A Title Could Potentially Be Placed Here That Would Be Of Some Relevance To The Story, But As The Narrator Is Currently Rather Brain-Dead, There Shall Be No Interesting Title For You Today. The Narrator Offers Most Sincere Apologies For Her General Lack Of Alertness And Presents This Story Which You Would Have Read Anyway, So In That Sense It Really Isn't Much Of A Peace Offering, Is It? But That Hardly Matters, Seeing As The Reader Likely Wouldn't Bother Reading This Ridiculously Long Title. So You Can Go Ahead And Read The Story Now, Which Begins In A Galaxy Far, Far Away.
In Case You Hadn't Guessed.
That was a stupidly long title.
Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away (in case you hadn't guessed), there lived a little girl and her mother on the edge of a deep, dark forest. No, they were not blind, nor were they Pigs, nor did they have in possession a magic lamp or poisonous apples. In fact, this mother and daughter were rather ordinary in most respects; they lived in a neat little Hutt like most other people in fairy tales and generally minded their own business.
One thing that was perhaps not so ordinary until a little while ago was the fact that the mother had made a bright red cloak for her little girl. You see, whenever they had gone to Coruscant to shop in the big Shopping Maul (where everything is half off), little Leia never failed to get lost. So her mother, Padmé, had made her a bright red cloak to wear, because they had found it increasingly difficult to yell, "Marco!" "Polo!" in a huge Shopping Maul where virtually every other mother-daughter pair were screaming the same thing.
Unfortunately enough for Padmé and Leia, every other mother had, again, thought of exactly the same thing. The last time they had visited the Shopping Maul, every other little girl in the place had been wearing a bright red cloak. It was decided among the public that the idea of color-coding children really didn't work, anyway, because some people were color-blind. There was also the obscure but steadily increasing group of people that had a phobia of color-coded children, to make matters worse.
So, since little Leia didn't want to be attached by her wrist to one of those telephone-cord thingies, they decided to stay at home.
Today was a very special day for Leia, though. Today Leia was going to visit her grandmother, who lived in the deep, dark forest. The proposition of hiking all by herself was very exciting to Leia, and she watched her mother pack the basket that she was supposed to give to her grandmother.
***
Now, in the woods close by lived a trio of evil people seldom seen at Elvis look-alike contests. Their names were Emperor Palpatine, Darth Vader, and Count Dooku, formerly introduced as such in the Three Little Pigs in Star Warsese.
Today, Palpy was mad at Dooku because Dooku kept giving him powdered cream instead of real cream to put in his coffee, Vader was mad at Palpy because Palpy kept snatching the morning newspaper away, and Dooku was mad at Vader because Vader kept giving him the answers to the crossword puzzle when Dooku would have rather worked it out himself.
Palpy grabbed the sugar and dumped the entire canister into his coffee (anyone watched Royal Canadian Air Farce?). "Okay, what's on the agenda of evil-doing for today?"
Dooku wasn't listening. "What was the first name of the Iron Fist's Captain Renthal?" he wondered quietly to himself, tapping the eraser-end of his pencil against the table.
"Drea?" offered Vader.
There was the absolute minutest of pauses; the pencil's eraser hung suspended, quivering over the table.
"AAAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!" screamed Dooku in fury, throwing the pencil at Vader (who ruefully rubbed the spot on his helmet). "YES!!! THAT'S EXACTLY IT!!!!!!!!!!" He grabbed the powdered cream container and dumped it all into Palpy's coffee.
"EEEEEEEWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!" Palpy's face reddened. "SHEET, THAT'S DISGUSTING!!!! YOU'RE FIRED!!!!!"
"YOU CAN'T FIRE ME!!!!!!!!!!!!" shouted Dooku. "I'M A SITH FOR LIFE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"No, you're not," Vader chortled. "There can be only two Sith at a time, and you were never introduced as lord of the Sith…HEY, I WAS READING THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"Not anymore." Palpy grinned evilly and held up the newspaper triumphantly.
"Sixty-four across means 'fried' in Japanese cuisine," Dooku mused, very quietly, tapping the end of another pencil on the table. "Crap. I have no idea."
Vader leaned over for a look. "Oh, that's yaki. Haven't you ever eaten out?"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! STOP ANSWERING FOR ME!!!!!!!"
"SHEET YOU!!!! GET THAT DISGUSTING POWDER AWAY FROM MEEE!!!!!"
"GIMME MY NEWSPAPER BACK!!!!!! NOW!!!!!!!!!!"
And so the typically chaotic morning went.
***
Unbeknownst to this evil trio, another evil one was lurking in the woods, outside of their Hutt. He had seen Little Red Riding Leia coming down the wide path, and had quickly erected a sign that pointed to the left in a fork in the road. This sign read:
THIS IS THE SHORTEST POSSIBLE WAY TO GRANDMA'S HOUSE. ANY ATTEMPT TO GET THERE BY USING A DIFFERENT PATH WILL ULTIMATELY LEAD TO YOUR ELIMINATION AND CERTAIN DEMISE, ETC.
AFTER ALL, THESE ARE DARK AND DANGEROUS WOODS.
Leia tended to agree with that last statement, and skipped merrily down the "shortcut", not noticing the dark figure that lurked along behind her, occasionally tripping over fallen lemurs and getting his foot stuck in a random gopher hole.
The woods, after all, were very dangerous that way. If you strayed off the path, you could never be sure if you'd get lost forever and eternally stumble over lemurs and get stuck in gopher holes. This evil person was smart, however, in that he always kept close to the path.
As soon as he had made sure that Little Red Riding Leia was off where he wanted her, he went back to the fork in the road and hurried off to Grandmother's Hutt.
Unfortunately for this certain evil person, a gopher had gone and broken the local building codes by excavating a hole right in the middle of the road. The evil person's foot popped right into it and he tripped and fell down with a noise that sounded awfully like 152763 people saying thud.
He struggled valiantly to get up and to un-stick his foot from the hole. Having done so, he then noticed that the band of duct tape about his waist was starting to come loose, so he went through the pains of carefully taking it off and wrapping it tighter, adding some more on from the roll he had attached to his belt, which, inconveniently enough, had been taped over…
Don't ask me what just happened. Keep reading…because I'm confused.
Right. So…
***
Little Red Riding Leia was wondering when she would ever get to Grandmother's Hutt. It seemed so awfully far away, and her feet were so awfully tired, and she thought how nice it would be to just sit down and sing something in Entish while eating a ten-foot banana.
So Little Red Riding Leia did just that. She found a nice smooth spot by the side of the road, reached up into a nearby banana tree, and sang a nice long poem in Entish. The banana was very difficult to peel, and by the time she had gotten it opened, two entire Entish verses had already been sung.
For the uninformed, that's a really long time.
For the even less informed, the previous sentence was a monstrous understatement.
So by the time Little Red Riding Leia had begun to actually eat the banana, she had passed away of starvation. Fortunately enough for the storyline, a group of Kaminoans lived in the nearby woods. At the sound of someone dying of starvation while singing in Entish and trying to get at a ten-foot banana, they poured out of their Hutts and gathered around the crumpled form at the side of the road.
Um…yeah. How did you ever guess? They cloned her, and transferred her memory. So now Little Red Riding Leia rode again…wait a minute. She needs a horse.
Leia blew a familiar-sounding whistle, and cupped her hands around her mouth. "NORA LIM, SHADOWFAX!!!!"
But Shadowfax did not come. Instead, a smaller black horse trotted up.
Leia stared, and stated the obvious. "You're not Shadowfax."
"I know," said the horse. "I'm Bob. Um…bad news, your Highness."
"What?" Leia began wringing her hands diplomatically. Wow, these politicians are so talented.
Bob whinnied mournfully before continuing. "Shadowfax, well, you know how he loved to browse by the side of the road, where all the tallest grass grows…and, well, yesterday he couldn't get a better computer than a Pentium I—"
Leia shuddered at the thought.
"And so," Bob continued in a heart-wrenching voice, "since the processing speed was so diabolically slow, he didn't have time to log off and make a run for it when the half-ton came his way."
"Roadkill?" she whispered.
"Afraid so, your Highness. And what's worse…McDonald's has seized their chance."
"NO!!!" Leia cried melodramatically. "NOT THE HORSE BURGERS!!! SAY IT AIN'T SO!!!"
"So anyway," Bob said in a lighter voice, "I came to give you a ride."
"Oh." Leia considered. "Yeah, okay." She jumped up and managed to land on Bob, even though she was very short.
Then Leia looked up into the sky, glared, and shook her fist at the Narrator for making fun of her because she was so very short.
~~~***~~~
Erm…while I'm still on the topic of shortness…I will attempt to make next chapter longer. Said chapter might also be a little more random.
(^^)