroller chief and his crony slink off after a k.o. tongue-lashing round, courtesy of her grumpy partner, had to rank somewhere in her top five for leastest.

She'd always known he was capable of kindness, of all around standing-up-for-the-little-masc-and-fem decency, somewhere deep, deep, deep beneath the anger and the snark. But seeing was a whole different box of sweet-sand cookies than believing.

"Wren, I-" She didn't know what to say. His sudden championing of her cause had taken her totally by surprise. She'd expected him to stand there and glower until the ferrocrete began to crack - or, far more likely, 'till his trigger-finger got the itching and he got to shooting. And somewhere, in a private little corner of her brain, she dared to wonder if he'd realized that, for her at least, the latter part of her argument with the chief had been about anything but those poor critters. If so, she was in deep crumbles. Neither sympathy nor pity did her Cookie take well.

Wren glanced at her, and for one heart-stopping moment Ro wondered if he'd read her mind. But then his gaze slipped down, past her metal bikini, to land on the strill pup nestled in her arms. The smugness he'd been radiating from getting his proverbial rocks off on the Patrollers vanished in a puff of acrid, smoky dissatisfaction as he realized what his lapse into kindness had saddled them with.

"You're not keeping that fekking thing."

She gaped at him. "What? Rewind and repeat. After all of that, you still want to give over this poor little fella? Fellarette?" She looked down quizzically at the pup. What exactly did she have in her arms, anyway?

The strill looked up at her and whined, as if saying, Don't ask me. I'm still trying to figure out how I got on this crazy ride.

Yeah, she had days like that, too.

"I don't give a flying kriff," Wren snapped back.

"Wonderful." She beamed up at him. "Then you won't mind the little fluffball staying with us. I'm so glad you changed your mind, Cookie." She hitched the pup up on one hip and strolled past her seething partner.

"Ro!"

"Don't worry," she told the pup. "His bite's worse than his bark, but once you get t'know him, he'll bite your head clean off."

There was a wash of hard incentives behind her, then the angry striking of boots against ferrocrete. Ro was glad she was wearing heels - for once, she could enjoy the full measure of Wren's displeasure without getting a crick in her neck.

"That...that kriffing thing isn't coming with us."

"Yes, it is."

"No."

"Absotively."

Wren groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger in an obvious attempt to stave off a mounting headache. Or maybe to keep his hands occupied so as not to strangle her. Ro might have been more sympathetic - the gooey crumblebuns knew she understood headaches - if this hadn't been the most fun she'd had all day.

"Fek it, cheeka, just dump the crinking beast out the airlock over Mandalore, where it can run the stang wild or get the vape eaten."

"How can you say that?" She hoisted the strill up so she could look into its blunt-snouted face, admiring the gold of its, admittedly, sunken eyes. "Look at it. It's so cute." Then she wrinkled her nose as a stiff breeze blew into her face. "Ugh. And stinky. Cute and stinky." She hugged the little animal to her chest, giving it a good squeeze until it was wriggling madly, endangering the hold of her metal bikini. "And mine."

Wren shook his head. "No."

"I think we already went over this."

"You're not keeping it, Ro."

She was nodding now, and quite vigorously, blowing the bangs out of her eyes as she did so. "Yeah, definitely already had this talk. It was a good talk. I remember it well, from, you know, five seconds ago."

"I don't want that fekking thing around me."

She whirled on him, poking him hard in the chest. "Why?"

Wren actually staggered back a step, caught off-guard. "What?"

"Why don't you want this poselutely adorable, albeit high-heavenly stinky, wee bit of grey dander-fluff around?"

His lips compressed into a tight, angry line, but his eyes shifted nervously from side-to-side. She'd cornered him; he was either going to have to lie - which he knew she'd know in a mynock minute - or actually reveal something of his past.

The response she did get was an angry snarl, which wasn't really surprising, but a let down nonetheless.

"None of your fekking business."

She gave a careless, one-sided shrug, hoping to hide her disappointment. Well, she'd tried. "Then you've got no sentient to blame but your own curmudgeonliness."

Wren stared at her. "How the frag is this," his wave took in the dusty road, harsh sun, crumbling warehouse and exhausted strill, "my effing fault?"

"You're the masc who had to swoop in and slay demanding Patroller-dragon-chiefs with your sharpie tongue of burning snark, winning over hearts and minds of impressionable - and bombad adorable - Jedi fems and small fluffy creatures. So there. We're keeping the strill, on accounting of you suddenly getting the noble, chivalrous urge and implementing return policies on previously saved and said tiny fluffy things would mar images of swooping hero troopers all-galaxy around. Oh, and Cookie?"

She tugged playfully at the buttons of his vest, while he was still preoccupied with his gaping gooberfish impression. Taking advantage, Ro bridged the remaining gap in their height and planted a swift kiss on his cheek. "By the my, have I mentioned how delish your unmentionables look in leather wrappings?"

Uhhh, if looks could kill...it would have been totally mono worth it.

Rule # 16: We save who we can.