"Did you just grab two?" Ad'ra asked Vau as she crossed paths with him.

"Yeah. I'm a lot to fuel. There's plenty. Get two if you want."

"No… I mean… you didn't even look at which ones…"

She was cute. Tried to be tough. Shab. She was tough. She was a wanted criminal and wasn't even old enough to have gone to her first dance yet where he was from.

Of course, the wanted poster they'd recreated and posted everywhere was scant on details… miniature Mandalorian in dark suit, possibly armed with sword of some type, possibly male or female, probably human or humanoid, probably working alone, probably dangerous.

She'd gotten caught on a distant security camera—one she'd missed—smashing a couple of guards to pieces before she could get out of the building where they'd offed some regent or something.

She'd used her helmet, dragged one guy down to her level, and headbutted him so hard his skull had cracked.

Probably dangerous.

"They all taste the same. What does it matter what the label says?"

She frowned at the two in her hand. Put out that little lip.

He just raised his brows at her. Ripped off another bite. Offered the rest of the crunchy, sticky bar to her.

Extended ops meant energy rations and while the lads were being kept going on nutricubes, Cuy'val Dar were offered these as an option. Infinitely better than a stim shot or nutricube only in that they were chewable and didn't leave you with the shakes when you came down.

She leaned forward. Took a bite.

Tasted the other one he offered her.

Frowned.

"I guess you're right," she said, looking down at the ones in her hand.

"Beats the highs and lows."

"Wait!" she called before he walked away. "Which flavor were those?"

He didn't even look, just held out his palm so she could read the wrappers.

"Sergeant Vau!" she chided. "Those are the same flavor!"

He glanced down now. Chuckled. Flipped her wrist up so he could see what she had.

Snagged one out of her hand and popped the whole thing in his mouth.

Lifted his shoulder.

"Same."

"I swear to god. You can be such a dick sometimes."

It amused him to perturb the little half-sized warrior.

She was the only up-and-coming Mandalorian he'd ever known. He didn't have a family and had come late to the party.

"Don't get shot today," he told her as he walked away.

"Didn't you hear?" she shouted after him. "I'm probably dangerous."

"Yeah?" he turned to tease her. "Then I'm probably shaking in my boots."

It made him laugh as he shoved the other two-bite bar in his mouth and tugged his helmet back on. The kid needed a keeper. Fett kept catching her in shiny armor sitting in on lessons and training and sims. She was going to get hurt. Or worse.

.

.

Worse happened.

Cadre meeting ran long. Tempers got high.

"Any other business?" Fett asked wearily.

"One point of interest," Ad'ra Adenn said.

"I told you no," Fett warned her.

"I can't issue the challenge now," she told their boss. Cut her eyes at him, anger flashing. She was nearly gnashing her teeth. "I'm only going to say this…"

They watched her shift, watched her partially rise, tipping her head at the opposite end of the table as if she would capitulate to some unseen conqueror.

"I am Ad'ra Rottske and my father was Liam Rottske, the adenn, and merciless. And, when this is over, I will hunt you down and I will kill you in the most painful way I can devise. When I'm tired, when I feel overwhelmed, when my uncertainty threatens… this is the lullaby that I will use to sing myself to sleep, this is the assurance that I will comfort myself with. I will find you. I will make you suffer. And I will end you. My vode are no longer under your command. They will not acknowledge your orders or so much as recognize that you even exist. Dar'manda."

She spat to the side. Took up her helmet, and exited.

Fett leaned back in his chair, pursed his lips together, and let out a long-suffering sigh.

He rolled his head on his neck, addressing the Cuy'val Dar sitting next to him.

"A man really shouldn't have to raise his own adenn, should he? So much angst. So much drama."

Skip didn't meet him there. He shuffled the stack of flimsi he'd been handling throughout the meeting.

"I believe I'd be proud to claim that one," the older man said simply as he gathered his things to leave.

Rav Braylor put out her fist. Banged it twice on the table.

"One hell of an adenn, and true to her name."

"She is an upstart and I'll be putting her in her place," Castella hissed.

"You'll do no such thing," Fett told the woman.

"What's to stop me? You?"

He flicked his wrist and landed his throwing knife in the space where two plates came together. Not enough to make her lose the arm, but enough to smart.

"I'll give you leave to work out your differences when it is my inclination to do so. In the meantime, she's removed the ASRC company from your instruction. I'll adjust your templates accordingly. Heed me, Reau. If there's a hair on her head harmed I'll be coming for you and you'll wish I'd let her act out her vengeance."

The woman bared her teeth but subsided, her gloved hand wrapped around the blade in her arm.

"You may return my kal at your convenience. Make sure it's clean."

Fett got up and started to leave. Hunted down Ad'ra to give her a set-down of his own.

When Walon Vau rounded the corner he had her on her knees, his hand wrapped around her hair, her head bent forward and his larger beskad at the side of her throat—angled down so that if he pressed he would open the vein protected by the steel collar she wore.

"Say it, Ad'ra," Fett demanded.

"Mercy," she finally hissed out, the word twisting in an ugly way as it left her grimacing lips.

Fett released her, throwing her away from him so she had to catch herself. Stalked away.

Walon's glance flickered over her.

"I'll take care of it," he said softly as he reached out his arm to offer her a hand up.

She clasped his gauntlet and let him jerk her roughly to her feet. The look in her eyes was brutal.

"I'll avenge my own wrongs."

"Gilamar claimed Priest."

"He can have him."

Walon nodded. Let it go. Continued down the hall in the opposite direction. He caught her in his periphery, though, as he turned to open the doors that would lead to his intended destination.

The girl was there where the woman had stood just seconds before. He read it in the slope of the shoulders and the way she reached up to touch the back of her head, wincing when she felt the tender spot. He'd have had a hard time walking away from her if he'd seen the expression on her face when she regarded the tiny spots of blood on her fingertips where her scalp had been ripped open by the reprimand's roughness.

.

.o0o.

.

It was weeks before Vau himself had cause to hunt her down.

And it wasn't to offer a hand up.

Instead his cupped hand shot out and caught her on the side of the head.

"Have you lost your kriffing mind? What game are you playing with your Rangers now?"

Her vision was still reeling from the blow and she thought about throwing up on him. Couldn't frame an answer.

"Shove off, Sergeant," she ordered instead.

"Of all the shabbla idiotic things you've come up with, this is by far the worst idea-"

"I don't even know what you're pissed about. So stuff it. You have your own tasks, I'm sure. And certainly aren't taking the prize for instructor-of-the-year."

He had a couple guys in bacta tanks. Had been the one to put them there.

"Mine will be men, at least. What do you aim to prove with this?"

"That mine are men, too. Individual men, who will be tasked with individual assignments. Go back to your squads and teach them some cheer or chant, Sergeant."

He reached for her again. He had taught them a tempo with one of the Mandalorian tenants. Taught them to punch to it. To march to it. To sing it back to his shouts.

"All armies learn cadences, which you'd know if you were old enough to have actually served in one."

"Again, I'm training the group I'm training for exactly that reason—I've never had anyone to rely on and neither will they. I'm teaching them just exactly the way they should be raised to do this job. It's a solo life, Sergeant. There won't be a return to a pod with comrades. No one to pat their shoulder when they come in from it. We do a different job and there's no one to help us with it."

"You had your father," he told her. Grimaced and ground his teeth together. "He'd be shamed of you, taking their humanity from them. There is no dignity in this."

He spat to the side this time.

Turned on his heel and started away from her.

"You think I'm shameful?!" she shouted after him. "You think you know how to impart dignity on a warrior sect? Dha ori'suumyc gug! The vode are so afraid of you that there's a measurable difference in their heartrates when you stomp down those halls! How are you inspiring yours to be full-men with those kinds of mean scare tactics!?"

"You're an upstart and criminally incompetent."

"Fuck you," she murmured to herself as he stalked away to take up his customary seat at the end of the table.

She fought her bottom lip into a straight line. Swore she wasn't going to cry.

Who the hell was he to say what would or would not have shamed her father?

She left her helmet on until the beginning of the meeting, though. Between one thing and another she wasn't up to taking it off just yet.

It turned into a pissing contest. It always seemed to.

"A common enemy is more important than a common goal," she heard Jaig say quietly to H.G. when Jango went down to look at something Priest brandished at Cort Devin.

"I'm tired of both," Ad'ra admitted, looking the man she called ba'buir straight in the face.

He nodded. "No kidding, little Ad'ika. You sure know how to make 'em."

"Good thing you're resilient," the hand-to-hand instructor said. "I thought you were a goner when you went over that rail."

"Over the rail?"

"Yeah. Tough little thing, though, just climbed back up and started over."

Jaig shook his head. "You don't have to do everything they're ordered to."

"Yes, I do."

"No, cyar'ika. They're optimized. I'm pretty sure their pain sensors were removed," Wad'e suggested.

"Then you're dead wrong. Their ability to get up and keep going is practice and training and fear."

"Resilience," Hashery Ghett nodded approvingly. "Mandokarla. Just like you, verd'ika"

"I'm tired of being resilient," she told him.

Shab, she looked it. Big bruise blooming up the side of her head—over her whole cheek and toward her ear, up past her temple. Circles under her eyes. Pale, yes, but wan with it like she wasn't normally.

"Who banged you up?"

"It doesn't matter."

"She gave as good as she got," H.G. nodded approvingly. "When they got EMP'd she shucked her helmet and used the DC as bludgeons. She and two of her lads ended up taking down twice as many in the time given. Hit all the kill zones."

"No quarter?"

"No quarter."

That caught Dred Priest's attention from down the table.

"Are we teaching them not to take prisoners, then?" he asked. Both his fist raised in triumph. "Wayii!"

"Not quite what we were discussing," Jaig countered.

The conversation moved, flowed, and took its tangents. Ad'ra let herself kind of drift on the currents of the voices. Deep, all of them. Not upset with each other for once. Just a bass rumble of opinions and experiences. Suggestions and policy—always an ever-developing policy to notate and codify. The cohesion didn't last long…

"It's just basic fight or flight," Cort Davin argued.

Dred shrugged. "There's more to it than that, but okay. I still want mine standing up, not retreating the field. There's one option in my company. Fight your way free or die trying. Fuck the 2Fs."

"It's actually 4-Fs," Vau intoned. He was lazed back in his chair, so obviously just attending this meeting because he was supposed to. Mird curled beneath his chair and he was scrolling lazily through his datapad. "There are four F's of stress reaction. Fight or flight are just two of the options."

They turned to him.

He lifted his brows. Extended his hand to count them off.

"Fight, flight, freeze, or fawn."

"Or flop," Ad'ra added.

He looked at her. She shrugged.

"Everything written in the last twenty years adds flop. There are five Fs now. Fight or flight, freeze, fawn, or flop."

"Wouldn't flop be covered under freeze or fawn?" H.G. asked, leaning forward.

Jaig chuckled. "It's when you end up dead—your reaction was a flop."

She made a face at him and he clapped her on the knee.

Walon Vau was already looking it up.

"Hmph."

"Find it?" she challenged.

"Yeah. H.G.'s not wrong. It could be considered either of them. It's when you just go through the motions of complying because your brain shuts off and you can't think to do either of the others. So fawning."

Ad'ra shook her head. "Fawning is a conscious act. Imma do this, I'm still thinking and Imma do this and do it in a way that makes you like me. Still seeking to save your shebs in the end, but maybe buying time or lulling them a little."

"I'd think fawning would be hiding in cover," Fett argued. Frowned as he read what he'd pulled up as well. "So why isn't this flop thing filed under freeze?"

"Because freeze is just that—frozen. No reaction."

"Probably dead," Jaig said again.

They all nodded.

"Fair enough. Probably dead."

'Flop,' the man mouthed across the table to his friend, his hand flipping upside down on his lap.

"None of which is what we're hoping to inculcate into the commando units," Narosh brought the argument full-circle.

"I can see the benefit of educating them about the Fawn thing, though," Fett said. "Many an escape—and with some good intel—has been enacted through a show of subservience and a little bit of faking."

"Be more useful if we were training women. Hard to make a commando who outweighs all of us look and act sweet and beguiling. Limit it to fight or flight, Fett. They're kids. Leave it at fight or flight for now."

"Why is it more useful for women than men to make friends with a capturing force?" Ad'ra whispered to Jaig when Fett moved down to look at something else Dred had pulled up.

He smiled at her. "Women are seen as weaker. You can use that to your advantage. Make an enemy think you're beaten, compliant. Even, if you have to, use your body in amenable passivity. Give him what he wants for now so that you can lull him into complacency, gain a better position to make an escape or get what you need from him."

"No."

They looked across the table.

"Do not teach her that," Vau threatened.

Ad'ra gulped at the intensity in his voice. He bent toward them.

"You fight, Ad'ra. You don't let yourself be taken. Do you understand me?"

She nodded. "I won't be weak."

He shuddered. Glared at Jaig. "Do not teach her that consenting to a captor will keep her alive. I'd rather see her dead."

Fett glanced over.

"What's going on?"

Jaig answered. "Discussing ways of applying the fawning technique. Ad'ra-"

"Ad'ra's got it pretty well down pat. Keep that fekking strill out of my quarters. Big-eyes won't save it if I smell it again."

Vau shifted. Gritted his teeth.

"The Chief's suggestion was that Ad'ra consider using her body as a way of placating a captor. Offering the charms of her appeal as a woman."

Fett straightened up so fast his plates grated.

Jaig held up his hands. "I simply said, if she found herself in the situation, that there was no shame in it. In using what tools are most advantageous to her, then finding a way out. Or getting word to us."

Fett's nostrils flared.

"And Walon, I'm sure, had suggestions for that use?"

"Just the opposite," Vau ground out. "I gave her the same advice I'll continue to give my boys. Fight. Then get out if you can. Then fight until they have to kill you."

The little girl shivered under Fett's stare.

"You're frightening her," H.G. said softly.

She shook her head. Swallowed. "No. I… I just…"

"I track you 24/7," Fett told her in a tight voice. "You're never going to be in a position to have to make that choice. Do you hear me? I'll get you out."

"You're not impervious yourself, boss," Narosh said.

"Wouldn't hurt for her to have a ba'slan shev'la for if you go down first," Tiethe' agreed.

Fett just looked down at him. "You two are excused."

Tiethe' had had just about enough of the strategy and codification meeting anyway and slammed out. Fett seethed. He waited, watched in silence, until the Corellian man took the hint and gathered his things, too.

"Dred?"

"You want my opinion or you want me to make myself scarce?"

"Give me the first and then the second."

He rose. Tilted his head. "Tough call. Asking a woman to whore herself for the job? That sucks. More honor in a warrior dying on the field. And, unfortunately, if your adenn is in a position where she'd be taken by a conquering force, osik is deeper than you want to think about. Either she's on her own on an op or we're all dead on a battlefield around her. Just food for thought."

He tugged at the ponytail draped down her back. She couldn't be more than twelve or thirteen.

Tough call.

Pretty girl, though.

"Honestly. If you can take it mentally, you've got the looks to make it work. To wait it out until he could get there or until you can get to a comm, muster help. Get out on your own or take out whoever's holding you. It's not a terrible option. None of us would judge you."

She looked over at Sgt. Vau.

"But you'd look at me differently afterward, wouldn't you? There'd always be pity. Remembering what I'd had to do to survive. And if you saw me in a state of weakness, it would color how you responded to my next summons. Influence the way you interpret my next orders. Wouldn't it?"

He nodded, his lips pressed together and his face ashen.

"When you've pulled a woman out of captivity… there's nothing like the things it makes a man feel," he admitted.

Priest agreed. "Yeah. You'd never just be the warrior-princess again. And, yes, there's an element of liability there. That whoever knew you'd been taken and brutalized once wouldn't be able to get past it—not from a command standpoint and certainly not from a protective standpoint."

"So?" Jaig asked. "You'd want her to do what? Blow herself away rather than get taken?"

"Wouldn't be the first time. There's more than one operative out there with a capsule tucked in their cheeks. More than one man who's got a clip tucked back so that his family doesn't go the hard way."

"There are enemies I wouldn't let myself get taken by," Wad'e admitted. He worked his jaw. "I think we'd all agree that if we couldn't get to her it would be kinder to-"

Fett shook his head. "That's enough. Ad'ra. We'll talk about this later."

The others shifted.

He leaned toward them.

"Ad'ra Adenn and I will discuss this later. The rest of you keep your mouths shut about the subject. She's thirteen years old and we have enough here to keep you busy without your philosophizing about the merits of where and when and how."

He got respectful nods from most of them.

"Fek. Hutuunes. Cripes. This is on you, Walon."

"Me!?"

"Your fekking four or five Fs."

Ad'ra reached for his hand. Stared up at him with big eyes.

"I won't get caught, Jango," she promised. "I won't die like Da and leave you, too. I'm not afraid of dying, but I won't-"

He crushed her to him, their plates clattering together as he pulled her into the hug.

"Get out," he grumbled at the other men, his face hard. "And keep your fekking mouths shut."

Jaig slapped his hand on the man's shoulder—probably the only man with the guts to offer him comfort. He bent to kiss the top of the head that she'd streaked in berry pink and ice blue. The colors of her father's livery. Poor little angel.

He shook his head at the two men waiting in the hallway outside.

Walon Vau still looked livid.

"Do not advise her to-"

"Shut the hell up, Walon."

H.G. lifted his brows at the vehemence in the words.

"I will not. She's a little girl and you're proposing she make a hodar ba'slan shev'la to act as veriduur to a capturing army! And if they realize what they've got in her? Realize that she's an important pawn to the Mand'Alor!?"

"Then he should rally the rest of us to get her out, Walon. I'm not telling her to fight to the death. Or to end it herself if it looks bad. I could give a fek if it makes her an ineffective combat leader later on. She needs to be told that sometimes surrender is the only way to get back on your feet."

He shook his head at the older man.

"No, she doesn't."

"You don't get a say in it. You're not her father or-"

"She doesn't have a father!" he roared. "She's got a circle of old men who think she's the cutest thing to ever strap on armor and an IQ that races ahead of anything we can keep up with—coupled with a fekking mouth she doesn't know when to shut. She absorbs every single thing she hears, so you're going to have to learn to watch your fekking mouth when she's around! She's loyal to Fett and he to her, but what happens when one or the other of them goes down? When he takes her out on an op and none of us even know he's gone, don't know that he's taken his second as well, and neither of them comes back!? Who's next in line here?" His hand flung down before flinging out wide. "Out there? What's going on out there and who decides when it's time for somebody else to step into those roles?"

H.G. sucked in a deep breath.

"I understand your concerns there. And I know that you guys were part of the strike force that cracked Falcon Manor. I don't pretend to know what you saw there. Can't imagine what truly happened. I see where that would color your opinion."

"Women don't belong in the fekking army," he hissed. Turned around and stalked down the hall. "Least of all half-grown imps just cruising for an opportunity to make their name known. We'll all die defending her if we end up serving under her."

"Would you die for him, then?" Jaig called softly. The other man's footsteps faltered. "Walon? Would you die to keep your Mand'alor?"

"I've taken that hit. Would you?"

"For either of them. Without regret," Jaig assured him.

He half-turned. Just stared back at them. Put his helmet on and continued down the hall.

.

Fight or flight, then.

His men wouldn't be stuck making that choice. He'd make sure their bodies reacted without thought.