The hooded figure strolled in, silently. Enclosed and hooded by her long brown cloak. She glanced up at the bacta tank before her. A heavy sigh escaped her smallish chest. Her superior leaned off the wall, and pulled himself into the bluish-white light of the three bacta tanks that were located before the cloaked figure and him. Her svelte figure stood so still, she seemed to be part of the floor itself. A dark eerie shadow extended from her figure onto the chrome floor.

"Syth," she said crisply, betraying her statue-like appearance.

"Yes, healer," the pirate leader replied as he walked up to her with his arms folded. His long black and brown tunic draped between his legs that were enclosed by soiled white slacks. "I did call you here," he prompted. He looked up at the conditioned figure of his subject matter. His oriental eyes, narrowed.

The hooded figure softly sighed. "Why?" Her silver eyes took pity on the man in the bacta tank, they observed. He would soon be a tool to Syth. Something he could tell to go where he wanted him too and keep himself safe from injury or death. "You shouldn't flatter yourself, my lord; you did not save him yourself. I've only been working on him for 5 days! I don't want him out just yet!"

The man in the tank jerked ever so slightly. He hovered in the center of its circumference. A white harness about his upper body supported him. White shorts about his lower body provided him with modesty. His brow furrowed and he exhaled. The semi short green hair, atop his head danced about as if in slow motion, suspended in an upright manner by the weightlessness of the water. His caramel skin and flowing green hair were an odd combination. His green hair had to be dyed. One strip of hair came from his left temple that was exceedingly lengthier than the rest.

Air bubbles ruptured from his breathing mask, breaking once they hit the surface of the bacta tank. He had been doing this ever since he had been placed in it. He was dreaming the same nightmare over and over. The healer lifted her chin to prepare herself for a verbal reprimand. She retained her dignity.

Syth dropped his conditioned arms. A conditioned hand pointed to the figure who merely stared straight ahead. "You," he barked, "do not get to decide! I don't care how bad he was injured! I want him out, now! Don't exalt yourself over me! Get him out, now!"

Syth swiftly stormed passed the cloaked figure. Her cloak whipped aside from the air flow of the sweep. The healer sighed in dread for the man in the bacta tank.

Outfitted with a breathing mask, the man had been placed here after she had found him and her party of pirates showed up shortly after. She shook her head in pity, departing from the room.

He was taken by surprise. Violently wrenched up a story and half in the acrid grasp of the droid's great paw, his very body was caustically crushed. Not flesh to flesh. It was cold hard metal to the plastoid armor, to soft flesh and bone of his body. There was no time practically. The plastoid armor ruptured and split, even into his very flesh. The air was forced out of his lungs in a brief scream before he fell silent and went rigid, unable to move. He was frozen stiff, mouth gaping open in a silent scream, unable to breath. His gun fell from his hands as he was heavily dropped to the ground with disinterest. The droid groaned in slight disappointment at its curious investigation of this strange creature that fought stoutly against him. It was weak. Useless.

The carmel-skinned man was removed rather speedily from the tank. He was lowered onto a crudely made stretcher after he was handled loosely down to it from atop a ledge. The ledge was used to raise the subjects out of the healing tank. The pirates relied on this tank with their very lives. They had no other way of healing themselves and their outrageous injuries. A pirate couldn't just show up at a bar or a populated hospital and demand treatment. He could be shot, turned in, arrested, or tortured if recognized. Unfortunately, they had more considerate periods of recovery in them.

"Be careful! His ribs are still fragile and you can break them all over again!" the healer snapped, and observed her raffish pirate comrades. They inconsiderately transported the saturated man to her work space to be prepped into waking up. She followed after them, briskly. They recoiled in irritancy when she snarled at them for their heartless way about things. They usually were. They didn't care about anything or anyone she was nursing. They only cared about themselves. Least of all her herself. She didn't care about that. She cared about the man they were tossing about without a care, who began to groan in discomfort in his awakening state.

"You careless, bastards!" the healer snarled. "Hurry up, but be gentle!"

He lay on the ground, mouth agape, gasping for air. His lungs could not retract any more. Even the very instinctive attempt caused him enough pain to make him want to faint. His now spacey brown eyes, severely pained, stared up at the droid whom lumbered over to him. His long green bangs were plaster across his moist skin. He was unable to move. He was helpless. Anything that was everything to do with his ribcage was broken. He turned his head to his right, reaching for his gun in vain. It was too far away. Just this very gesture caused him so much pain he gasped. His body seized in panic. His breath came up very short. The great black foot hovered over him to crush his blood and flesh being that crawled about the soil under its owner. Blaster fire reverberated around him.

"General!" he howled with all of his might. His body contracted again in pain with his panicked gasp. He wheezed. An uncontrollable coughing fit engulfed him. He forced himself to roll onto his right side. A warm substance slithered its way up his esophagus, aspersing onto the green grass. It was bright red. It glistened in the sunlight and he tasted its metallic flavor in his mouth. A groan of disgust escaped his being before he was coughing again and he rid himself of yet, more of this red substance. It lolled from his mouth as he struggled to stay functioning. His body was beginning to shut down. His breathing was uneven. His heart raced in his chest. He could now hear and feel the fluid building in his lungs.

A rebel cry over head drew the attention of the droid. The angry hiss and buzz of the weapon from the galaxy's greatest warrior reached the dying man's ears. He glanced up. He reacted not to the severed foot of the droid that now came down at him. At the last minute it was force blasted deep into the forest. Trees splintered and cracked, falling under the thing as it ripped them in two. The droid disappeared with a harsh groan. The ground shook violently under him. The droid had been felled.

"Clear out-clear out now!," the jedi General shouted. "We're done here! Mallard, call in a gunship, now!" The jedi General deactivated his light saber and slowly approached the downed soldier before him.

With a hiss the double doors retracted. The healer elegantly trotted in, her cloak billowing broadly behind her. She gestured to a metal chair in the middle of this rather large enclosure, surrounded by chrome and giant air ducts that crisscrossed the ceiling.

"Put him down!" She readied a syringe of liquid bacta. Her cloak settled around her once more and was limp.

"Why the hell does Syth want this heap of bursa meat?!" growled a Gammorean. He helped his well-toned, human companion hoist the murmuring man onto the metal chair.

His legs and wrists were restrained in mechanical binders, built into the chair. The healer, rushed over to him with her needle.

"Get-out!" she snarled. "He's not useless!"

"Heeey! All right, don't get your fuzzy muffins in a bunch, hehehe," the gomorrean cackled as he took his time, lumbering out of the room.

"Do you think that's a bright idea, Gunther? Calling her names like that?" The human asked his companion. "You know she has powers. She could knock you out, you know."

The healer ignored the ignorant male. She injected the bacta into the main right arterial vein of the man's neck. His wet, green hair plastered his face. The healer watched him, wondering what was going on his mind that was so mind-blowing it created an encore of its performance. She placed the back of her fuzzy hand to his forehead. The doors to her lair hissed and closed once more.

"Well, you're temperature is normal. You should be waking up soon out of that mess. What happened before we found you? Did someone you care about die? What?" the healer asked softly standing back and observing the technically dead soldier she had saved while he was in his last stages of passing into the next world.

"General-" the green-haired man whispered ever so softly as he continued to dream. "I need help standing, you can heal me on the gunship, hurry, I don't know…how much longer….Sir? General?!"

The man pulled at his restraints in his dream.

The jedi general looked down at the soldier he had vowed to show compassion for, in satisfaction to his felled state. The soldier stared back, with shallow, wheezing breaths. His brown, hopeful eyes winced, expecting the jedi to kneel and lift him over his shoulder anytime now. The soldier tried to hoist himself up eagerly, blood trickling down his lower lip and onto the collar of his black body suit, as his arms failed under him. The miserable yelp and whimper he gave didn't seem to move the general any.

"General, plea-" the clone rasped, dropping to the grass . He was still for a short while, wheezing.

"You're duty is over. You've served your purpose, clone," the jedi dismissed crassly. "I never did like clones." He turned away without a second glance. The jedi's gallant figure began to move away from him.

The clone's eyes widened and he struggled with all of his might to merely crawl forward after the jedi in confusion. He could see his brother's boarding the ship in a hurry, through his hazy vision. He couldn't shout loud enough for them to hear him. Why had the jedi left him? He could be renewed, he could fight again! The general was a healer! He had heard great things about him. Great things! What did he mean he never liked clones?

"General?!" the clone wheezed before coughing once more, gasping in severe pain. He saw the gunships leave. The grass blades grew up into his field of view. He inhaled the scent of the soil under him.

Just shortly after more gunships landed and blurred figures departed from them. They had come back for him!

"Why did you leave me?" he rasped before he lay still, ceasing to breathe. He looked about as the sounds of the forest began to fade and mesh into silence. Something dropped beside him. The world shifted. He was rolled over onto his backside where he stared into a dark face, concealed by a hood.

Warm hands were placed on his forehead. He closed his eyes in sadness. He still wanted to fight and protect his brothers, but someone he trusted had denied him that right. He never did open them again. It was too late. He accepted his fate, yielding to a soothing slumber that had come over him all of a sudden.

The man in the metal chair was silent. The healer had heard his speech.

"They left you to die, and you wanted to live," came her sorrowful sigh. She checked his vitals. He was stable. "I am sorry you had to go through that. It had to be painful."

The man stirred, opening his eyes slowly. They clumsily rolled about as he took in this strange formation above him of air ducts.

"Why…am I…alive?" he inquired softly.

The healer stooped to straighten out the many coils and trails of cables that riddled the floor about the chair, going to large computers, machines, and equipment located about the room. The man felt a soft furry mass brush his left hand. He gasped in surprise.

"Boshy?"

The Healer erected herself with a cry of alarm as her tail was felt about by this stranger she had been defending in his unconscious state. She whipped around to feel him tighten his grip on her tail.

"Let go of me! What is wrong with you?!"

The man released her tail once she smacked his hand. His sociable eyes, found her and he narrowed them. "Who are you?! Where am I? This isn't the medical base." He strained in his bindings. "Why am I bound? I'm supposed to be dead!"

His struggling became more jerky and angry.

"Calm down, now! You're safe and you're alive. Just keep your hands off of me. Please, relax, or I will have to give you something to calm you down," the healer calmly coaxed him. "What is your name?"

The man seized in pain and he wisely stopped his straining. He panted softly in exhaustion. "I thought they had come back for me!" he groaned.

The healer growled and cursed Syth. "I told him you weren't ready to be out of the tank yet! Be still, like I said, you're ribs are still linking back together and your straining is breaking them apart again!"

"My chest," the man sighed, "it hurts. Not as bad…not as bad as it did. I can breathe. What did you do to me? I'm not even-"

"I healed you. I arrived literally in your last moments," the cloaked figure informed him, going to her large counter top to retrieve some pain medication.

He saw the hooded figure once more, briefly in his mind's eye before she was gone and he remembered no more.

"That was you? Who were the others? I thought they were my brothers!"

"What did I say?! Be calm. Obviously something bad happened to you besides the fact your lungs and ribs were a like a crumbled piece of paper. Worry about it later," the healer said, flicking a new needle with her clawed fingers.

The needle spurted its liquid substance and she returned to the man's side. "Your brothers?" She inquired to distract the man from the needle she shoved into the middle of his forearm.

The man winced. "Yes, my brothers. I'm a clone trooper, a soldier of the republic. My brothers are just like me in some ways. Actually, quite different really even though we all share the same face. My name is Feral. Clones don't," he sighed heavily, "get real names so we get nicknames apart from our conception numbers."

The healer stood erect and drew back in disbelief. "Numbers? But you're a sentient being, why numbers? That's really inhumane, don't you think?"

"Look, we're programmed and meant to serve, we don't ask questions. I don't, I never did. I followed my orders to the letter. I loved fighting alongside my brothers and keeping them safe. I expected them to do the same unto me. The jedi they-they-"

Feral laid his head back. He sighed softly in ire, looking away. The cloaked figure let him be, sensing his mood. She disposed of the syringe and went over to her counter, going about things that he could not see.

"I don't know why he left me. Jedi don't do that. I don't understand why he would just leave me there. He could have kept me alive." Feral grunted in irritancy. "Is it necessary to have these things on my wrists and ankles? I'd like to be able to move!" The green haired clone tugged once more at his bindings. "What am I thinking? I'm a clone. I shouldn't have asked him to save me anyways. I just didn't see any reason why I couldn't be healed."

"I never liked clones…"

The speech reverberated in his mind. He couldn't silence it. Was the man a traitor to his own cause? His own…faith? What was he even there for if he wasn't practicing what jedi were supposed to be practicing?! What jedi just leaves a man who asks to live? No, who begs to live?! Who acknowledges that he, the jedi, could save him?! The jedi was his mentor. His personal mentor out of all of his brothers in his squad, ever since he could remember. Hell, since he was a youngling. He had been encouraged, promoted, and exalted by this very man into places and people he would have never gained attention from! Favored above all others, trained in specific areas and during specific times at the drop of a hand of this jedi. Why?! Why would he leave him to die?! It didn't make any damned sense. It only angered him to dwell on it. He was too flustered right now. He wasn't where he was supposed to be. Being dead would have made more sense at least than this!

"Be patient, Feral," the healer prompted him. "You have nothing to worry about since you follow any order you're given. You've got bigger things to worry about now. You're a soldier, now under the man who runs this ship."

"Ship?!" Feral echoed.

"Yes, he's a pirate lord. One of the most proactive in the galaxy. His name is Syth. He took you out of recovery earlier than I wanted him to. I'm sorry Feral, but you need to be strong and prepare yourself for some unpleasant pain."

Feral looked about the room. "What? I work for no one but the republic! I don't work for scum like pirates!" the clone spat. "I'm property of the republic, you cannot keep me here!"

"You do now Feral." The healer turned to face him. "The republic left you as you've been replaying in your dreams all this time you thought you were dead. Now, you serve Syth. Trust me, do as he says and you'll be moderately comfortable and treated…well…let's just say you'll be left alone long enough to sleep, do your business, and to do nothing, but think about your new situation."