Author's Note: If you have any tips writing tips, please feel free to comment.

As always, I continue to hope that I am doing justice to the spirit of Star Wars as well the respective authors and characters from which I borrow. Again, I gratefully accept constructive criticism as a means to help me develop my skills further as a writer.

Mandalorian (Mando'a) words

Aruetii (ah-roo-AY-tee): traitor, foreigner, outsider

Ba'vodu Gan: Uncle Gan

Ner vod (nair-vohd): "my brother/sister"; colloquially also "my friend"

Ika (EE-kah): diminutive suffix written as 'ika - also added to a name as a very familiar or childhood form, e.g, Ord'ika - Little Ordo

Di'kut (DEE-koot): idiot, useless individual, waste of space (lit. someone who forgets to put their pants on)

Dina'la (dee-NEE-lah): insane

 Kotyc (koh-TEESH): strong 

 Shabuir (SHAH-boo-EER: extreme insult - *jerk*, but much stronger 

Sharal (SHAH-ral): lazy 

Vode (VOH-day): brothers, sisters, comrades

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Chapter 20

The other squads had called us the Reject Squad practically from the moment the Kaminoans had released us from our incubation pods. They couldn't understand how we could argue and fight amongst ourselves so consistently. I guess when you're told you're a reject often enough, at some point you begin to believe it. I can't say when exactly it happened, but we realized that if we were going to be considered rejects, then we would be sure to use it to our advantage. It didn't take us long to learn how to bend the rules and show our superiors they were wrong. More importantly, we specialized in proving how our superiors were wrong.

RC-1168 "Dusty" reminiscing about his time in the GAR

Tochin Moon III, 784 Days ABG

"Can I ask what...dee-koot means?" Arlesse asked, not looking at anyone in particular as she continued to keep herself busy with preparing more RubyFruit candy.

Dusty raised an eyebrow at the princess and her curiosity. "What use would you have for the Mando'a language?"

Her eyes flicked to Jas for a brief second, but he remained in his stony posture. When she looked to Dusty, she explained, "I want a way to remember you all. Jas taught me that vode means brothers, and the trooper who was killed taught me that koytc means strong."

"Oh, idiot," Dusty said.

Arlesse felt suddenly taken aback and she was mortified that she might have just insulted him. She shook her head in apology. "I'm sorry. I just..."

Dusty laughed again. "I didn't insult you, Les'ika. Di'kut means an idiot, someone who's a waste. The cook of yours who won't let you near the kitchen, he'd be a di'kut."

"Oh," she smiled, feeling foolish.

"If you want, I could teach you a whole new vocabulary."

"Don't you dare taint the girl's innocence, shabuir," Mouse warned as he came back and sat down before the fire again.

"Fine, you do it then," Dusty replied as he stood up. He walked by Jas, gently tapping him twice on the shoulder armor, using their personal signal that he needed him to accompany him for a private conversation.

Jas took a quick glance around the campfire and Mouse nodded, acknowledging that he would be all right with keeping an eye on the princess and Gath.

Dusty and Jas stepped about ten yards away from the campfire and Dusty settled onto a downed tree. He brought one of the RubyFruit candies to his mouth and savored the sweet flavor.

Jas found a tree stump opposite of Dusty and sat upon it. "What's with the stealth? Are you planning a surprise party for Gath or something?"

Dusty smiled he looked back at the camp. Les'ika and Mouse exchanged a few words, and he saw that Mouse had just explained to her what a shabuir was, followed by sharal, which meant lazy. Dusty found it funny that Gath slept blissfully unaware probably for the first time in his life, and if he had been awake, he would probably have found some excuse to stop the private Mando'a lessons they were now giving to an aruetii, an outsider.

Looking at Jas, Dusty had decided it was time to confront his brother and get him to see the opportunity that was being wasted before him. "Remember back a few months ago when we were on Denon and we had to get that intel on Barl Nusset and his bio-weapon?"

"Of course I do," Jas replied. "You had Gath pacing for half the night wondering at what point he should give the order to go in and extract you. Somehow your communications had gotten shut off, and we were going insane with worry about you. Gath immediately wanted to recon your position and go find you, but I tried to reason that maybe it was just a glitch and the link would come back on in a few minutes. I told him that there was nothing in your conversation that indicated you were in any kind of distress. Mouse wouldn't admit he was worried, but he began calibrating every weapon he could find and when there was nothing left to calibrate, he started rewiring a set of comlinks he found lying around."

Smirking at the idea of his brothers in a panic and wishing he could have had it all recorded, Dusty forced himself back to the point of his private conversation with Jas. "You had communications surveillance on that mission. What do you remember of the informant they arranged for me to meet?"

"Considering I never saw her and only heard the conversations, I just know that she was pretty taken in with the near-observative need to give you a normal night...whatever that was supposed to mean. The entire situation was just damn near strange, and I couldn't help feeling that I was glad it was you they chose instead of me. I wouldn't have been so tolerant of her games."

Dusty laughed and let his memories drift back to that night for a moment. He thought about the informant, Cerina Browlin, the woman who had arranged their meeting to provide the necessary information on Nusset's location. He doubted Cerina Browlin truly was the woman's name, and he was fairly certain that she had altered her appearance as much as Dusty had. It would have been far too dangerous for her to walk around as a broker of information and have everyone know who she was. Briefly, Dusty wondered what had happened to beautiful brown-eyed, redheaded woman he had known for only the duration of one Denon evening.

"She was attractive," Dusty said almost dreamily, "Very easy to look at, and she wore this perfume that I just couldn't ignore..."

Jas grumbled, growing impatient with his brother. "You're being pointless. If you want to daydream about some woman, you can do that without me around."

Dusty felt his juvenile smile fade and he brought his mind back to the present. "You're right. What she looked like and how she smelled is irrelevant. But, do you understand at all what Cerina was trying to do for me?"

"She was dragging her feet with giving you the information we needed to handle that job." Jas then moved to stand up. "I don't know why you pulled me aside to discuss a mission we completed months ago anyway. It's not even classified, and you could have easily talked about this in front of the others."

Dusty grabbed his brother's arm and jerked him hack down. "You need to pay attention to details, ner vod. Let me finish and you'll see what I'm talking about."

Jas sighed and reluctantly settled back down. He folded his arms across his chest, trying to be patient, but not really wanting to hear about a past mission that was done and filed as completed.

Dusty wondered just how innocent and dense Jas truly was. He shook his head, feeling a stupid grin on his face he thought about Cerina and what exactly had happened that night. Grateful to be away from the light of the campfire, Dusty was also glad Jas couldn't see the flush on his face as his mind quickly reminded him of the things she had done with him.

"Do you know why I shut off the communications?" he asked finally.

At that, Jas glared angrily at his brother. "You shut off your own comlink in the middle of a mission? You dina'la shabuir! You could have been in trouble, and we would never have known."

Dusty remained calm, seeming to be unfazed by his brother's outburst and kept his eyes on Jas. Calling him an insane jerk was mild compared to the other insults Dusty had been called by others. "Think real hard now. What was the last thing you heard before the complink shut out?"

"What is your problem?" Jas grumbled. "Just tell me why you would do something so stupid."

"You still don't get it, do you, ner vod?" Dusty asked, forcing Jas to have to think about it. He wasn't just going to freely give up the truth of that night. His brother had to see it for himself in order to understand his own predicament.

Jas considered more carefully the events of that mission, more specifically, the dealings of that night. He took a moment to replay in his mind the conversations and background sounds he heard on the comlink feed. He remembered Dusty's positioning device didn't move from the apartment's location, and he had considered the possibility that maybe Dusty and Cerina were conversating about the best way to infiltrate the underground bunker. Of course, there was also the nagging concern that Dusty was already dead and his body was just lying there.

After a couple of minutes, though, Jas began to piece together the realization of what Dusty was confessing. None of the members of Crimson had the opportunity to actually see the informant's face except for Dusty, and when he agreed to meet with her, it was arranged for an expensive dinner in an upscale restaurant followed by Dusty walking her to an apartment not far from there. As Dusty's solo mission began to make more and more sense, Jas finally understood why Dusty had disappeared from the comlink feed over two hours.

Jas remembered now that when Dusty had finally caught up with Crimson later in that night, he seemed...different, somehow experienced in a new way. Jas had thought it was just because Dusty had been able to handle what should have been an intelligence agent's mission on his own and was in a satisfied mood about it, but now he was certain it was something else entirely.

Dusty smiled at his brother, watching some new realization pass over his face. "Do you want me to spell it out or draw you a picture, ner vod?"

Jas gave his brother a look, watching the smirk form on Dusty's face, and then Jas finally understood. "I'm going to assume you were both consenting and willing then."

Dusty sighed heavily and ran his hands over his face, rubbing his eyes gently. "You're completely missing the point. It had nothing to do with the actual act of what we did. It's about taking a chance, a risk on something you may only experience once in your life."

"I was right," Jas complained as he got up again. "You're being pointless, and you don't need to brag to me about soe enjoyment you shared with a female."

This time Dusty wasn't going to just let Jas walk away until he understood exactly the point he wanted to make. He stood up and put his hand on his brother's shoulder, stopping him abruptly from walking away.

"Listen to me," he argued softly. "We don't get opportunities. We're not supposed to—remember, flesh droids and all. And, I'm not telling you what to do. But, when I realized the opportunity I had waiting before me and that I could bend those rules just a little to take that chance, I didn't hesitate. What Cerina offered me was a moment in time I'll never forget. I didn't care then and I don't care now that Gath would have killed me if he knew what I was really doing. All I knew was that I was part of the Reject Squad. That was all I needed to give me permission to bend and break the rules as I saw fit. I decided in that fraction of a second that I was not about to have my short life pass by an opportunity because some Kaminoan scientist didn't put it in my flash training. I got to experience something with Cerina most of our brothers will never know, wherever they live long enough or not."

"Why are you confessing this to me now?" Jas questioned. Not sure why he hadn't just walked away and ignored Dusty.

"Because there're an opportunity waiting for you, ner vod."

Jas brushed off Dusty's hand now and turned to face the camp as though to return to it. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Dusty sighed and grasped his brother's shoulder plate again, his eyes watching Les'ika just as carefully was his brother's were. "You shut her out, didn't you, ner vod? You locked her away like she's some aggravation on the mission that is distracting you. I know it's what you do to get through when you're confused or unfocused. You've shut me out at times. But I'm used to it."

Jas realized then that his attention was on Les'ika, watching as she wrapped the blanket around her shoulders now and listened to something Mouse was telling her. She smiled suddenly, and Jas felt like a glowlamp had been turned on in his chest.

"You need to decide if you want to take the chance on knowing something before you die or if you can walk away and question it for the rest of your life. She's your opportunity, ner vod, and if you get your moment, will you waste it or seize it?" With that, Dusty said his peace and moved away from his brother.

Jas remained standing where he was for a number of long minutes. Even after Dusty had returned to the camp, Jas decided to stay in the dark, safely away from everyone. He mulled over the conversation Dusty had with him, and he didn't understand how his brother could not be fearful of the repercussions of his actions with Cerina.

Watching Les'ika cook the last of the RubyFruit and share it generously with his brothers, Jas felt the whirlwind of confusion surround him. As he thought about the princess and their short time together, he had come to the conclusion that it was more than just an incomprehensible attraction that developed quickly. Earlier when she spoke of her childhood moment, he had been listening to every word she spoke and was glad to see that she had been spared from punishment, much like Ba'vodu Gan had done for them. It led him to believe that maybe she wasn't so different from them, despite her ranking in a sophisticated society.

Watching her eyes shine in the distance and reflect the humor that his brothers were providing, Jas thought of her tough and the honest compassion that radiated in her plain, blue irises. After a moment, Les'ika's smile turned into a genuine laugh as Mouse and Dusty traded their usual collection of insults while they shared their stories. 

The hunger that Jas had thought was safely locked away in his mental box was trying to break free, and he struggled again with keeping it there. Jas had thought that he had finally gotten himself and those rampant emotions under control, but Dusty now had gone and shattered that control into new shards of confusion.

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