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Commander Fox was, as CMO Emmer liked to say, a fucking mess. But that was Emmer's problem most of the time, not Fox's, so he mostly decided to ignore it. But currently it was very much a Fox problem. He was shaking apart in a hall closet next to cleaning supplies.
Now, this isn’t the most unusual thing for Commander Fox, however, it is a bigger problem mostly because he had to meet with Cody and Wolfie in about five standard minutes, and he was wasting time he could have spent at least trying to wash up after a 32 hour hell run in the lower levels, he was not doing that, and he was quickly running out of time.
This was not good. This was the exact opposite of good. Unfortunately, he couldn't make his brain shut up long enough to do anything about it.
There was a tentative knock at the door to the closet.
“Commander?” If Fox wasn’t panicking he might have been a bit more able to tell who he was talking to. As of right now all he got was Shinny. “Sir? The gar commanders are almost here, you might wanna run to you office, before they get here"
Fox fucking loves his troopers, he doesn't care what Wolfe says, his are better.
"Thanks," he rasps. Crawling out of the maintenance closet in the most dignified way he could manage. Dropping a hand on the shinies shoulder for balance as he stood up, the lightheadedness was taking its time to fade. The shiny was on the shorter side of the kaminoans acceptable parameters for height. But then again Emmer had said the acceptable parameters had gotten wider since the first bracket shipped out. Maybe the kid was more average now. Prime was technically about 5'7.
The kid pulled a water canteen off their hip and handed it to Fox. This kid is really going for the favorite shinny award, Fox would have to add them to Thire's stupid leaderboard.
Fox took a rather painful swallow of the water, it was lukewarm and tasted like low quality plastic, but water was water and Fox didn't have any on him. It fell off his belt somewhere on level 4,500-something.
"Thanks," he said again, looking at the shinny. A little calmer now, he could recognize them from the new squad they got two months ago. "You got a name?" Fox asked, handing back the canteen.
"Not yet sir," They said, clipping their canteen back to their belt. "My squad called me eighty though," a careful wary smile on their face.
"alright," Fox said, dusting off his kama. One would be surprised at how dusty and dirty a closet where cleaning supplies would get. "I might call you to the office later to add you to the favorite shiny list-"
"The what?"
"-Thanks again for the time hack and the water Eighty, see you around kid" Fox turned and started walking away, unclipping his helmet from his belt as he did so, leaving the very confused shinny behind. He was already running late, better to make it look like he really did just get back from a hell run, and not been slacking off for an hour and then having a panic attack or the rest of his free time.
He shoved his helmet onto his head, wincing at the feeling of sweat and dirt against the interior of it, it'll be hell to clean. He better make a good show of this, cus he doesn't have the energy to lie.
----
Both commanders were already standing in-front of the office when he rounded the corner, they were looking rather bored and just a little annoyed. Good, it hasn't been long enough for them to get mad, that’s very important, they might be more sympathetic to his ‘just walked out of a sludge pipe’ looking ass. If they weren't, that was still manageable. He could do this.
“Hello commanders,” he said, making a face at the pull on the back of his throat, he needed more water, ow. They looked at him, he noted Cody’s confused look at his armor, and Wolffie’s raised eyebrow, and made the choice to ignore it. He was tired, he could ignore things with vod’e, they weren't as judgey as natborns. “Good to see you both in one piece,” he tried to inject a bit of warmth into that. Wolffie seemed to appreciate it at least.
“You barely seem to be,” Wolffie huffed, “what happened? you get sent chasing after a senator's lost cat?"
“Not quite,” Fox chuckled, allowing himself to feel a little hurt, it was fine. It was fine.
Fox punched in the code into the pad next to the door, rubbing his fingers against his kama in an attempt to not get dirt on the door. It only sorta worked. The lights flicked on automatically as they stepped into the room.
Fox considered sitting in the chair behind the desk but he really didn't feel like having to clean anything. He stood next to the table, leaning on it to take some weight off his right leg, it was starting to ache something fierce.
“You gonna take your helmet off?” Cody asked, taking Stone’s chair and sliding it across the floor to be more in-front of the desk. Wolffie did the same with Thire’s next to it. Fox had forgotten that he'd been wearing a helmet.
“Yeah just give me a second,” he had run from that little maintenance closet till about the end of the hallway, he was probably still red in the face a little. Breathing was hard in his helmet, something with the filter was broken, but he hadn't had the time or suplies to replace it.
He shifted his weight further onto the table, lifting his hands to his helmet. It was still slimy and gritty against the nape of his neck as he pulled it off. He blinked twice in the stark white light, he always forgot how bright it was, outside the barracks.
“Blegh,” he muttered under his breath, hair sticking to the inside of his helmet.
Wolffie burst out laughing. “I didn't realize corries did hell runs!” he said. Fox just stared, a little confused. Of course they did hell runs, the lower levels aren't neat and tidy, and that's where they spend most of their time. “I'll have to tell Seventeen that next time i talk to him,” alpha-17 hadn't spoken to fox since a year into his posting, “he’ll get a kick out of knowing you're still sharp even with a desk job,” Wolffie said, still chuckling. Cody next to him chuckled as well, even if his expression was a bit sharp. They were here for something specific and Fox had no idea what. Fox just slowly nodded slowly giving them a small half fake smile, placing his helmet on the ground next to his feet. it's good to hear them laughing, he did miss that, being stationed at 000.
“Well, I’m glad neither of you is in a shit mood, because we unfortunately have to talk about supply chains,” Fox said, and Cody made a show of groaning dramatically. Fox made the decision to ignore how Wolffie was staring at him something rather unreadable in his face and laughed, a real good one. He nearly tipped forward when the lightheadedness came back full force.
“You alright?” He couldn't tell who said it, but he nodded anyway. It would take a second to fade but he'd be fine.
Fox propped himself up on the desk again. Taking a deep breath, he opened his eyes again, they were both up on their feet and looking at him concerned. He almost expected them to laugh and say something about being weak for having spent too long on 000, but neither of them did. He gave a weak smile.
“Just got back less than ten ago, haven’t had time to eat. I'll be fine,” he wasn’t going to mention that they probably didn’t have much in the way of food, he agreed to this meeting in an effort to not get their supplies routed to other ships so often. Even if he tried to bury that goal under a lot of layers of legalese. They also didn’t look any less concerned, so not mentioning that didn’t seem to have been the most effective.
“you should eat now then,” Cody said, stepping back slightly, less concerned that Fox was going to fall over at a moment's notice, "we can walk with you to the mess,” he said. And no, that’s not what Fox wanted right now, that might make the sub-text real-text and that’s not what he needs them to see right now.
“Or I can get a shiny with too much energy to grab me a pudding cup and the good ration bar from their totally secret contraband network,” Fox said, definitely trying to deflect them with a joke. It didn’t work, neither of them seemed impressed.
“Or,” Wolffie said, "you can explain why a slicer of mine looked into the guard records and they clearly stated you guys didn’t have enough food.” Fox went stiff.
Cody didn’t seem surprised, so that wasn’t a new revelation for him. Wolffie, had a slicer look into their records. The last time fox had spoken with guard slicer crew was a week ago, and they had said that a week prior was the last time they kicked someone out of the servers.
Two weeks ago was when Cody suggested a meeting pertaining to supply networks, specifically food.
Fox was a paranoid bastard by nature, he had plans and backup plans for every situation, his paranoia had infected every part of the guard down to the shines that stepped off the ships new and clean of fear.
And Fox had no idea what the fuck to do in this situation.