A short time later, the Vulture found itself staring down at the somewhat rickety green protocol droid standing before it. There was a visible layer of dust covering his surface, and while his eyes flickered every few seconds, he seemed alert enough.

“Oh my,” he repeated for the fourth time in half as many minutes.

The Twi’lek woman was beginning to get exasperated. “Tell me about it. Abbit, can you translate what it’s saying?”

He turned to her, arms stiffly held at his sides. “Oh, hello! I am A-B1T, and I am ever so pleased to make your acquaintance. May I ask your name?”

She made a muted groan. “I’ll… tell you later. Can you translate for the big droid?”

Understanding dawned across the Vulture’s thoughts. After she had calmed down somewhat, the Twi’lek woman had gone back inside, and the Vulture had considered blasting the house down again. Thankfully, she’d come back before it could decide whether that was a good plan or not, and she’d brought the protocol droid with it. And now it knew why!

Disappointment cut a line through the relief of comprehension. It didn’t communicate with beeps or sounds like many of its compatriots, which meant the protocol droid’s presence was entirely pointless. The intent was appreciated, however. This was turning out to be a very considerate work force!

A-B1T echoed the Vulture’s thoughts. “I regret to inform you that the droid is not speaking at all! Would you like me to perform any other service? I am fluent in over-”

“-six billion forms of communication, yes, you’ve said that. Many times.”

The protocol droid was no longer listening, staring off into the distance. The Vulture turned, trying to see what he was looking at, but there wasn’t anything there except fields and livestock.

A-B1T’s eyes dimmed for a fraction of a second, and then he faced the Twi’lek woman with a start of surprise. “Why, hello! I am A-B1T, and I am ever so pleased to make your acquaintance. May I ask-”

The Twi’lek woman reached behind A-B1T’s neck and flicked a switch, and the protocol droid powered down. Gripping the bridge of her nose with her thumb and index finger, she dragged her fingers down and irritably looked up at the Vulture. “Okay…”

The Vulture suddenly realized something that nearly made it shut down. It had to make another decision. Without an available method of communication, it had to come up with an alternate mode, ensure that the Twi’lek knew what it was trying to say, and figure out what to say at that point. Assuming it even succeeded at the first two steps.

It was a faulty plan that required faulty subplans. The Vulture, for the first time that day, made a decision immediately and easily; no more plans aside from the main one.

So, without a plan to follow, it stayed perfectly still. If it didn’t move, it couldn’t make further decisions and it couldn’t negatively impact future interactions in any way. It would wait until a Separatist signal came through and it would do anything that signal told it to do. Nothing had come of its plans except the necessity to make more, which missed the point of trying to avoid having to make them in the first place!

Shaking her head, the Twi’lek gazed up at the Vulture, resting her hands on her hips. “Where in the world did you come from…?”

The Vulture, naturally, did not answer.

“Hey, Mom,” the younger Twi’lek started, tentatively approaching the three of them. “Is it talking yet?”

“According to Abbit, it doesn’t talk at all,” she told him in reply, still staring at the Vulture droid. “And it doesn’t seem to move much, either. So what’s it doing here?”

The Twi’lek boy watched at the Vulture for several seconds along with his mother. He startled both of them when he shouted, “Hey, droid!”

The Vulture and the Twi’lek flinched in unison, attention instantly diverted to the boy. “Zeh’tocu!” She practically hissed.

He ignored her, raising his right arm into the air. “This means yes!” Lifting the other, he added, “And this means no!”

Excitement tinged the Vulture’s thoughts. Someone else was making the decisions! This was perfect! Now, if something went wrong, it was the Twi’lek boy’s fault, and its superiors would consign Zeh’tocu to the scrap heap instead of the Vulture.

Breaking out of its thoughts, the Vulture ignored the Twi’lek mother’s fussing over her son and held its forward right limb upward, trying not to notice the squealing of old parts and rusting joints.

Both Twi’lek paused to watch the Vulture for any further movement, and then looked at each other.

After a moment of hesitation, she loudly asked, “Are you dangerous?”

The Vulture didn’t have to think twice about that. Its right leg went into the air again, and both faces in front of it scrunched with concern. “Okay, well… are you planning to hurt us?”

It slammed its right into the ground, almost falling over with the speed of raising its left. Their safety was now a relatively high priority, since they were making the bad plans for the time being. If they ended being less helpful than needed it could go for a more violent option, but until then, it needed them alive.

“Do you have a name?” Zeh’tocu blurted, and the Vulture gestured negatively. This was easy!

“I think we should contact the Republic,” the Twi’lek woman told her son, and suddenly it got much harder. The Republic was the enemy. The Vulture knew that with absolute adamant certainty. Anyone affiliated with the Republic had to either go through intensive screening by a superior or be executed upon examination. The problem with that was that none of the Vulture’s superiors were present, or possibly even alive, which automatically meant that it was the highest-ranking Separatist representative present.

A great dollop of frustration landed on the Vulture’s routines. All it wanted to do - all it wanted to do was follow orders. Why was that so hard to do!? People loved giving orders! They did it all the time!

It boiled down to yet another decision, a critical one. The Vulture had to decide exactly how essential the Twi’leks were to the Separatists and whether their continued existence would profit the cause or not. Given that they were remaining calm, possessed a farm, and most importantly had fingers, the Vulture wanted to believe they were necessary. But if they had contact with the Republic, that threw a number of large and awkwardly shaped wrenches into the mix.

It had frozen in place upon hearing that dreaded sentence, and anything said by the Twi’leks had been all but missed in the pre-programmed irritation felt by the presence of autonomy. It now realized that they were both staring at it, Zeh’tocu with an expression of hope and his mother with a raised eyebrow.

She let out her breath in a sigh. “Fine.”

“YES!” Zeh’tocu’s hands shot to the sky, clenched into fists of excitement. “Okay droid, follow me!”

The Vulture obeyed the order before it could ask itself if it should, shaking the ground with every step. The Twi’lek woman watched on, deep concern and a faint tinge of something approaching greed glinting in her eyes.

Zeh’tocu led the Vulture to one of the barns, struggling to push the heavy doors in the front open. It was a two story building with a sizeable loft, and while a decrepit tractor hid in the back corner, there was plenty of open space in the center. An upright battery covered in dust stood to one side, connection hose draped on a paddock wall. Several stalls occupied either side of the barn, with a kybuck moodily grazing in the one opposite Zeh’tocu. Stray strands of straw could be seen floating in the air, starkly outlined by rays of sun.

The young Twi’lek threw his arms wide. “You can stay here for now, ‘kay? Mom’s gonna try and fix you up, and then we can give you a voice! I want you to sound like my old teacher droid 3-9B, so I thought we could take his voice out since he doesn’t work anymore, but I don’t know if that counts as ‘morally compromising’. Mom talks about that a lot but I don’t really know what it means. I’m sure I’ll figure it out, I’m really smart. I can build small robots to fight rodents but they don’t have a brain so I have to use a remote. Anyway, do you want anything? I can probably give you a tune-up if you want!”

The Vulture stared flatly at Zeh’tocu, trying to process everything the excitable boy had expunged and put it in some sort of order that made sense. It didn’t seem like a very achievable task, so it simply ignored it.

The work force was being quite accommodating, even if they didn’t know they were a work force yet. The barn was roomy enough, and would provide ample camouflage for when the Vulture needed to recharge for a bit.

Unfortunately, that also meant the Vulture would have to trust them. Not to mention, it technically wasn’t supposed to reside in foreign housing without prior approval of a superior officer, but as far as the Vulture knew, all of its immediate superior officers were dead. It was as superior as it could get, which was still frankly annoying.

Zeh’tocu climbed up onto a paddock, swinging his legs. “Hey, can you shoot things? I mean, I know you aimed your gun at me and Mom, but I don’t think you were going to actually shoot.”

The Vulture disagreed.

“But like, how does it work? Or-”

“Zeh’tocu!”

They both looked towards the home where the Twi’lek woman’s voice had come from. She was watching both of them with a hard furrow of concern in her forehead. “Come in for dinner, okay?”

He pouted as he slid off the paddock. “Guess I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Good night, sleep tight, and don’t let the-”

Zeh’tocu paused, a blank look of confusion on his face. “Wait, it’s not nighttime.”

Shaking his head, he ran off to his mother. The Vulture watched him leave, still running the situation over. It had thought of a few rather concerning things.

Firstly, these people were very trusting of the giant droid that had shown up on their front door. The Vulture knew the Separatists were a force for good, intended to help all they encountered, but trust had limits.

Second, they didn’t recognize it as a Vulture droid. Its model should have been extremely recognizable to anyone who had ever even heard of the Separatists, and there was a warehouse of droids on the planet.

In a rather detached way, it was pleased by in spite of its inability to make plans, it could still use logic. At the same time, that logic allowed it to come to conclusions that it would rather have been unaware of.

It the Twi’lek were trusting of a strange droid, and they didn’t know that it was a Separatist droid this close to a former Separatist droid warehouse…

A spark of dread rose deep within the Vulture.

…How long had it been?