A/N: This was written as a response to a Dare Challenge over at the fan fiction section of the Jedi Council boards. Dares had a 2,500 word limit, which was somewhat difficult for me to work with, since I have a tendency to go overboard, lol. Anyways, this was my dare:
I dare you to write a story about Wes and Hobbie during their days as training officers for the New Republic military. This fic must have: 1. Use the title 'Training Days'
2. Involve a group of trainees awaiting their first day of training.
3. Be a group with a lot of memorable quirks. What they are, I'll leave it up to you.
4. Involve a prank.
5. Someone ends up with a pie in the face in the end.
This didn't start or end the way I expected it to, but it was all good fun. Enjoy!
Training Days
NEW REPUBLIC DEFENSE FLEET
INQUIRY: incident at training session
SUBJECT: Jorge, Denali. Human female. Age 20. Homeworld: Coruscant.
Computer on. Recording.
My name is Denali Jorge, and I am an ex-trainee.
No, I have never been and will never be a train. That is not what I said. Are you delusional, by any chance? Delusional fly boy? Oh, so you think I babble too much. Okay, yeah, I get that. Sometimes I do talk too much – I open my mouth and words come flying out, somewhat uncontrolled. Not my fault, I can't help it. My mom always said that I talked too much. She told me once that I was born talking.
No, I am not trying to talk my way out of jail! What is it with all you officers these days?
Start from the beginning? Okay, okay, fine… ugh. You always make it so obscenely complicated. Can't I start with the end?
No?
All right, fine! To the beginning we go.
My name is Denali Jorge and I –
Pfft. FINE! You guys are really uptight. I wonder how Janson got through your screening process… or do you even have screening processes anymore? Or does everyone who fought the Empire get a free pass? If so, why don't you give some to the Ewoks, I'm sure they'd help the military oh-so-much, they did a great job at Endor… not to mention Janson would have a field day.
Am I babbling again? Oops. So sorry, officer, I can't help it. Maybe you'll have to arrest my mouth for talking out of turn.
Yes, I know you can't interview a mouth. Where's your sense of imagination?
MY NAME IS DENALI JORGE AND I AM AN EX-TRAINEE. NO, YOU ASKED ME TO GO BACK TO THE BEGINNING, SO HERE I AM, GOING BACK TO THE BEGINNING. LET ME CONTINUE, WILL YOU? Unless you enjoy continually going back to the beginning – oh, sithspit. Whatever. I give up.
I came to train with the NRDF three months ago. I wanted to be a fighter pilot. Besides talking my mouth out when I was little, I wanted to fly around the stars. I wanted to go places, and if I could help protect my friends and family – yadda yadda yadda, this is so classic fighter pilot syndrome I'm almost ashamed of myself – and fly at the same time, why not? That's how I got to be here. I passed my exams. I got to that first day of training, ahead of everyone else in my class. I was golden. I was free. I was going to do the best I could, which was going to be the best. I was going to be a celebrated fighter pilot –
Okay, okay, I'll get on with it. I did warn you multiple times that I talk to much. Is there a problem beyond that, officer?
Oh, you think I'm telling a story. Well guess what, laser brains, I AM telling you a story because you just asked me, "What happened?" Well, I'm telling you what happened and I'll do it anyway I please. So there.
Okay, so it's my first day. I cut my really, really Princess Leia-challenging long hair the day before. Made it really short so I wouldn't get a bad case of helmet hear, see? And it's not all about vanity – you try seeing when you've got hair that's almost down to your knees. If it gets in your face, it really gets in your face. But it's also a pride thing, see, 'cause I really didn't want to have to cut it and I fought with myself about it for ages –
Yes, this has a point. I'm just taking a roundabout way to it. Lighten up, would you?
So I walk in there to the debriefing room where all us first batch of trainees are supposed to meet. And guess what? Are they sitting quietly, maybe chatting polite amongst each other? Nope. You'd expect the New Republic military to have a little class (even though technically we weren't New Republic military yet). Let me see. Amongst their numerous faults were bouncing off the walls, chair-flinging, attempting to bake cakes and pies in the middle of the debriefing room, coin tossing, juggling… there was one guy who was trying on his collection of stormtrooper uniforms, just to show them off. He had several of the standard white ones dyed multiple different colours (including rainbow) and he was swaning about the room in them, throwing the helmets of the other armour at us, trying to get us to join him. There was this midget girl with stripy hair who was attempting to sing an opera and dance a ballet to keep us amused. Everything she said came out as a song, but it was ear-piercing racket, let me tell you.
I was not impressed. You'd think I was having an audition for the Coruscant Circus or something, not trying to become a fighter pilot. It was embarrassing, it was, being in the room with that lot.
"Am I in the right place?" I said awkwardly.
Mr. Stormtrooper Suit swans over to me and goes, "So, you wanna be a fighter pilot?"
That's when Miss Stripy starts singing a piece which she entitled "Ode to the Fighter Pilot." It was Sith-awful noise, let me tell you:
Oh, you want to be a fighter piiiiilot
And fly amongst the staaars alll daaaaaay
Oh, you want to be a fighter piiiiilot
But you don't know the waaaaaay—
See? I told you it was awful. But she's just belting this out. So, I go sit down next to Mr. Cake/Pie dude (because he's the one who looks the most normal) and he starts trying to feed me stuff. So I tell him to stop, 'cause I don't want any of his food, but he insists and goes so far as to try to shove some cream cake in my mouth. It was awful, and it made me start choking and everything. Sithspit, that cream cake could have killed me! Check your bloody records! I dare you!
So, I take the cake and say to him, "No way! Have a little taste of your own food for a change, buddy!" And I shove the cream cake in his own mouth. Except the problem is that he likes the taste of his own cooking, so he just sits there with cake in his mouth and a dreamy look on his face.
I'm getting real annoyed by this point so I stand up and walk across the room to sit by myself. Except it's hard, 'cause Mr. Stormtrooper Suit is trying to snuggle up with me with his stormtrooper helmets and I'm trying to get him to leave me alone but he's going, "Hey, try this on, please! It's AWESOME!" and I'm all like, "Ew, get away from me before I stomp all over your precious stormtrooper suits."
He actually looks a little disappointed, but by then the doors have opened and in come Janson and the other guy (can't remember his name right now) –
What?
Oh. Hobbie. Right. Janson and Hobbie. Training Officers extraordinaire.
My foot. Really, you should think about giving them the sack, 'cause they are by no means brilliant. If anything, they helped things get crazier! Check your records!
Why does anyone not do that any more? I'll never get it.
So, Janson and the other guy – Hobbie – come in and are trying to introduce themselves, except Janson sees the cake and makes streamline for it. Hobbie is trying to spectacularly continue along with all this debriefing stuff, but Miss Stripy is now singing a very flat aria that introduces herself to them and lists many reason (one thousand and ten – I counted) why she should be a fighter pilot.
Hobbie congratulates Miss Stripy on her wonderful singing. I tell her to shut up, very loudly. Janson has cake all over himself by this point, 'cause Mr. Cake/Pie dude keeps trying to feed him and he keeps accepting it.
"Do you think you could get me some cake for my Ewok?" Janson says.
Mr. Cake/Pie dude starts making up some more cake and some more pie. He's on the run. He's baking and baking and you're wondering why the hell he's here in the first place. So, I'm getting sick of this. I stand up and march over to Janson, but I trip on my way because Mr. Stormtrooper Suit has pushed a pile of helmets in my way. I fall over the helmet and crash into Janson and he goes head-first into a cake that has a lot of white icing on it – Mr. Cake/Pie dude has been calling it the HOTH CAKE. Because it's white.
Oohoo, so creative.
Anyways, Janson is positively THRILLED to have landed in the cake and he starts eating the icing. I say "Excuse me, but you have got to be kidding me." Janson offers me a piece of cake and pulls out a roster. He looks at it and goes, "Thank you very much, I needed that. Would you like to get a piece of cake for my Ewok while you're at it?"
"What Ewok?"
"The one over there."
"I don't see an Ewok."
"What do you mean? He's standing right over there!"
I turn and looked around the room. Miss Stripy is so short she could possibly be considered to be impersonating an Ewok, but somehow I get the feeling that she's not the Ewok in question.
"Who?" I say.
"Well, you are certainly blockheaded."
"This coming from the guy who has icing all over his face," I say.
"Yep," he says. "Something wrong with that?"
"COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY," I say.
"Well, then, you must lighten up, girl," he says. "All sorts of crazy things happen to fighter pilots. Believe me, I've been in the business for way too long. I've had all sorts of crazy things happen to me – though this is my first time leading a debriefing with icing all over my face. I'll just have to add it to the list."
"WHAT THE HELL?!" I scream.
Hobbie walks over to me. He's picked up some of the juggling balls that have been flying around the room and he's tossing them up and down. "This is a test," he says. "All pilots have to do it. It's called the Insanity Test. If you pass, you're clinically insane and you're accepted. If you don't pass, you're sane and you can go home."
"WHAT THE HELL?!"
"Is there a problem, Miss… DEE-na-LEE?" Janson says.
"Denali," I correct.
"Sorry?"
"It's Duh-nah-lee."
"Huh. Dee-nah-lee," Janson says.
"Denali!"
"Deenalee!" He stops for a moment. He looks like he's thinking very, very hard. "Can we just call you Dee?"
"NO!" I hate nicknames. It's so annoying whenever someone insists on giving you a nickname and you don't want one. Why do people do that?
So, by now, I'm thinking of getting the hell out of there, 'cause it's getting way too strange. So, I turn around and walk towards the exit. But then a great sack of flour falls on my head out of nowhere and I'm covered in white stuff and I'm coughing and sneezing. I don't know what else to do, so I fall down and start crawling, except I hit the collection of stormtrooper suits and now Mr. Stormtrooper is crying that I've gotten flour all over his precious collection. I'm half in mind to tell him to shut up and it's own fault for bringing the collection in the first place.
"I think I'll write a song about this!" Miss Stripy says.
"I think that's a good idea!" Janson says. If I didn't know better, he was beaming when he said that.
Anyway, Mr. Cake/Pie is celebrating, because his excellent plan went off with a bang – someone walked right into his Flour Trap and he can't wait to tell everyone that it was his plan. I'm infuriated, 'cause now I'm walking around covered head-to-toe with the stupid white stuff.
To my horror, Janson is congratulating Mr. Cake/Pie for his prank. I can't believe it. So, I storm over and pick up the nearest thing from the table. It turns out that it's a pie. I swing around and fling it – the pie lands right in Mr. Cake/Pie's face.
"You DESERVE that one!" I shout.
He blinks and stares at me.
And then he starts trying to eat the pie on his face.
"That's disgusting," I say.
"You're disgusting," he shoots back.
I glare at him and jump up and down on the spot, I'm so mad.
I storm out of the room, and manage to walk right into another flour trap and have more white stuff dumped on me. Can you believe it? Twice in less than three minutes!
That's when I hear Hobbie and Janson discussing it behind my back.
"Some people just can't take it," Hobbie says.
"Yep. Mark that one down as sane," Janson agrees.
"You know, this has really gotten quite messy. Perhaps we should come up with another plan of sorting the bright, creative ones from the uncreative, dull ones."
"Nah. This is fun! It's all in a day's work for a training day!" He pauses. "This one was practically normal in comparison to the others we've seen."
I'm so infuriated at this point that I have no control whatsoever over my actions. I storm down the hallway, lift the first blaster I find off the first military guy I meet, and shoot the controls to the debriefing room, successfully sealing them in. If it also caused that fire, then that's fine with me. Go me! They deserved it.
The moment I walked out of there, I decided that I quit. The world of fighter pilots is way too insane for me, and I didn't even fight any simulation battles. I ain't ever going back.
My name is Denali Jorge and I am an ex-trainee.
End recording. Computer off.
fin