False Dichotomies

Bonus: Vod Rules; Sithspawn Rules

In every mission, there's a chance for things to go wrong. No plan survives first contact with the enemy, and all that.

Staring out into what is essentially open desert, having spent the last two days gradually dragging himself out of rubble alongside his commander, Bead knows this is one of those experiences where 'going wrong' is an understatement. Their base camp— assuming it hasn't moved— is days of walking away. They both have food and water on them, but it's a limited supply of both. The only reason the water's lasted them this long is because they've been able to refill it along their path. It probably wasn't massively safe to drink water that's filtered down through dusty debris, but dehydration will kill them quicker or at least leave them non-functional quicker than germs and metals and whatever else might be in there.

Not only will they not survive the journey to base, but their battalion will have left the planet by the time they get there anyway. If the general had been with them for this mission, Bead would've been confident he'd come for his padawan, but General Tholme got pulled away for something else entirely, too confidential for Bead or Commander Estai to be privy to it. Instead, they were given a temporary general, one without a Force bond to the commander, and therefore no reason to think the commander or Bead survived the collapse.

In other words, they're about to be abandoned, with no hope of rescue because their comms are both wrecked. They'll die, most likely, of dehydration. After what they just survived, it's a stupid way to go.

"We should check the rubble," Estai says, "see if there's a land-speeder still functional or close to."

There won't be one. Bead and the commander went over the placements of the explosives this morning, they specifically placed three around the hanger to reduce the likelihood of the droids using any speeders to get out of reach of the explosion. If there's anything salvageable, it's buried under rubble they don't have time to dig through. Still, it's better to have some kind of tangible aim while they wait to die. "If only we had one of those quadrupeds the locals ride around on." Bead had to drag two of his shinies off one of those creatures just a handful of days ago. Those troopers— too young to be out here fighting, in Bead's opinion, but the kaminoans aren't going to stop knocking down the minimum age requirement for deployment now that they've started— were having the time of their lives messing around. If they'd had General Tholme in charge, Bead would've left them to it. Their temporary general isn't so relaxed though.

"What if we did?" Estai asks.

Bead's currently looking at a fat load of desert so he's not sure what the benefit of wishful thinking is right now. Unless, "You think you could summon one with your Force?"

"My species has a quadrupedal form."

It takes Bead a full ten seconds to actually comprehend what she just said. It's been hard to forget, for a fair while now, that Estai isn't entirely human. Her physical strength is a blatant marker, the number of worlds they've been on with atmospheres that aren't breathable for humans that have given her no trouble is another. Still, it's one thing to know she's not human but appears near enough to anyone looking at her most days, it's quite another to learn, "You're a shapeshifter?"

He'd assumed she was some species of near-human from a planet of extremes, or maybe a mix of human plus an extremophile species. Adding shapeshifting to her abilities is a whole new armour set.

"I have set forms for a few different species," she tells him, matter of fact, like this isn't a massive revelation to him, "I can't just take any form at will." I can't look like a vod, she doesn't say. He hears it anyway, and it's a relief before he even had the chance to come up with it as a concern.

She's a shapeshifter. She's really a shapeshifter. Bead's commander is a shapeshifter who might be able to save both their lives today. "How quickly can you run in quadruped form?"