"CRASH!" A storm raged over the nearly endless waters, crashing and thrashing about like a strange open water battle, with the air on one side and the sea fighting back. A strange creature, the likes of which had never been seen before, flew through the air. The dragon, if it could be called that, was carrying a rider just as intriguing as the as the creature. He was covered with a large black cloak, which obscured most of his face. He was carrying several weapons at his side, the largest recognizable to many in the galaxy: a lightsaber. The dragon reared back as a flash of lightning struck a pillar jutting out of the water several hundred yards away. The rider urged the creature on; he had no time for distractions. He had to get to his destination-and fast. The fate of his entire people depended on it. In a large brown sack, soaked to no end from the constant downpour, he carried the tools he needed. He had to hurry, and it would take another several hours, he knew. He just hoped he wasn't too late.
Several hundred miles away, a near-barren hospital towered, oblivious to the rain and the waves pounding and smashing into it. Within, if one were to look down the hall, it would be impossible to distinguish one room from another, were it not for the black numbers in front of each door. Medical droids rolled in mechanically from door to door, checking on the few people still roomed in the hospital. On weekends, patients were scarce, and the watery world of Noroque was no exception.
It was quiet—almost too quiet for being the building that it was. In one room, a man sat with his daughter as she labored for breath. In another, a young boy whimpered in silence as he pressed his hand firmly over a severe blaster wound. In another, a grandpa, surrounded by his friends and family, said his last goodbyes. In the farthest room from the hall, however, a woman sat quietly alone. It was obvious that she was in great pain, but it did not show on her face, and were it not for the sweat that trickled down her face onto her white hospital gowns, one would not even know that she was delivering. She sat, as the contractions grew larger and closer together, until she knew she was giving birth right then, right now. She called out in a pitifully small voice, and a medical droid scurried in. Using state-of-the-art technology, it quickly equipped a small device to her arm and connected it to a larger machine sitting next to the bed. The small machine began to vibrate, and the larger machine began spitting out binary signals and texts at rates of thousands of ones and zeros per second. One could only assume that this long numeric string was a set of instructions to the droid, because he began to move around at once. First, he pried off the small machine from her delicate arms. Then he attached another, smaller mechanism that strapped onto the woman's leg. It hummed, and the woman stopped sweating. She lay back, as the painkillers seeped through the device and into her bloodstream, calming her immediately. Suddenly, she sat up, though, her face contorting as if she was being twisted at angles previously unheard of. The droid reacted quickly, and started doing all sorts of crazy things, attaching then un-attaching objects until the woman leaned back onto the soaked pillow, pale and weak.
"The baby…is he almost there?" asked the woman faintly, but eagerly, as if waiting to hear whether or not she had received a package from a long lost relative or friend.
"It is hard to say, madam, but I believe so." The droid responded in its standard monotonic drone, "You just need to sit still."
It took almost another two hours before the determined new mother and relentless droid finally coaxed the baby out. The weary woman finally held the baby in her small arms. The mother's frame had thinned in those hours, and she looked worse than ever. Her eyes were sunken and low, her voice barely a croak. It was obvious that she was dying.
"Darren…Darren…you are destined for greatness…" the mother crooned softly, stroking the baby's nose. "You can stop this all…" she whispered. "Just remember…remember…" She suddenly shot up, sitting upright on her bed with what appeared to be her last energy, and then laid back down again.
"Hand me that instrument…droid…" The droid reluctantly handed it to her, having no idea what the odd device sitting on the counter was meant for. She smiled, looking faraway, and then jammed the instrument straight into the baby's heart.
The droid let out a very human alarm, but then saw that the baby was fine; Baby Darren showed no reaction, still gooing and giggling. The mother looked at the tool and slowly, painfully lifted her lips in an attempt to smile. Her body was beat and torn, her immune system racked and destroyed. Her mind was barely holding on to reality. Although she should have died several hours ago, something kept her alive, some strange force that gave her the will over her body, the will to keep herself alive for those last crucial hours. She could sense that the end was near, though, and her iron will was crumbling, if you could call it her will. Her last breaths were coming, but she had something to say. She gathered just barely strength to say one last sentence, one statement that would change a boy's destiny—and the destiny of the entire universe. She said simply,
"At 16, his journey will begin…16…May the Force be with him…"
Her voice drifted off and she left this world, leaving a feeling in the room, as if a light had been extinguished. The droid hung its head, as was customary in respect for the dead. It had created a holo-recording of the lady's last words. If only the droid had known, it would have saved that precious thing, and saved a young boy from his horrible fate, a fate that would affect everything that moved and felt for the rest of now and eternity.
"Let's go Darren!" A young man's voice called. "You're going to be late!" Darren lay snugly in his bed. His blue covers were pulled up to his sleek- jawed face. Darren pulled the covers over his head, and his bed rattled slightly, shaking the shelves directly overhead, shelves covered with maps, datapads, repaired engine parts, hydro-spanners, droid parts found from scrap, rebuilt painstakingly over several hours, and other odds and ends that lay in a heap over the creaky, dusty shelves. His makeshift alarm clock turned on then, beeping at a high, ear-shattering pitch shook on the shelf with his other junk, and one of the engine pieces fell down smack onto his head.
"OW! Not again!"
Darren shot up, rubbing his head and rustling his brown, short hair that now stuck up in all directions. He groggily shook his head again and rubbed his eyes. He pulled back his covers, and attempted to get out of bed, but instead fell flat on his face. He was prone to things like that, sometimes falling down the hard, clay-covered stairs, smashing his face, and having to spend the rest of the day tending to his injuries. Darren held the rail next to his steep, cold stairs, grinned, looked around to make sure no one was looking, and slid down the rail. He managed to clear the stairs, but when the rail ended, he went flying, landing painfully on his rear. He jumped up, rubbing his rump, and ran into the kitchen, where his family was already having breakfast. His father smiled at him, beaming at his only son, and continued to serve Darren's stepmother.
"Hurry up, you're going to be late!" his father said in his rich, deep voice. Darren wolfed down what was on the table, not realizing that he had eaten the butter, and ran to school, He was halfway out the door when he clutched his stomach and ran into the bathroom. His father smiled again and said passionately to his wife,
"I'm so glad that we have Darren as our son."
It was very early in the morning, and Darren still had a long walk ahead of him. He clambered out the door, and was about to begin his long trek into school, when he caught a view of the horizon. He stopped and turned around, and quickly ran to the side of his large domed house. He scaled the wall of his house, keeping his eyes on the horizon as the twin suns began to rise over the barren, dusty mountains way off to the east. Darren propped himself up, and threw his bag carrying his school supplies onto the roof, then hoisted himself the rest of the way up. The sky was a brilliant cacophony of color, a brilliant display of orange, purple and pink as the twin suns of the dusty planet of Keibore rose to take their place in the vast expansion of the sky. Darren couldn't help but smile as the magnificence of the sunrise filled him with inspiration. His icy blue eyes reflected the child that was still in him—they were filled with wonder and awe as the suns finally made their way above the peaks and took place in the circle of night and day. He ruffled his hair again and grabbed his pack. He put it on his chest, and, like a bobsledder, slid down off of the dome and onto the ground. He ran down the dirt road leading from his house to the city, where he would begin another normal day of school. Or so he thought.
As Darren headed down the dirt road leading to town, he noticed that it was getting windier and windier. Dust was being picked up from the road, and it flew into Darren's eyes, causing him to have to rub his eyes. His hair also blew over his eyes, so when he finally got the sand out, he noticed in shock that a large vehicle was rapidly coming towards him! Darren managed to dive off the road in time for the large, flitting vehicle to pass by him unharmed. Darren surveyed his clothes. They were a mess; he was covered in a fine sand, and they had ripped in many places. He tried to lift up his school bag but felt something rip deep into his arm and he screamed with pain. He fell onto his knees, hugging his torn arm with his other hand and tried to get back onto the road. He tripped, though, and his books spilled onto the road. Muttering angrily, he tried to pick up his books and tripped again. He swore loudly this time, and whipped up his books with his good hand, shoving them into his pack in a fury. He started running to school, knowing that if he hung around too long, the gang that was always chasing him would show up, no doubt in a mood to punch some faces in. They were called the Red Bomas, a bunch of teenagers who happened to all enjoy tormenting, taunting, beating, and basically doing anything they could to make Darren's life miserable. They had always been mad at him because he would not submit to their will; they were used to getting their way, no questions asked. He had stood up to the leader the first time they had picked him as a target, a mistake. He punched Darren so hard he was out for days. Ever since then they had come on Darren with a fury, taking every chance possible to torture and insult him.
By the time he arrived at busy marketplace, people all around were looking at the different shops open and no one there paid Darren any attention. He thanked heaven for small mercies and hurried into the nurse's tent. It had used to be a large medical shop, but generous donators had allowed for the placement of 15-20 small beds on either side of the tent, thereby turning it into a makeshift hospital for anyone who needed medical attention. The head nurse, recognizable from any other merchant only by the red cross on her dress and her gray, wrinkling skin and white hair, hurried over quickly when she saw Darren.
The nurse started to talk at a thousand miles an hour.
"Oh my, Darren. You're a mess! What happened? Did those boys beat you up again? My, I really should call the parents of those boys, always causing trouble, stealing, vandalizing..." Darren interrupted quickly,
"No Mrs. Derbyn, they didn't beat me up."
"Well, what was it then?" asked the nurse, taking on a grandmotherly tone.
"I just...fell." said Darren sheepishly, looking down at the floor.
"Well there is no way I am letting you leave this bed looking like that! Let's get you all cleaned up." By the time that Mrs. Derbyn had finished, the marketplace outside was busy with activity, people. Since Darren had nothing to do, he propped himself onto his bed with his good arm, and surveyed the nurse's room. Darren had been in here so many times, he could count exactly which bed would make the loudest creak and just how many cabinets would creak open and when. He had grown very tired of this room several weeks ago, where every day at some point he would com staggering inside with a black eye and numerous other bruises across various, sometimes excruciatingly painful, parts of his body, caused by the gang that found no greater pleasure than in degrading and hurting him. Darren set his head down onto his pillow, and was about to close his eyes and rest when the door opened just a creak. Darren raised his eyebrows in surprise. Normally no one came into the nurse's area during the first few hours that the market opened. No, it was the merchants' lunch break where everyone got hurt. They were always drinking way too much Keiborian rum and trying to fly off a roof or ten foot high tent or something equally stupid and suicidal. The door opened just a tad, more, then the figure from behind the door revealed herself. Darren's eyes widened as he saw what he was looking at. The girl standing in the doorway was extremely beautiful. Her hair was perfectly placed around her shoulders, and her large, brown eyes surveyed the room with a cool interest as she flipped her long, curly brown hair behind her ear. Everything about her was perfect in Darren's eyes. Her legs, walk, everything about her was so perfectly placed that Darren was overwhelmed with infatuation. A split second of uncertainty passed; a small voice whispered, Something's not right…where have you seen this face before? Darren, though, pushed the thought out of his mind and took in the beautiful view of her body.
"Um, is Mrs. Derbyn in here?" asked the girl with polite interest, flipping her hair back behind her shoulders. He managed to keep himself from drooling all over the bed, but his voice box had clamped so tight that nothing would have gotten out anyways.
Darren thankfully didn't have to answer, because at that moment Mrs. Derbyn burst in through the door, practically dragging two boys by the scruff of their shirts. One boy, a human, had bruises up and down his face. He had long black hair that was strewn across his face. His eyes were a chilling black cold, devoid of all feeling. His gaunt, flighty eyes had dark lines drawn around them to give a creepier effect. He was wearing pitch black small robes that again caused that same uncertain feeling to swell up inside of him, but Darren, intrigued, pushed it out of his mind again. The other, an aquatic looking alien from Noroque with blue scales rippled across his body, had a nasty, green cut that seemed to be oozing something putrid that smelled of something unpleasant. His yellow cat eyes surveyed the room non-chalantly as a thin film covered his eyes; his retractable eyelids that all Noroquiens have Mrs. Derbyn looked furious. She began yelling at the alien in his own language, a mix of hisses and crackles that sounded sharp, like the fine point of a sword. The alien kid thought so too, because he began to scoot backwards, curling into a ball and shrinking himself as he did so. She turned on the human next, yelling at him in a language Darren could finally understand.
"How dare you...How dare you! You two boys should be arrested, no, hung! Never in my 51 years as a nurse have I ever seen such a brutal assault on another group of boys! You boys should not even be allowed on this planet! I spit at the thought of your very presence!" She continued this long lamentation with an even longer strain of curse words, some of which having never touched Darren's ears before. The girl obviously did not approve of the profanity as she quickly turned on her heels in a huff and whipped open the tent flap.
The infuriated nurse stormed out of the room, slamming the door as hard as she could behind her. Darren decided that it was not worth staying in the room with the two obviously dangerous boys who were eyeing him as if they would have nothing better than to take out some very important pieces of him. As he stepped outside, the fresh (meaning smoggy and very dusty) air outside greeted him and (un)pleasantly filled his nose and made him sneeze. Loudly. Had it not been for the sneeze, he would not have, eyes watering, stumbled into the bathroom, where he snatched a tissue and was about to blow when he heard a loud sob coming from the girl's side of the bathrooms. He quickly blew his nose and tip-toed to the girl's side. When he opened it, Jennifer was lying against the sink, hands in her face and sobbing hysterically. She looked up, startled, and turned on the sink, spraying cold water over her face. She sniffled and, mascara streaming down her face, brushed tentatively past Darren, who just stared curiously, very puzzled.