What a different kind of story "TESB" becomes when you add a cat on a run & social network fun.

This fic really makes me laugh tears all the time.

I even found it in my heart to feel sorry for the owner of Whispurr.

 

I feel sorry for Piett in this update, he got treated rather poorly by his commanding officer. I also feel sorry for Whispurr because she is now down a master and might be in the hands of people that doesn't love her or might dump her on the first planet/outpost they come to.

Funny thought: maybe Vader takes her in.

 

Oh-ho, Caridan Angora! So Ozzel is like the Bond villain! I dunno...I'm not sure about poor Whispurr's chances if she sheds all over Vader's cloak. Although, who knows? Maybe the Dark Lord will take a liking to her. Unless Maneas gets to her first. I see him headed for the nearest airlock. Or is Whispurr secretly a Rebel agent, making sure that one Imperial Officer after another gets...er...'dismissed from duty'? LOL!

And Y.W.! Ah, yes, NOW it makes sense! Draven progressively losing his mind, monitoring the Rebel lonelyhearts threads...

This has been such a fun little fluff...I am so sorry to see it end. But then, sometime in the future, you can always pick up the threads for a dare or a challenge and we can all hurt ourselves laughing again. And of course there are the fanfic awards and Artemian's Eleven, so I guess I can't be greedy. (Well, yeah, I can, but I'll try not to be!)

 

Poor Whispurr who now has to be adopted or worse.

 

Ah ha! Things have definitely come to a head, in many ways. The Hoth base has been found, and the Galaxy's largest "D'OH" has now been uttered (at least mentally) by poor, silly old Ozzel—so much for all that hard work he put in searching those "other avenues." I have to say that I too feel rather sorry for the poor fellow at this point; he put so much time and energy into this whole Liana Hallik project, after all. Though he would have been toast anyway, because he made that one tiny but crucial slip that gave him away as an Imperial mole. Very good catch, Draven! Song lyrics DO matter. This kind of reminds me of those stories where spies carefully memorize all the verses of the national anthem of the country in which they're spying, and then are found out precisely because most actual citizens of the country only know verse 1.

Love how Draven is still both monitoring and ruminating on the Alliance social networks right up to the very last moments of Echo base—and why shouldn't he? As he notes, security is a serious issue; we know that it was ultimately "just" the probe droid that found out the location of the base, but from Draven's standpoint it could well have been one of those "loose lips" profiles that did it. And now we have at least partly solved the Y. W. mystery... I knew exactly who it was the moment her profile showed up, of course, but I too am still curious why she chose that moniker. "Your Wife"? And I am curious to see what further fallout there might be with the CManeas/Liana Hallik back-and-forth; what more will Draven find out? Will he ever know who he was talking to? And will someone else, inadvertently or otherwise, pick the CManeas account back up on the Imperial end? (Perhaps C. Maneas himself? ) Still so many questions.

Once again, the way you've integrated the ESB dialogue and scenarios is very clever and fun, and you got it to dovetail very well with the social media plot. Looking forward to the denouement!

 

Y.W. could refer to Young Woman; at least that is what I thought.

 

Thank you all for reading and reviewing! The epilogue is coming right up, but before I get there, here are a few quick replies.

Thank you You're a much better person than me if you feel sorry for Ozzel -- I always thought that the man had it coming at him

Thanks both Don't worry too much about Whispurr, she'll find a new home... soon!

Oh that Pandora's box again...

Thanks Actually, you can be as greedy as you want. I've had a plan for a sequel to Feline Trouble called Canine Adventures for a couple of years already, I just need to get around to writing it.

Thanks I was actually thinking of the national anthem thingy when I came up with this one -- I saw it mentioned in a book I read not so long ago about Patrick Leigh Fermor.

I thought it made sense for Draven to be trying to figure it out to the end. The way he was portrayed in Rogue One made him come across as a little paranoid, and more generally I'm assuming that spies (those in stories at any rate) must get so caught up in their job that they can't believe in coincidences anymore.

Aaaaand... everyone is still trying to guess what Y.W. means Just read on, but pay attention, it's in there... somewhere.

Thanks again! All your questions are answered in the epilogue, so I'll just go ahead and post it.

Thanks again to everyone who dropped by to read! Epilogue up in 5, 4, 3...

 

Epilogue

“State your name and rank for the record.”

“Crewman Cadir Maneas, sir.”

“You were assigned to the Super Star Destroyer Executor, is that correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Describe your duties.”

“I was the late Admiral Ozzel’s orderly, sir. Or batman, as it is more often called here on Coruscant. I carried his messages, I took care of his laundry, I polished his boots, I made arrangements for his travels and transportation and” – Maneas let out a deep sigh – “I looked after his cat.”

The senior military judge raised an eyebrow. “His cat?”

“Yes, sir. Her name is Whispurr, she is a Caridan angora. Admiral Ozzel was very fond of her.”

The judge exchanged puzzled glances with his colleagues, then shrugged and moved on. “Do you acknowledge that your duties gave you unimpeded access to Admiral Ozzel’s quarters?”

“Yes, sir. However –”

“Do you acknowledge that you had access to his personal datapad at any given time?”

“Yes and no, sir. I had access to the object of course, but –”

“Do you confess to using the admiral’s datapad to make contact with a member of the Rebellion going by the name of Liana Hallik?”

Maneas’s lawyer stood up. “If you will allow me to clarify something, sir. The fact that my client had access to Admiral Ozzel’s quarters does not in any way imply that he knew the admiral’s password to activate the datapad. Furthermore, we have evidence that crewman Maneas was not present in the admiral’s suite at the time when the various messages to Liana Hallik were sent.”

The judge raised an eyebrow again. “Evidence, you say?”

“Yes, sir,” the lawyer said firmly but politely. “The Executor’s records of my client’s magnetic passkey show that he was in the laundry service when the first message was sent. He was using a garbage chute when the second message was sent. As for the last message, my client was in the brig.”

“The brig?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And why was that?”

The lawyer looked at Maneas, who summoned all his courage to reply. “Captain – now Admiral – Piett confined me to the brig, because... because the cat escaped.”

“The cat again?”

“Yes, sir. She was a little difficult sometimes. She didn’t like being cooped up in the admiral’s suite, and she had... various ways of expressing her displeasure.”

“For instance?”

“Well, she was extremely aggressive towards me, for starters. She would attack me so badly that I had to mend my uniform at least once a week and procure a new one every month. And, umm... she also did not want to use the litter box and –”

“At any rate, here is a copy of the Executor’s records,” the lawyer said hastily before Maneas could get into too many details. He stepped forward and placed a datacard on the bench. “These not only prove my client’s innocence in the matter of contacts with the Rebellion, but also confirm that Admiral Ozzel was the only person with access to the incriminating datapad when the messages were sent.”

The senior military judge looked at his colleagues. “Do you have any other questions for the accused?”

The officer to his left nodded. “Yes. I would like to know what happened to the cat.”

“Admiral Piett adopted her, but she isn’t aboard the Executor anymore,” Maneas said with obvious relief. “I believe his family is looking after Whispurr now.”

The senior judge looked questioningly at his colleagues again. They shook their heads.

“Very well. You are dismissed. We will review the evidence you provided and render our judgement.”

* * *​

The shuttle exited Home One’s hangar and headed towards the medical frigate. General Draven slouched comfortably against the backrest of his seat. There was no need to be in a constant state of alertness here on the edge of the Galaxy, and this was the perfect moment to have a casual look at the Imperial military newsfeeds. There was usually little information to be gleaned from them, but Draven didn’t like to leave anything to chance.

He activated his datapad and scrolled down the list of promotions, decorations and retirements. Nothing of value here, and he was about to switch off the handheld device when two consecutive items caught his attention. The first one indicated that a crewman by the name of Cadir Maneas had returned to active duty aboard the Executor after a court martial found him innocent in a case that involved contacts with Rebel spies on an unspecified social network. So CManeas existed after all, Draven thought – though why a military tribunal would find him innocent when his name was there practically in full on the HoloNet profile was an interesting question.

The second item stated that Kendal Ozzel – Draven remembered him well from his time in Republic Intelligence during the Clone Wars and knew that he had risen to the rank of admiral in the Imperial Navy – had been dismissed with disgrace posthumously after the same court martial found him guilty in a case that, again, involved contacts with Rebel spies on a social network. Now this made the question even more interesting. There was no way Ozzel could be a Rebel sympathiser. Draven had always thought of the man as a slimy, dim-witted git anyway, and even after being relegated to the Social Network Monitoring Service, he would have known if the Alliance had such a high-ranking spy in the Imperial hierarchy. Could it be that Ozzel had borrowed Cadir Maneas’s identity to try and bait Liana Hallik? Or was the operation led by Maneas himself? And if it was Maneas, was he an Imperial Intelligence agent posing as a lowly crewman, or a conscript trying to defect to the Rebellion? At any rate, the crewman would have had to manipulate events very cleverly to frame Ozzel in such a way, and that made him a potentially dangerous man. Draven resolved to keep an eye on his profile on RebelsOnly.com – although the profile had gone dormant since its last message to Liana Hallik.

As the shuttle neared the medical ship, Draven saw that the Millennium Falcon was attached to the frigate by a docking tube. He slipped his datapad in his pocket and made his way hastily to the recovery ward as soon as they reached the hangar bay – he had been told that Princess Leia would remain behind with the Skywalker boy in the immediate future while Calrissian and the Wookiee went looking for Solo, but he didn’t put it past her to change her mind and he wanted to make sure that the issue of C-3PO’s RebelsOnly.com page was settled today once and for all.

He let out a silent sigh of relief when he found Leia gazing out of the viewport, together with Skywalker and their two droids. They watched the Corellian freighter detach, make a turn and fly away into space. There was something exceedingly intimate about the scene, and Draven felt that he was trespassing on a very private moment, but he was determined to put an end to Threepio’s nonsense here and now. He waited for a few moments and coughed discreetly to signal his presence.

The first thing he noticed when the little group turned around to face him was the haunted look in Skywalker’s eyes. The boy had developed a special bond with the princess, that much was clear – but for the first time, Draven got the sense that he hadn’t chosen the user name VeryLonelyLuke as a mere ploy to indicate his romantic availability on a dating holosite. There was something deeper here, something personal, and Draven wouldn’t seek to find out what it was, because for all the importance of monitoring communications on social networks, he was adamant that each user’s privacy should be respected.

The second thing he noticed was the lines of worry that were etched on Leia Organa’s face, even as she stepped forward to greet him. This was all the confirmation he needed, now that Solo was gone, that Y.W. was indeed the user name she had chosen for herself – although what those initials meant, he had no idea.

“Yes, General,” she said politely. “I remember that you have been seeking to talk to me for a while now.”

“Indeed, Your Highness, and it is a happy coincidence that I find you here in such good company. I have reasons to believe that the Imperial fleet finding our base on Hoth may have been due to your protocol droid’s RebelsOnly.com profile.”

“Me?” Threepio sounded positively scandalised. “I would never –”

Leia burst out laughing. “Threepio can’t possibly be on RebelsOnly.com.”

Draven gave her a pointed look. “Aren’t we all?”

She blushed ever so slightly and stopped laughing. He extracted his datapad from his pocket and opened the droid’s page. “Here you go,” he said, pointing at the incriminating line about ‘planets so cold that my servomotors will freeze’. “This is exactly the sort of clue that could help the Empire narrow down their search. The odds that they could have found us on Hoth entirely by chance were...”

“... one in a million,” Luke finished for him.

Skywalker’s astromech let out a series of beeps and chirps.

“Artoo says that the odds would actually be three hundred and seventy-two trillion six hundred and forty-one billion two hundred and... well, several hundred trillion to one, given the number of inhabitable worlds in the Galaxy,” Threepio translated. “However –”

“However, you also mention desert planets in your profile,” Draven said sternly. “I strongly advise that you delete that reference before you leave for Tatooine – although, in this case, it is only your personal safety, not the security of the Alliance as a whole, that will be at stake.”

The protocol droid went to speak again, but Leia silenced him. “We will take care of it immediately, General. Thank you for all the hard work you put in this. Please accept my apologies on behalf of Threepio for making your job unnecessarily difficult.”

They exchanged polite salutations – Skywalker had reverted to his very lonely expression already – and Draven left. He saw the Millennium Falcon in the distance as his shuttle exited the hangar bay, and at the very moment when the Corellian freighter disappeared into hyperspace his datapad gave the characteristic ‘new user’ chirp.

He sighed. Now what?

The new profile bore a picture of Han Solo – but that was not possible, Draven thought; the smuggler was frozen in carbonite – and read: “Male – Age 32 – Furless – Dwarf – You Worshipfulness no worry, no committee diss cushion, life-debt do this!”

What in the blue blazes...?

He read the profile again and again, trying to run scenarios in his mind. Could Jabba the Hutt have released Solo already? If yes, why would the smuggler write up his profile now, and in such mangled Basic? What was that about a committee insulting a cushion, and where did the life-debt fit in all this?

He was so flustered that he failed to notice a single line in tiny script at the bottom of the screen. It read: “Speech-to-text conversion from Shyriiwook to Basic using Holoogle Translate”.

Draven threw his hands in the air and switched off his datapad. Someone was clearly playing mind games with him, and enough was enough. Mon Mothma hadn’t authorised him to shut down social network access, but there was still a way out of this barvy job. As soon as he reached Home One, he would hand in his resignation.

----------------------------

Note: Holoogle Translate is the creation of divapilot for her hilarious fic "Dear Mr & Mrs Solo".

 

"You Worshipfulness" That makes sense.

 

I truly feel sorry for Draven and suggest that they take down their social network sites and just use cork-boards in mess halls and rec areas to find romance or friendships.

At least Whispurr was relocated to a family, on a planet, where she can get all the love she could ask for and be spared a fiery death a year later.

 

This was terrific! I love how you interwove all the stories and then wove that into the plot -- and dialogue-- of ESB! It must be awfully lonely indeed on Hoth. Nice reference back to Rogue One, too.

Most importantly, you saved the Space Cat. I was actually worried there for a moment that Whispurr was going to be a casualty of war.

Excellent response to the challenge!

 

Draven threw his hands in the air and switched off his datapad. Someone was clearly playing mind games with him, and enough was enough. Mon Mothma hadn’t authorised him to shut down social network access, but there was still a way out of this barvy job. As soon as he reached Home One, he would hand in his resignation.

Poor Draven. He gives all his best in this job. Without his watchfulness there would be chaos due to social network breaches.

I like that you wrote down what happened right after Leia & Luke watched the take-off of the Millennium Falcon. It shows how devastated both are from their experiences in Cloud City. Yet they are able to go back to business, especially Leia, when Draven seeks them out.

 

So Whispurr has a new home (she'll probably be much happier when she's not in space). And I'm actually glad for poor Maneas...not going to be held accountable for contact with the Rebels AND no longer on cat duty.

Furless Dwarf! Yes, I can see how he'd interpret things that way! Oh, lawks...

So good (as always). Loved the characters, loved Draven, was rather sorry to lose Ozzel, although he is an unpleasant man, but still...

 

A fun and satisfying conclusion! The Rebels are out of danger. Whispurr has found a new, safe home. Maneas has been cleared and no longer needs to devote significant quantities of his workday to cleaning up cat mess (which is a good thing for any mouse droids helping him out, too). Ozzel has gotten his just desserts. And Draven can breathe a little easier now all around. Not only has he (at least partially) found out what the whole CManeas business was all about, but he also has finally, at long last, gotten his long-awaited chance to talk to Leia about That Droid. I love the way you make that scene dovetail with the famous and poignant end scene of ESB, and I love how gracious Leia is about the whole thing despite the worry that is clearly eating at her. It's cool here too that "VeryLonelyLuke" takes on a meaning beyond either the romantic one or the semihumorous Twittery one known to us Earthers, and becomes reflective of Luke's own solitary inner struggle post-Bespin. But best of all is that Draven is able to pick up on both of these characters' inner states during this reflective, pre-chat moment. He's a perceptive guy, and that's no doubt part of why he was chosen for the job he was chosen for.

And is it my imagination, or is A Certain Wookiee up to some matchmakerish pranks? "Furless – Dwarf" in combination with the Holoogle-translated broken Basic—just love it. And now I know what "Y. W." means—very, very clever!

This has been a really fun and wild ride through Rebel and Imperial intrigue alike—thanks so much for sharing!

 

Anyway....


Well, aren't I glad that you misread your dare!

This is a pretty odd concept that matches the overall theme and feel of the song and while I would still like to see the original response at some point - as I understand, that will happen - the actual thing that came out of it is great. Just like that one time when I couldn't do with the rules of a certain challenge and created a mindkriff. Rules are just guidelines, after all and breaking them creates real art. I love to see you, out of all people, colour outside the lines for reasons other than making a storyline and its events edgy. This is brilliant and I mean every word of this comment. Your best story ever, as far as I am concerned. So good that I might need two separate replies here.

Prologue

Now, that was at first...dull. Then it was pathos to the point of absurd and it got me intrigued. Then I tried to imagine it IRL and it was like something out of a Le Piaf cartoon. These characters are about as jovial as one's average funeral crowd of grannies and I can sort of imagine them humming along to the song in a lethargic manner after it has been played enough times to refuse to get out of their heads. I get it that they're quite young here and trying their best to be hip, but hoo boy, aren't they trying HARD.

Samuel Beckett would have something to say about them. And the creators of that cheesy deception song, but yeah, Beckett, the king of absurdity beyond all possible beyondness.

Chapter 1

Seeing Ozzel in your stories, or pretty much anybody's story, is a treat. He's just so conservative and nerdy in the pejorative sense of that word that one can't help but feel *kind of* sorry for him, yet think that he got what he deserved, in a way.

...I...I don't think that's a good idea, Ozzel.

And heeeeeeeeeeeeeeere's the cat from Feline Trouble. Love it how Ozzel gives this cartoon villain impression here. Not sure if that was intentional, but it made me giggle.

SoundNebula - bwahahaha.

Now, this dating site - the bait is just too easy. Of course, this is a humorous story and all, but I wonder if at least some of those members are counter-intelligence folk.


The morbidness of there being a profile for somebody who had just died, Jyn, is completely in-tune with the story. So weird, yet so awesome in its own way, since she is not alive to complain about it. And Ozzel, out of all people, has the hots for a dead girl and thinks he could exploit her. Whispurr, SCRATCH HIM. SCRATCH THE KRIFFIN' SON OF A BITH, LOL.

And it's funny how Draven is trying to rationalise his decision! LMAO.


And this is where I officially died.

I shall be leaving the reply to chapters 2 and 3 & the epilogue from another world. 'Bye!

 

Chapter 2

Finally, somebody notices it. And the connection you made is just so...BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Aaand here it is again. If he only knew...

Funny how Leia won't talk to Draven because this is literally happening when she's angry with Han and now...now this!

Chapter 3

Love this.

And love it how Veers has a bad feeling about it, yet Ozzel doesn't believe him.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

And you got the death scene perfectly. And Whispurr seemed to be a foreshadowing of what would happen to her owner, plus she switches allegiances as much as Vader himself does when it comes to his minions.

Draven is one smart, smart cookie, by the way...with the words "Rebellion" and "alliance" and all...


Epilogue

Cool bit with lawyers, given that you are a lawyer and I'm glad that you included a mention of Piett's family. I am all for Volshe's canon and Valyn Piett will always be his wife.

And this is the best ending ever:

Thanks for the great, great story.

 

Oh, Chyn!!! I loved this!!!!! So much! Funny and so ESB-ish.