I'm good at shooting people, cracking wise, and pretending to know how to fight.

As far as Republic army missions went, this hadn't been a bad one. Atton hadn't even picked up a scratch along the way, though he was muddy and wet and his hair smelled like jungle. At least he'd picked the easily-cleaned leather Jedi uniform this time around.

But now the pirates were either dead or in custody of the military, and Atton was left searching the hangar of this massive cruiser for a towel or something. Didn't help that he kept getting pulled in for 'high level tactical talks' and thank-yous and whatnot.

Honestly, he just felt disgusting, and--

"General?"

"I'm not a," he started, before he spun around and found himself face-to-face with... "Farani?"

She looked terrible. Not injured, like the last time he saw her. But her eyes were red and her uniform was as messed-up as Atton's was, with a couple of streaks of blood thrown in. "So you look exactly how I feel," he started.

"It's Parish," she said, scrubbing at her arm. "They got him."

Oh.

He looked past her and saw the others from her squad, looking bedraggled and feeling miserable. He sucked in an audible breath. "Well," he said slowly, "Since we're stuck here anyway, how about I buy you guys a round in whatever goes for a cantina around here?"

Parish. As they said on Earth, shit.

The military had been on Atton's mind for a while: not really a surprise, considering the last couple of months and who'd been responsible for anything. His Netflix queue at home (and may Sparkle never bump into it) was full of war documentaries and war series-- the wars on Earth might have been different, but in some ways, war just didn't change. It was always the same.

Back home, the first real explorative pieces about the Mandalorian Wars were coming out. He'd been watching one of them, pointing out the inadequacies, quietly getting angry to himself, when he got the call. Had gotten up and gotten going. War on TV was one thing. War in real life-- the consequences? Yeah. That was different.( Cut for mentions of NPC injury. )

[[ can be open for phone calls, etc. ]]