Disclaimer: I do NOT own star wars or anything remotely related to this parody. This includes cacti and man-eating doors.
Darren
The Republic fleet moved slowly over Geonosis; consisting of at least 100 Acclamator-class Assault ships, and they all moved slowly planet-side.
Inside one, in hangar B-5, a gunship prepared to take a team of clones down, to be part of the front assault force, which consisted of every ship launching 10 gunships full of clones.
Alpha 101 stood, in line with the other clones, to something resembling a lazy form of attention, as the Sergeant addressed them.
"Men! We are going in hard, moving forward and, if need be, back, then forward again."
Sounds like fun, thought Alpha 101 – Darren.
The Sergeant continued.
"No amount of training or preparation could ever get you ready for this experience – it's…" –he paused, breathed in and out deeply– "wonderful."
When Darren had first been 'made' a number of years ago part of his training was to go to Felucia and scale some of the mountains there. The trek took 2 weeks, and many clones from his unit died, and the popular sayings were 'Why are we doing this', 'is that a river or the result of a Bantha's 'happy time?'', and 'that's not a rock! How the hell could a Bantha get up here!'
But, of course, Darren remembers none of this.
Shortly after he finished all of his training he was nearly eaten by a rogue door on Kamino – the incident partially crushed his brain, making it so small it could fit into the ash tray of an atom – and he now suffers ASS-I-AMM (A Spiffingly Short and Indecisive Amount of Memory Malfunction (short term)). He would know where he was (sometimes), what some things were – such as guns and tanks – and a few people, but had no idea how to use them (especially the people) to his advantage.
This is why, while everyone was paying attention to the Sergeant and listening to the drop details, he was looking down at his gun and thinking 'how the hell do I work this thing?', even though there was a small note just behind the trigger saying "DARREN: PULL THIS TRIGGER" with a large arrow pointing at the trigger, which had another sign saying "TUG ME AND I SHOOT STUFF".
He suffered momentary quirks, things which the Kaminoins purposely overlooked – the part of brain that allowed him the ability to distinguish right and wrong; smart and dumb, had been severely damaged.
This was also why he looked up and said to the Sergeant, "I love you."
Everyone looked at him, and the Sergeant stopped talking.
For Darren this was almost as awkward as that time he walked in on 2 male Kaminoins……… playing cards………strip poker to be precise………with 2 female Kaminoin………and Boba Fett.
"Alpha 101…" growled the Sergeant.
Suddenly it hit Darren, and he winced. "Oh, right. Sorry – I love you, sir."
"ONTO THE SHIP!"
The clones piled on without saying a word and, most likely, not thinking anything – except for Darren.
Darren was thinking about a Republic cruiser with a giant pink flower on it, and said, "I wonder if this gunship can fly."
The only clone that acknowledged this was the Sergeant, who mumbled something incoherent and stepped onto the gunship after Darren.
Darren's mind is a strange thing.
The sheer small size of it is mind boggling, but since his mind is so small it can't even begin to comprehend the smallness of it – it is immune to boggling. When he sees something, and tries to remember it, he works extremely hard, but is then disappointed to find that when he turns his attention to something else he forgets what he is supposed to be remembering. Then he remembers that he forgot to remember something, and is disappointed because he can't remember what it was he was supposed to remember. Then he stops being disappointed, because he completely forgets that he had failed to remember something he forgot after he told himself not to forget to remember it.
Pretty mind boggling, eh?
It doesn't bother him at all – he doesn't even know what mind boggling is. He forgot.
Eventually he forgot that he had ASS-I-AMM, and isn't at all bothered by the fact that he keeps forgetting everything he sets out to remember, even though he doesn't really want to remember everything, because – if he doesn't forget to remember – he doesn't remember at all.
Sometimes he also has arguments or conversations with himself; one side being his thoughts and the other being his voice box.
The battle planet-side was raging.
Giant CIS core-ships attempted to lift off and join the rest of their fleet in space, but the Republic LAAT (Low Altitude Assault Transport) gunships and SPHA-T (Self Propelled Heavy Artillery-Turbolaser) artillery pieces cut them down, causing many to explode, and some to land in the dust and dirt, causing a large dust cloud to cover the 2 armies (Republic and CIS).
LAAT's landed and out piled clone troopers, following Jedi into battle.
On one gunship, this had just landed, 10 clones piled out; with no Jedi escorting them. The Sergeant led the unit – single file – into the thick of the battle, firing his own blaster rifle at the droids in front of the army.
One clone, however, was left behind to wonder why birds had wings.
Darren.
He looked around, having no clue as to what he was supposed to be doing.
"Hmm," he said. "I wonder why they're running away."
Maybe they're trying to find something, he thought.
"But what?"
I don't know.
"Why are we even here? Are we supposed to be fighting some sort of battle with those robot thingies?"
I don't remember.
"Neither do I."
Perhaps they are looking for giant pink flowers on ships?
Darren giggled.
"Perhaps. Tee-hee. That word sounds funny. Almost like 'hoop'. That's funny."
Yes, I rather quite like it.
"Maybe my name should be Bob instead of Darren."
Or Bill.
"Or Kustaar."
Kustaar?
"Meh."
Why are we talking about alternate names?
"I don't know. I forgot."
What did we forget?
"I don't know. I forgot."
Oh well.
"Yeah, let's go."
"Alpha 101!" a voice yelled over the comm, awash with static – the Sergeant's voice. "Where are you?! We need you at the front AT-TE now! Do you copy, over?"
"Uh…" he looked around, watched as clones ran past and blaster bolts sizzled through almost every possible space; an explosion to his left showered him with dirt, and he shrugged.
"I dunno. You got me there. I think I'm in the Outer Rim of the Galaxy?"
There was static and blaster fire on the other end of the comm channel, and panting.
"Just get here now!"
"Where am I supposed to be going?"
The comm clicked off.
Darren (Or, as he would now know himself as for about the next few minutes before he forgot again – Darren-Bob-Billy Kustaar) shrugged again and started off towards the front, running, and a lot of red and blue lasers shot past. He moved with the pack of clones, and as he got closer to the front the clones slowed down, and there was much more shooting.
To Darren the red lasers looked pink, and his thoughts immediately moved to something else that was pink – something that might have been on a ship (he didn't know exactly; he forgot) – but then he forgot about that too, and he forgot the thought of pink lasers almost instantly. The only reason Darren remembered the Sergeant was because there was a holorecord in his quarters back on Kamino, which he almost always forgot about until he saw it again, on a loop, constantly playing the Sergeant telling Darren that he was the Sergeant, showing his modified armour to prove that.
He also remembered the voice every time he saw the holorecord and then saw the Sergeant in person.
That is why, just after he thought about how fast someone might be able to map how fast they were thinking while thinking about possible answers for how fast they could map themselves thinking of themselves thinking of answers to impossible questions, he recognised a voice that shouted to him.
"Alpha 101!"
The Sergeant suddenly appeared next to him – Darren hadn't noticed him before – scaring Darren out of his armour.
"Wow!" he nearly jumped up into the air. Then he spoke in his normal 'spaced-out' voice.
"Hello, Sergeant. I didn't know you were a magic-man."
"Get down!" the Sarge yelled, and dropped his weapon, tackling Darren to the ground as a rocket, fired from a droid, flew over their heads and smashed into the AT-TE's head and detonated, covering it and the clones underneath it in flames. More clones on the side were thrown away from it like… uh….. clones that had just been next to an AT-TE before it exploded, and then thrown aside. Rubble and flames flew overhead, and the chassis of the AT-TE crumbled inwards on itself.
Looks like a red balloon, thought Darren as he stared at the black remains of the AT-TE.
The Sergeant stood, and then helped him up.
"Are you alright, 101?" he shouted, ducking as lasers flew past.
"Call me El Darro!" he said in a Mexican accent, rolling the 'R', as he stood up and took a triumphant pose.
The Sergeant shook his head and picked up his weapon.
"Let's go!" he shouted, running and aiming at the droids and firing, yelling obscenities as he did so.
Darren was left to stand there and pick up his weapon. He looked after the Sergeant – the clones were pushing the robots back.
"Oh well," he said to himself. "At least I have you to talk to while I commit needless slaughter. If I know how…"
The hell with that! I'm outta here! his mind announced.
"You can't," Darren reminded it – himself. "You're in my head."
Touché…
A few hours later Darren was sitting on a rock with the Sergeant and another clone, with a speeder behind them, and some field rations spread out in front of them.
"Now," the Sergeant said. "Seeing as we're the last clones to be evacuated, I figure 'why not get a warm welcome'? We eat out rations, expend our ammo and then turn up at the rear Command Post in my speeder to make it look like we've had the hardest of the fighting and haven't had any access to ammo or food for the entire battle. Now, I figure that we all need to have wounds…" He looked at himself, nodded, looked at the other clone – a blasted leg – nodded and then looked at Darren and sighed.
Darren was completely fine, had his helmet off and was eating his rations.
He pulled his DC-15 blaster pistol from its holster, aimed at Darren's right arm and fired.
Darren yelled in pain and dropped his rations.
"Hot, hot, hot!"
The blaster bolt wasn't very concentrated, as it was only from a pistol, and it ate away at his armour only, leaving his skin only a little burnt.
"Why'd you do that?" he asked the Sergeant angrily.
"We need to look like we've been fighting the whole time." The Sergeant growled in return.
"Ohhh." Darren sat back down and a grin spread across his face, and he turned back to the last of his rations "Why didn't you say so?"
"I did say so!" The Sergeant said, and then shook his head and went to the speeder to get his own rations.
"Why did he yell?" Darren said to himself.
Meh. He might be angry.
"Anger management." He agreed with himself.
By now the clone next to Darren was slowly moving away, looking at him as if he were a large pile of cacti that had just talked and said 'Could you help me? My chafe is getting really bad', and then started making extremely bad 'knock-knock' jokes. But maybe the clone 'Alpha 101' wasn't as stupid as he looked. And sounded. And acted.
But the clone hoped he was.
The Sergeant returned to see 101 and the other clone shaking hands. The other clone stood and, walked past the Sergeant and said, "I'll be back."
The Sergeant sat down against a rock, then had an idea and gathered some droid parts from around the area and piling them up to make a large… well, pile I guess. He sat down again and looked around.
His food wasn't there.
"Alpha 101." He growled menacingly, and fixed him with a look so cold that it could somehow melt the ice on Ren Var, and freeze an entire sun.
"Where did my food go?"
Darren shrugged.
"I ate it. I think."
"You WHAT!!!" The Sergeant exploded.
"I ate it. Capitol-I-space-A-T-E-space-I-"
The Sergeant pulled his pistol out again and shot Darren in the foot.
"Ow!"
The Sergeant stood up and turned around – he was going to leave this soldier here, even if it killed him. Actually, no, he would get out alive; but still leave Alpha 101 behind to die.
But his speeder was gone.
He trembled with rage.
"WHERE THE HELL IS MY SPEEDER!!!"
He rounded on the still-eating 101, and readied his pistol – aiming at the clone's left arm, half expecting him to say 'I ate it'.
Instead, he came up with this:
"I traded it to the other clone."
The Sergeant growled, and only just managed to speak in a calm and controlled voice – no mean feat considering he was talking to a soldier of the grandest army in the galaxy that didn't even remember what the 'fur' on the top of his head was called.
"For what?"
"More rations."
Bang!
"Ow!"
The Sergeant shook his head – looks like he'd have to radio in.
He opened a comm channel.
"Command, this is Sergeant Alpha 164 requesting immediate evac from these coordinates," he opened a map of terrain on his visor – a holographic projection – and read out the coordinates to the clone on the other end.
"Copy that, Sergeant; gunship en route."
"Roger, Command. Out."
He turned back to Darren, who had finished all the rations, and saw him looking at the blaster marks on his arms, confused.
"How did they get there?" he asked.
The Sergeant sighed and picked up Darren's weapon, checking out how much ammo he would have to waste in order to make it look like they had really fought the battle they were saying they did.
He frowned when he checked it, and then checked it again, finally snarling and throwing it away, hearing Darren yell in pain as it hit him in the head.
The blaster rifle hadn't been used.
A/N: Thanks for reading, and please review.