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“Are you sure we’re putting this up right?” Rex asked.
“Yeah, this will be fine” Ahsoka said as she pushed the box into the corner.
“Alright then” Rex said as he looked around the Resolute’s hallway to make sure the weren’t spotted.
After seeing that the coast was clear, he cut the bag open and poured several liters of fine tooka sand into the box.
Ahsoka got caught in the dust cloud and started coughing.
Red chuckled at that “and that, sir, is Why you should wear a bucket.”
That earned him a smack on the back of his helmet. It didn’t hurt, obviously, so he laughed it off.
“I know, I know. Montrals.”
She smiled at him and shook the box a bit to flatten the sand a bit.
“How long do you think it’ll take for Skyguy to notice?”
“I don’t know. It could be minutes, it could be months. The General isn’t exactly predictable.”
“No kidding” she said before grabbing a new box from the stack “Let’s keep going, our imaginary tooka is going to need a lot of litter boxes on a ship this big.”
“Of course, sir” he said. He just hoped this prank she wanted to pull on her master wouldn’t get him in trouble. She had promised him she’d tell Skywalker that she ordered him to do it if he did, but still.
A week later, Skywalker had connected the dots.
“What tooka?” He asked the both of them.
“The one we were supposed to get to get rid of the mice that keep eating the clones’ rations” Ahsoka lied.
“Captain, is this true?”
“Yes sir” Rex said.
“Okay, I believe you. I must’ve missed that form.”
Rex relaxed a bit. The risk has paid off, and they where getting out of this.
“I want to see the tooka though”
And there their usual bad luck was.
“Now?” Ahsoka asked.
“Yes, now. Is that a problem, Snips?”
“Yes, we don’t have it here.”
“Then get it here. I have to see it with my own eyes.”
“Sir, we’d need to catch it first” Rex lied. He hoped it’d make sense. He didn’t know a lot about pets. It wasn’t exactly covered in his training.
“We’ll show her to you as soon as we can get a hold of her” Ahsoka promised.
“I’ll hold you to that” Skywalker said before walking away to do something that would disappoint General Kenobi.
“What do we do now, sir?” Rex asked.
“We go to the shelter.” She said.
“What do you mean with “shelter” in this context?”
“You’ll see.”
Rex followed Ahsoka into the shelter. It wasn’t what he had expected. He had expected some kind of bunker, but this was a clean hallway filled with cages. Inside them, there were several tookas.
“Why are all these tookas locked in these cages?” He asked Ahsoka.
“They are here to be adopted.”
“How does that work? My training didn’t cover pets.”
“Well, all of these pets are here because they need someone to take care of them. We can pick one we like and take it back to the Resolute, and then we can take it home and we take of it and it’ll give uit attention in return”
“Alright then” Rex said before stopping. A tooka had caught his eye.
A black female was clawing at the bars of her cage and yelling at him.
“Hello little one” he said. The tooka just kept yelling and clawing, but it didn’t seem aggressive.
Ahsoka walked up to the cat and activated the hologram next to her cage to see her profile.
“It says here that she’s a year old and had an unplanned litter at nine months, and that the previous owners couldn’t take care of a litter. So they brought her here, and the kittens are already adopted.” Ahsoka told him.
He opened the cage and the animal immediately walked onto his command wing and put her butthole in his face.
“Uhm... what the Kriff?”
“That means she likes you” Ahsoka said as she stroked the tooka’s head. The tooka started purring.
“Okay. That’s an odd way of showing affection.” He said, trying to ignore the view.
“It makes more sense than the salutes you boys do to be honest” she said as the feline put her front claws on her forehead and stretched.
“How so?”
“Tooka’s show affection by essentially allowing you the chance to attack them. They’ll only do that if they trust that you won’t harm them. Like by turning their backs on you or closing their eyes. A salute is a sign of respect, but this is a sign if trust”
Rex nodded, though still found it weird that this small creature trusted him already. The tooka got off his shoulder and sat on Ahsoka’s head.
He looked at the small creature and smiled, closing his eyes at the tooka
When he opened them, the tooka had closed its eyes at him as well. He reached out gently and rubbed her furry cheek.
“I like this one. Let’s take her”
A few hours later, they were back on the Resolute with the box holding the newest recruit of the 501st.
“Did you actually get a tooka to clear your name of that prank, sir?” Jesse asked.
“Her name is Cinder and she’s part of our family” he said sternly.
Ahsoka just laughed and opened the box, allowing Cinder to explore her new home.
A few days later, Ahsoka got a comm from Anakin. When the hologram came to live, Skyguy had Cinder on his shoulder.
“Snips, I’m sorry for thinking the litter boxes were just a prank you and Rex were pulling on me for some reason.”
“It’s okay, master. Do you like her?”
“Yes, she’s amazing.”