The Incredirebels
A gift for @me8t as part of the @kanera-discord-events exchange! I had a lot of fun with this – I was inspired by the dinner scene from The Incredibles, so this is the Ghost Crew going undercover as a dysfunctional middle class family...
Also on AO3 ->
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In the capital city of a planet deep in Imperial space, in a nondescript house in a quiet suburban neighbourhood, Hera Syndulla was fixing her droid.
She murmured in binary to Chopper as she worked on his wiring, making sure his latest upgrade was secure and up to the task of monitoring their target: the household next door, where an Imperial governor lived with his wife and only child.
“Hera…”
From the place next to her at the dinner table, Ezra looked uncertain as he tried to catch her attention.
“Uh, Hera… You’re making weird faces again.”
“No I’m not,” she said, drawing out the ‘o’ in ‘no’ so that it sounded like ‘good boy’ in binary. Chopper was doing a great job at holding still for this. And, okay, maybe she did widen her eyes, raise her eyebrows and over-exaggerate the mouth movement.
“You make weird faces, honey,” Kanan said from where he sat opposite her. His meal sat largely untouched in front of him as most of his attention was on the datapad he had balanced on the corner of the table.
She knew he was cramming as much information on local laws and regulations into his brain as he could, and that it was so he could better infiltrate the governor’s office to get close enough to steal the intel they were after, but she couldn’t help but be irritated that he was doing it while they were eating dinner.
She sighed at him. “Do you have to read at the table?”
He didn’t look up. “Yeah… There’s a big debate on farming taxes tomorrow, and if I can get onto the select committee I’ll have two days when I’ll be right across the hall from his office.”
That did sound like a promising lead; maybe she could forgive him.
She caught sight of Ezra, who had turned back to his dinner but was attacking the steak on his plate much like a nexu might: with his teeth, instead of cutlery.
“Ezra, use your knife and not your teeth! Zeb, could you help him cut his steak?”
Ezra reluctantly let the steak drop back to his plate so that Zeb could lean over and begin to saw at it with his knife. Hera tried not to feel guilty; she’d been the one to buy their supplies and she’d seen the face Kanan had pulled when he’d found the meat she’d chosen for his steak dinner. It wasn’t her fault her only role on this mission was essentially housekeeping – she’d gladly let Kanan do all of that if he wasn’t spending each day trying to get deeper into the levels of bureaucracy at the target’s office.
Unfortunately, as Rebel Command had explained but Hera understood all too well, it would only raise suspicions if they managed to get aliens working at an Imperial government office. Which was why Hera’s role was to stay at home and monitor all incoming and outgoing communications from the target’s house, and Zeb was covering the last remaining place the governor frequented: the gym.
Ezra and Sabine were trying a more unconventional route. They’d been enrolled at the same school as the governor’s son, and their task was to befriend him to enter the house and plant surveillance devices. While they were taking well to the espionage element of their roles, Ezra in particular was struggling with something he had very little experience in: attending school. Which reminded her–
“Ezra, do you have something you want to tell Kanan about school?”
The boy’s face took on a panicked expression. “Uh, sure, I saw a tooka! Did you know they’re different to loth-cats because–”
Hera rolled her eyes and cut him off mid-sentence. “Ezra got sent to the office again.”
“Good, good,” Kanan said absently, his eyes still on the screen.
“No, Kanan, that’s bad,” Hera told him gently.
He finally looked up from the datapad. “What?”
“Ezra got sent to the office again,” she repeated.
“What!” He looked between her and his padawan. “What for?”
“Nothing!” Ezra exclaimed, trying to look innocent.
“He put a tack on the teacher’s chair,” Hera told Kanan. “During class.”
“Nobody saw anything, and you could barely even see it on the tape,” Ezra mumbled.
“Wait, they caught you on tape and you still got away with it?” Zeb, who had been listening in, was grinning widely as he continued to hack at Ezra’s steak.
Even Kanan looked thoughtful. “Your control must be getting really good if no-one noticed, how smoothly did you get it there?”
Hera narrowed her eyes at both of them. “We are not encouraging this.”
“I’m not encouraging, I’m just asking!” Zeb protested, his hands moving faster as his voice rose. He turned his head towards Ezra and dropped his voice conspiratorially. “So, how smooth was it?”
“Zeb!”
Hera’s warning came too late; there was a loud cracking noise and everyone fell silent to stare at Ezra’s plate. Zeb had sawed right through the steak and split the porcelain beneath it clean in two. He’d been too distracted by the conversation to temper his strength.
Maybe sending Zeb to the gym every day hadn’t been such a smart move. The Lasat hardly needed more strength.
“Great,” Zeb muttered, glaring at the shards of pottery. “First the bike, now this.”
Hera blinked. “What happened to the bike?”
Zeb’s scowl deepened. It was clear he didn’t want to answer the question.
“Here.” He swapped his intact plate with Ezra’s and picked up the pieces of broken one, which thankfully were still whole enough to continue holding the remains of Ezra’s dinner. “I’ll get myself a new plate.”
The silence lingered as he stood and left the table, retreating to the kitchen.
“So, how about you, Sabine,” Hera said brightly. “How was school?”
She shrugged. “Nothing new.”
“You’ve hardly touched your food.” Hera frowned with concern.
Sabine merely poked at her plate with her fork. “I’m not hungry for nunaloaf.”
“I’m sure Kanan could cook you up something else – a steak, some flatcakes, what are you hungry for?”
Sabine shook her head and Hera gave up, turning back to Chopper. At least she’d broken the tension left behind by Zeb’s accident. As she turned away from the table she didn’t hear the quiet words Ezra said next.
“Ketsu Onyo,” he teased Sabine in a mocking, singsong tone.
Sabine glared at him. “Shut up,” she hissed.
“Well you are.”
“Shut up you little nerf!” Sabine’s eyes flicked to Hera, her irritation having made her raise her voice.
Ezra appealed to their captain. “She is!”
Hera didn’t look up from Chopper. “Do not shout at the table.”
“Kids, listen to your captain.” Kanan’s warning tone was enough to get Sabine to stand down, but Ezra clearly didn’t feel he was done yet.
“She’d eat it if we were having Ketsu-loaf,” he murmured.
“That’s it!”
Sabine slammed her hands against the table and stood up, her chair scraping against the floor. She threw her fork with deadly precision at Ezra’s head and closely followed it with a spare detonator from her pocket.
He reacted to both missiles with Force-aided instincts, stumbling over his chair but ducking neatly out of the way. The distraction meant he didn’t see Sabine rush him until she planted her hands on his chest and shoved him to the floor.
Chopper whooped with approval while Hera shouted for them to stop, trying to be heard over their fighting. Ezra retaliated by swinging a fist at Sabine, which she ducked and followed up with a quick grab for the gauntlet which was hooked to her belt. She tugged it on and turned back to face him.
“Hey, no armour!” he complained.
She activated her energy shield. “You started it.”
Ezra grimaced and summoned his lightsaber, thumbing the switch that activated the blade in practise mode.
“That’s enough!”
Kanan’s voice cut through the kids’ argument at the same time as both of them felt themselves suddenly immobilised and lifted a few feet into the air. Kanan had stood from the table and now held both hands out, one extended towards Ezra and the other to Sabine, as he used the Force to hold them back from each other.
Hera was also standing, her vibrospanner still in her hand.
“Everybody stand down,” she ordered.
Kanan looked to Sabine and saw her nod, but before he could get the same confirmation from Ezra, the doorbell rang.
As if a switch had been flicked, the four of them immediately reset their positions. Kanan dropped the kids (gently) to the floor, Ezra’s lightsaber disappeared, Sabine’s gauntlet returned to her belt, and the four of them returned to their seats around the table as if nothing had happened.
Hera let out a breath and rose from her seat, feeling everyone’s eyes on her back as she did her best to project an air of calm. Trying to appear as though she had just got up from the middle of her meal, and not mediating a fight between her crewmembers, she opened the door.
“Kori!” she exclaimed upon seeing the governor’s teenage son on their front step. “What a lovely surprise.”
“Hi, Mrs Sumar,” he said politely. She still wasn’t used to the cover name they were using, as both Syndulla and Jarrus were far too well-known to the Empire. “Are Ezra and Sabine in?”
“They’re just finishing their dinner.”
“We’re done!” they both chorused from behind her.
“Do you have that new SpaceStation game you were talking about at school?” Ezra asked excitedly.
“Yeah, Dad got it for me! Want to come over and play it?”
“You bet we do!” Sabine enthused.
Hera stood aside so the kids could leave, feeling pleased that they were also making progress with the mission. She wouldn’t forget about the dinner incident, though – the retribution for that would be waiting for them when they returned.
Until then, she had a dinner table to clear and a droid to finish updating. Why Rebel Command couldn’t have found them a house with a dishwasher, she didn’t know.
“Would you help me clean up, love?”
Kanan immediately looked up from his datapad, which he’d returned to as soon as peace had been restored. He gave her a soft smile and she watched him turn the screen off completely before starting to stack the mostly-empty dishes.
They cleared the table in a comfortable silence. Hera didn’t speak until Kanan was stood before a sink full of soapy water and had a plate and a sponge in his hand, and she stood next to him with a tea towel.
“Thanks for intervening earlier, with the kids,” she said finally.
“They’re as much my responsibility as yours,” he replied gently. “More, even, since I’m Ezra’s Master.”
She twisted a corner of the tea towel in her hands. “I worry that the stress of this mission is having an effect on them.”
“Tonight did get pretty out of hand.”
“And Ezra keeps acting out at school. I know it’s his first time in formal education and being around so many other kids since his parents died, but I don’t remember him getting in this much trouble when he infiltrated the Imperial Academy.”
“Maybe it’s because none of the staff at his school carry Stormtrooper-issue blasters,” Kanan suggested light-heartedly,
Hera huffed out a laugh. “You have a point there, dear. But the teasing, the pranks… He must be learning all this from his classmates. Is it a good influence? I know most kids go through the school system and make it out okay, but things felt better before, when he was just with the crew all the time.”
Kanan picked up the frying pan he’d cooked the steaks in and dunked it into the soapy water. “I can’t speak to what the rest of the galaxy experienced, but up until I was about his age, I knew a lot of kids like that. And we had Jedi Masters watching our every move! But they grow out of it. You just have to wait – and the same applies here. We’re all close to the target now; it’s only a matter of time before one of us gets the data we need, and then we’re out of here. Back to the Ghost, back to the skies, back to regular jobs.”
He shut off the running water he was rinsing the pan in and turned to look at her with a softness in his eyes that reassured her just as much as his words.
Hera nodded, thoughtful. “You’re right, we just need to be patient. Still, do you think you could give Ezra an extra lesson or two in discipline over the next few days?”
He chuckled. “I’ll do my best.”
“Thanks, love.”
She reached for the next plate on the draining board, and as she did Kanan leaned over to press a kiss to her temple. It was a reminder that even in the most foreign of undercover missions like this, there was one thing that never wavered.
And she treasured it more than anything.
