Chapter Text
Bodhi swung down into the pilot’s chair, ready to start preflight checks, and a lump he wasn’t expecting to be there made contact with his foot. It felt soft and yielding, at least until it grew spikes like needles and poked them into his shin through the tough fabric of his coveralls.
“Ow! What the—”
He jumped up and peered into the footwell. Something—two somethings? no, one thing with four reflective eyes—was huddled in the cramped space, spitting and hissing.
"Kay!” Bodhi shouted. “Come get this thing out of here.” Kriff, what was it? Was it venomous? He wasn’t about to stick his hand in there and risk another scratch, or a bite.
“What is it?” The droid’s head appeared above the companionway ladder.
Bodhi pointed under the console. “Looks like we picked up a stowaway.”
K-2 clambered into the cockpit and extended a long spindly arm into the thing’s hiding place. A high-pitched yowl emerged, along with a tiny, fuzzy creature clasped in Kay’s hold. It had dappled, watery blue fur and a long tail, four bright green eyes, and a general air of fragility somehow combined with extreme aggression. (Actually, the attitude kind of reminded Bodhi of Jyn, if she had four eyes and blue fur.)
“A pittwith,” the droid identified it, after holding the creature up in front of his ocular receptors. “Native to several planets in the Core Worlds, often raised as companion animals or used to exterminate vermin.”
“Whatever it is, it doesn’t belong on our ship,” Bodhi said. He reached out gingerly to see what it felt like, keeping an eye on the thing’s mouth in case it decided to take a bite out of him. The short fur on its floppy ears was even softer than it looked. “How did it get in here? I don’t want to steal someone’s pet.”
“Pittwith are capable of making their way through very small apertures, but it most likely entered while the ramp was down and we were busy loading cargo. This is an immature individual, or kitten, about two standard months old and probably feral. Spaceports are often infested with pittwith.”
“Huh.” Bodhi didn’t remember seeing any pittwith on his previous piloting routes, but Jedha had had few domestic animals in general and not a lot of vermin to hunt. And the Empire probably wouldn’t have allowed a bunch of semi-wild animals to run around its scientific outposts—unless they were there as experimental subjects.
The kitten twisted in Kay’s grip and started trying to lick the metal fingers holding it in place. Bodhi laughed and touched the soft fur behind its ears again. It turned its head upside down at an angle that looked impossible and licked the underside of his wrist instead.
Kay turned toward the companionway. “I will release it before takeoff.”
“Hang on,” Bodhi said. “I mean, no-one’s going to miss it, right?”
“There is a high probability that such is the case.”
“It’s kind of cute.”
“The exaggerated size of its eyes does give it an appealing quality,” Kay said.
“And there’s plenty of vermin on Hoth. Baze was complaining about scrabblers in the southern corridors just the other day.”
“If you’re looking for a justification to keep the pittwith, Bodhi, you need not bother. I don’t care what you do with it.” Kay poked the kitten’s belly gently and it made a strange rumbling noise that vibrated in its chest. “That is an interesting vocalization.”
Bodhi sat back down in the pilot’s chair and resumed his interrupted prelaunch sequence. “Well, then, you can hold onto it until we get back to Echo Base. Any ideas for a name?”
“A designation?” K-2 folded into the co-pilot’s seat and clamped his hands carefully around the kitten to hold it in place. “Perhaps we should name it after Jyn Erso. There is a resemblance.”