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General Kenobi laughs, a tittering sort of sound that means danger and immediately has Steady’s hackles rising. Their General, typically, does not laugh. He certainly does not giggle.
The transports that have come to fetch them off this sithforsaken rock have finally arrived. It has been a bloody and harrowing seventy-some hours trudging through mud and sulfur-reeking pits, carefully evading Sepratist forces because they had known that they were brutally outgunned. The only victory they could hope for was a quick escape, but a storm had prevented their rescue from reaching their ever-changing position, as the Seps did not stop marching just because they were tired, and they certainly didn’t care that it was pouring rain, either.
So the General laughing—nay, giggling—right as rescue is in sight? Not a good sign.
Steady forces his way through the tight cluster of troops waiting to board, gunning for the front of the crowd where Kenobi is… hanging off of the Commander’s armored shoulders and pointing at the design on the side of the LAAT.
Lots of battalions paint their ships—lots of them paint their ships with pinups, even. So this particular artistic rendering of Senator Amidala of Naboo isn’t even that shocking. She is a fairly common muse, as far as Steady has seen. The image isn’t even particularly graphic—typical pin-up stuff, really. Her clothes are tight, her skirts flowing out behind her, a blaster clutched in her hands such that her arms are brought in close and her tits are pushed forward and up, her expression is severe and her lips are as red as the lacy item that winks out from behind the billowing fabric of her dress.
General Kenobi is staring, pointing, and giggling.
“Oh, oh, Cody, can you imagine? He’d—he’d—”
The commander deadpans, “He would cry.”
“He would—” Kenobi splutters, hysterical. “He would cry. Oh, Anakin—you’d think that given the circumstances of his early upbringing, he’d be a bit less… conservative, no? Cody, Cody, did I ever tell you how terribly Anakin hates Quinlan Vos?”
The commander makes an encouraging sound. “The Kiffar Jedi? With the arms?”
“With the arms, Cody! Yes! The arms! Yes, well—” “Sirs, can this conversation be had in-air?” Steady interrupts.
Both idiots turn to him, Kenobi a bit sluggishly. It appears as though the commander is supporting most of his weight. Was he injured? Steady hadn’t noticed anything particularly urgent, but if the General can’t even stand—
“Of course, my dear. Of course.”
The two of them stagger—stagger!—onto the ship and boarding resumes as normal. Steady follows them at a close distance. Something is decidedly off.
“Quinlan and I, we’re casual, you understand. We’ve been so since… oh.. Our padawan days, surely. And Anakin just has a sense for these things, for any hint of…” Kenobi snorts. “‘Impropriety’, shall we say. Poor child—how he came to believe that sex outside of a monogamous marriage was so taboo, I have not the faintest idea.”
“A coping mechanism?” Commander Cody muses.
Kenobi gasps, all faux-offense, and then snorts. “My dear, are you calling me a slag?”
“No, I’m calling you a slut.”
“A slut is a slag! Boil, dear, tell Cody that ‘slut’ and ‘slag’ mean the same thing,” Kenobi insists. Boil shoots Steady a horrified look. Steady shrugs and mouths, I don’t know.
“Uh,” Boil says, eloquently. “They’re… the same thing?”
“Thank you Boil. Where was I? Cody, where was I?” Steady has seen his General in some fucking states—blown up, shot, drugged, concussed, drugged and shot—but never this manic before. It’s like he’s taken far too many stims; he’s wired and chatty and has lost his fucking mind.
“You were being a slut with Quinlan Vos,” Cody relays, dutifully and with glee.
Kenobi makes a face that Steady would, under extreme duress, describe as “seductive”. “My dear,” he drawls, leaning in close to the Commander’s bucket and aiming a sultry look at it, “Are you pining for details?”
“Never,” Cody says.
Just then, the ship shudders to life and begins to rise into the air. Both men stumble and now Steady is worried.
“Bucket off, Commander,” Steady barks. “General, look at me. Did you receive any blows to the head? Take any stims?”
“No, nothing of the sort,” Kenobi answers and shies away from Steady’s small flashlight.
“He doesn’t need stims,” Cody grumbles. “He has ‘the Force’.” The quotations are not so much implied as they are explicit. Vod has the same attitude towards all things Force-related as most men reserve for sharp objects near their gettse.
Steady often wants to grab his vod by the shoulders and shake him until the stupid falls out. If you hate the karking Force so much, why’d you have to go attach yourself to a Jedi like a fucking barnacle, you di’kut? Much like a tooka that has fallen in love with a fish, the esteemed Commander Cody is doomed to pine after a creature whose simple conditions of existence are incompatible with his desire to live an unmolested life.
Finally, Cody’s bucket comes off.
Vode have fairly dark skin, especially compared to General Kenobi. At the moment, the shadows under Cody’s eyes are so deep and dark that they make Kenobi’s look like child’s play.
“Fierfeck, when was the last time you slept?” Steady blurts.
Cody blinks. “Me or him?”
“You!”
“You look pretty terrible, vod,” Boil adds, grimacing.
Cody turns a glare on him that could curdle milk. “I always look fantastic, Boil,” he says with deathly menace.
“You do, dear, you do,” Kenobi affirms. And Cody, the idiot, preens under the praise.
“Answer the question,” Steady says, snapping his fingers to get them back on track. “When did you last sleep?”
“You’re not allowed to ask me that,” Cody snaps, practically growling.
“The fuck does that mean?”
“Is this a fucking medbay, vod?” Cody volleys back.
“No, but now that you mention it, it looks like you’re in need of a visit,” Steady says, saccharine. “Now answer the fucking question before I skip the bitch-fest entirely and sedate your ass.”
Cody looks at him. Cody looks at Kenobi. Cody looks back and Steady.
“Kenobi hasn’t slept in four days,” Cody declares.
“Cody!” Kenobi hisses, scandalized. “Cody hasn’t slept for more than thirty consecutive minutes in four days! I have the Force to sustain me! It is hardly the same!”
“Manda save us,” Boil murmurs. “They’re so stupid.”
As soon as the transport is safely aboard the Negotiator once again, Steady marches his two idiots to the medbay by the scruff of their necks, cursing the Jedi and Jango Fett himself in every way he knows how.
“Both of you are getting an IV and a solid twelve hours or so help me, I will be dunking you both in bacta just for the fun of it,” he threatens. “Now is the appropriate time to tell me how many stims you’ve taken and when.”
Steady won’t do them all the embarrassment of asking why they have elected to forgo sleep entirely—this is war and the pressures on the pair of them are burdens that Steady wouldn’t wish on anyone. He knows why they’ve deprived themself of rest to this extent. It’s for the same reason as his own.
“None,” Cody says, proudly.
Steady looks to Kenobi. “Explain.”
“Cody had… objections to the notion that the Force can sustain a Jedi far past the limits of their physiology. He elected to—what was it you said, dear? ‘Prove that it’s all banthashit? I can do that, too, cosmic powers be damned?’”
Steady takes a deep breath and attempts--Fett help him--to release his rage to the Force.