Work Text:
It is not yet three in the kriffing morning when every comm in the barracks starts going off with a hardly-recognizable priority alert. Fox can barely open his eyes at the moment, and he does not have the energy to even bother trying to figure out just what exactly the sound is supposed to mean. Someone, though, stifles a scream with their pillow, and calls out, "Weather alert. Back to sleep, everyone."
Fox hums, and manages to grumble out a word that at least sort of sounds like, “Shifts?”
Someone- Thire, maybe- shuffles around. Checking their comm properly, probably. “Canceled, there’s a travel ban until tomorrow.”
“Thank the kriffing stars.” someone else in the room mutters, somewhere vaguely to the left. Sounds too well-rested to be high up, so probably not a Commander. Or a Captain. Sergeant, maybe? Fox feels too goopy to really care who it is.
Nobody in the Guard has the option for legitimate time off. That is one way that Coruscant is the worst posting in the GAR. Those on the warfront might see a lot of battle, but traveling from place to place is essentially a forced rest period for them, not to mention they get shore leave. The Guard is an all day, every day job with shifts that are either twelve hours long or twenty hours long, and if so much as a single Senator asks for you by name then your sleep period can be waved farewell. Regular troopers might be able to wriggle their way into some time off, but for Fox and the other Commanders, that is pretty kriffing impossible.
Days like this, where they have time to actually give their bodies a proper break, are rare. In a few hours, when Fox can keep his eyes open, he will probably use this chance to speed his way through the backlog of flimsiwork that has been piling up on his desk. Probably. If he does not sleep through the entire day, at least.
The smell of paint is what wakes him up- or rather, it was his own neck-wrenching sneeze. The harsh chemical stench has essentially been trapped by the closed door and locked windows, and with nowhere for it to escape to it instead lingers in the air. He could sleep through any number of unbearably loud noises, but odor are another story entirely.
Fox cracks one eye open just enough to glare at the little gathering of unarmored troopers sitting cross-legged on the floor on the other side of the room. All of them are looking towards him with wide eyes. Either they had not expected him to wake up, or they had not even realized he was still in the room.
“Sorry, Commander!” one of the troopers stutters out, and Fox vaguely recognizes them by the thin scar cutting horizontally across their entire forehead. That would be… Missy, then? A fairly recent arrival, whisked away from the frontlines after his first battle left him with permanently blurry vision in his left eye. Terribly young, too, younger than Fox was when the War started.
“If you were going to be painting armor in the barracks,” Fox tells the group wryly as he rolls off the bunk directly into an admittedly lopsided standing position, “You could’ve at least invited me to join in.”
He does need to update his paint, to be honest. His armor has been looking more white than red recently, and there are probably enough scratches to call for some proper cleaning. He has hardly had the time to do anything about it.
“Do you want to join us, sir?” one of the other troopers asks curiously, though there are no identifying markers for Fox to determine who it is.
Well, at least one of them has some vague semblance of manners. “Yes, trooper, I would like to join you. Got any spare paint?”
The group starts scooting around so that there is a gap in the middle. Fox supposes that is enough of an answer, so he gathers up his kit from under his bunk and heads over to lay out his backplate. It will take the longest to dry once repainted, so getting it out of the way first will be best.
It takes a moment for him to locate the sandpaper and the polish among the mess of paint canisters and water bowls and brushes. Fox glances at the other armor pieces laid out on the floor. A lot of them are still primarily white- shiny, undirtied, brand new white, untainted except for sloppy patches of crimson still being painted on.
Oh, kriff. Fox did not realize that the group was a bunch of Shinies in armor so new this is their first time working on it at all. Missy is probably trying to show them how, but he probably has not been here long enough to know how to paint their armor properly either. Good thing they must have started just a short time before he woke up.
He grimaces at some of the strokes.
“Hold on,” Fox murmurs, and leans over to tap on part of the breastplate being painted by the Shiny to his left. “If you wave the brush back and forth like that, you’re going to get visible streaks when it dries. Keep it aimed in one direction and lift the brush between strokes. It helps keep the paint even.”
The trooper pauses, and hesitantly tries to do it as they were told to. The patch of red starts looking a bit less globby, and Fox nods in approval. They do seem to revert to the back-and-forth motions sometimes out of habit, but the explanation about single strokes got through to them enough that they at least catch themself most of the time.
The others seem to be trying it too, which is good. Too many older members of the guard never learned better, and looking at their armor practically drives Fox insane on the best of days, and he will never forgive them for spreading their bad habits.
“What are your names, troopers?” Fox asks the group as he finally gets around to starting on his own armor, using the sandpaper to strip away the old paint and the raised, jagged edges on some of the scratches. He won’t be able to fill them properly until then, and he will have to wait for the paint to set before he can actually polish the piece into something that starts looking brand new again.
That will give him time to start stripping down his breastplate and cuisses- the armor for his upper legs will likely take just as long as the backplate to dry, since they are similarly painted pure red. He might repaint the inside of his armor once the rest of it dries, but it is unlikely that he will have the time for it unless the travel ban sticks around for an extra day.
“Oh! Um, I’m Hush, sir. I mean, CT-3-” the one he spoke to before starts to say, before one of the others interrupts them with a hissed, “Hush!”
Yeah, Fox can see how they got that name. “CT-numbers are reserved for dealing with upper-level natborns. No need to use them with the Guard.”
The Coruscant Guard headquarters is a safe space. They have ensured that much, at least. No matter what the rest of the galaxy wants to throw at them, headquarters is home and home is just for them. The Senate does not bother to try and catch them off-guard with random inspections anymore, not like they would during the first few months they were here.
Using their idents is for the Senate and for fools who can barely remember a string of numbers for more than a minute. Names are for their brothers, for the people they trust to have their backs.
“Sorry,” Hush mutters.
Fox gently taps two knuckles against the side of their head. “Don’t apologize.”
He sure as karking hell will not hold something against a Shiny for being confused. Most of the Guard’s protocols may seem nonsensical at first glance, and many of them have a deliberate vagueness and unspoken meanings to make sure no one can hold anything against his Corries.
Missy clears his throat. “I’m Missy. Transferred from the 85th.”
“I don’t have a name yet,” the one who hissed at Hush before mutters. “Um. CT-3942. From Kamino.”
“Mug, straight from Kamino,” the one sitting directly to Fox’s right says with a half-shrug. Their hair is shaved much shorter than the others, likely not even a centimeter long to the others’ two inches.
“I’m, uh, CT-9110, Mug’s batchmate. I don’t have a name yet,” the last trooper says, raising their hand in an awkward wave that smears diluted red paint across their cheek. They forgot to put down their paintbrush. “Oh, karking dammit!”
Fox snorts, and pretends not to notice that Four-Two is already snapping a holopic with their comm while the unfortunate Shiny is furiously rubbing at their cheek, spreading the paint even further. “Well, if you don’t have one yet, you’re probably on your way to one now.”
Splatter, maybe, or something a little bit simpler like Stripe or Crim. Whatever it is, they will probably be getting it on their way to washing it off later.
One-Oh wipes their hands, grumbling, and glares at their half-painted breastplate as if their armor is at fault for the mess. Well, it partially is, if only for being the reason they’re painting in the first place. Fox has to hold back the smirk that is threatening to curl his lips– most of his Corries find themselves with an aversion to the expression. Something about how its only mode is unhinged, or so Thorn usually complains. Fox simply thinks Thorn is a rude kriffer whose smile needs to be stuffed where the sun doesn’t shine. Preferably the deep undercity, such as the Two Thousands.
He focuses on his own armor again. He’s been scraping the paint without paying any true attention to it, so he probably has not been keeping up the pressure as he should have been. Fox glides his fingers over the surface, noting the still-uneven indents and sanding them down to something that barely exists at all. Only a couple are deep enough to require careful filling. Normally the paint alone could work to fill them, but the depth of the layer required would make the paint take even longer to dry than typical. Letting the final layer of polish take care of any remaining inconsistencies would be easiest.
Fox tugs one of the paint canisters towards him and grabs one of the unused brushes to get started on properly renewing his armor. Well, the outside of it. Kriff, he can barely remember the last time he fixed up the inner paint, and he knows it must be a little bit warped by now. He has his own personal supply of armor paint that is such a pale red that it is barely off-white that he uses for the designs. It is easier than trying to mix together their usual supply of red and white evenly enough for a uniform color.
“How are your lines so clean?” A Shiny to his left– Hush, probably, but Fox refuses to look up from his task to check– blurts out suddenly.
“Don’t hesitate in the strokes or it’ll start collecting where you pause,” Fox says. “Also, try to keep the pressure even. Too hard and the brush fans out too much and leaves messy edges, too light and you’ll barely even touch anything. You’ll want to use something thinner when touching up borders, by the way.”
The usually-unsaid standard is that wherever the outside of the armor is red, the lip and about a centimeter of the inside is similarly painted red, just to prevent random nitpicky Senators from complaining about the uneven half-white edges looking horrible when they’re standing guard. To be honest, it is one of the few things that Fox could privately agree with, for the same reason that uneven paintjobs drive him mad.
It is quiet for a while as the Shinies try to paint their armor to match the rest of the Guard, cursing with every accidental stroke of red somewhere that is meant to be white. Eventually, Fox carefully sets his freshly-painted backplate somewhere out of reach to dry undisturbed, and picks up his breastplate to work on next. This one is in far rougher shape, but that was to be expected. He gets into more fights already facing the enemy than he does getting ambushed. Vibroknives are incredibly annoying sometimes, but at least plastoid holds up against blades better than it does bolts.
“What’s that?” Mug asks, frowning. Missy, having been in the Guard for a few months already, makes a high-pitched, strangled noise at the question. “On the underside.”
Fox pauses, and sets down the sandpaper he had been just about to use. Those are some unusually sharp eyes for a Shiny. He should see about getting them into at least some sniper training. “You’re all aware that the appearance of the Guard is standardized so that non-Commanders or Specialists all look the same, yes?”
The Shiny nods slowly. “Because of Senate decree, so that we can be effectively identified by citizens as Guardsmen instead of as belonging to a fleet.”
Well, that is a large part of it, but not quite the final reason. Fox digresses. “Since we can’t show our individuality on the outside of our armor, we paint our personal designs on the inside. So that we can still tell whose armor is whose, and all that. Like, hm, how there’s a lot of people in the Guard who dye their hair so that we can tell who they are even in partial-armor.”
Usually, those who dye their hair or get inked are the ones typically on patrol in the undercity, where they don’t have to worry about the rich fools on the surface. Fox beyond envies how free they are to do such things compared to the Commanders and Captains and literally anyone that regularly has to babysit the morons in charge. He would have several piercings in an instant if he thought he could get away with it. A teardrop and snakebites at the very least. He bets it would make his so-called unhinged smirk worse, and then maybe he could actually get Stone to faint at the sight of it.
Fox has to suppress a grin just at the thought of it. No, wait, he has gotten distracted again.
He lifts his breastplate to show the underside. “Everyone does it differently, but I personally keep just this single mark, while my outer armor is just a reflection of the regulation armor.”
The only design that Fox wears is one that he simply refers to as the Screaming Vulptex. It is only snarling, really, crystalline tufts bristled and ears turned back. It rests just off-centered, so that when worn the pattern sits over his heart, so pale it hardly stands out at all, blending in against the white just as its namesake would. It’s nothing like the looping, meaningless crimson swirls he knows are inside of Thire’s vambraces, or the teardrops that once littered the underside of their old CMO’s armor.
“What is it, though?”
“Vulptex.” Seeing the lack of recognition in their eyes, Fox sighs. “Some places nickname them ‘crystal foxes.’”
There are a few appropriately interested noises that do not, in fact, actually convey any comprehension. That’s fine, they likely have not been here long enough to have heard the brunt of the jokes always going around about his name.
Vulptices are highly sociable creatures, and typically a gentle one as well, preferring to stay out of sight than to draw attention from sentients. A vulptex does not, however, accept threats to its skulk so easily.
Fox bares his fangs behind a mask of politeness that ensures no one is fully aware of his intentions. Natborns, neither the Order nor this planet’s other denizens, do not understand it. Not even the rest of the GAR or his batchmates could really understand it. Fox does not tolerate threats to his Corries, and if he has so much as an inch to work with then he will take it halfway across the entire kriffing Republic.
“Wait,” Four-Two says, “You’re Commander Fox?”
Did they not realize that?
“How do you not recognize the leader of the Guard?” Missy hisses, and Four-Two tosses their hands above their head in exasperation.
“We’ve only been here for a week! We’ve never met the Commanders before! How am I supposed to know who is who?”
“You’re not as scary as Viral said you are,” Hush tells Fox with an oddly critical gaze, and suddenly Mug is leaping over all the painting supplies to tackle them so that they stop talking, knocking over a paint canister and two different water bowls in the process. One-Oh, sensibly, shies away and moves their armor before the spilled paint reaches them.
Wait.
That slicer said kriffing what about him?