The last time Rusk had seen Kritak he'd been hunched over in one of the old chairs in Rusk's sitting room. He'd been talking about how the people needed Rusk, and wouldn't he just consider coming with him. Rusk had told him no and shown Kritak out the door and watched him limp away into the night.

This? This was the last place Rusk expected to run into Kritak. Kritak had been a well known, well regarded officer in the Imperial army for as long as Rusk had known him.

"What're you doing on the walls of a rebel outpost?" Rusk drawled. He felt unaccountably miffed that Kritak didn't seem surprised by him. Most people at least startled when he snuck up on them.

"Inspecting," Kritak rumbled.

Rusk huffed. "You could have said you weren't trying to recruit me back into the Empire."

Kritak gave him a gimlet stare. "Not my fault you've gone soft. A few years ago you'd have known the last place I stopped for a piss."

Rusk rolled his eye. "Retired."

"And yet," Kritak said, clasping his paws one over the other atop his cane, "here you are."

---

Trying to do a set of pieces of these characters. Let's see how that goes.