The Story of a Scar

"What's in there?" Rex asked as he pointed at the helmet Cody held in his hands.

"Expansion foam," Cody replied with a smile.

They both crept down the sterile and glossy corridors of their water world home. Kamino was always so very white and bright. It hurt your eyes if you weren't used to it. Rex hadn't known anywhere else in his short life so his eyes had somehow managed to adjust to all this brightness. This was the only home he had ever had and sometimes it felt as though it were a prison.

Clones were raised and trained in these halls and the adjoining training areas. Always told not to step out of line, not to get into any trouble, be good little clones and you will be rewarded by getting yourself blown up in the name of someone else's freedom. That was what they were all taught from the time they were decanted from the jars and were thrown into flash training. Rex sometimes it was the biggest load ever.

Cody and Rex had made it a habit to make life on Kamino just a little bit more exciting for al of those involved. There was no reason that they couldn't cause the scientists just a little strife here and there. Today, was no exception and they had really big plans for this prank.

Finally they reached the end of the hallway and were faced with a large door. Behind that door was one of the labs where the tall grey aliens were surely refining yet another set of clones. They never stopped working on the genetic material. It was their obsession. It had made them into a species of clones which looked like pulled taffy.

"How you gonna get that on her head?" Rex whispered as he stood with his back to the wall on one side of the door while Cody stood on the other side holding the helmet full of expansion foam.

"I didn't think that far ahead," Cody shrugged and smiled. Cody was always a little more reckless than Rex. Always ready to throw himself into something without thinking out all the details. Rex shook his head, but a smile spread across his face. This was one gonna be one hell of a prank, if they could pull it off. It would surely be talked about for generations of clones to come.

"Well you do remember they are a lot taller than we are right?"

"Yes Rex," Cody sighed. "Do you always have to ruin the fun before we have it?"

"Someone has to be the voice of reason around here."

A sour look crossed Cody's face. Rex knew that he didn't like being told he was unreasonable. That was a big insult to a clone. Clone's were bred to be reasonable, to be a safe bet that they would always do what they were told. It was something Cody struggled with during his time in training. Cody was not the clear headed thinker that the cloners had foreseen the Captain and Commander classes to be. At one point, Rex believed that Cody had even been up for extermination and that sent a shiver down every clones' spine.

"I'm sorry Cody," Rex said trying to calm his brother. They didn't need to have differences between them. They had enough trouble getting alone with the Kaminoans and a war between brothers would do nothing to help. Kaminoans were the enemy here, not brothers.

"So are you gonna distract her?" Cody asked, the wry smile returning to his face.

"Of course," Rex snickered. "It's the whole reason I came along."

"Oh, I thought you couldn't stand not to be in my charming presence."

"If I wanted to be in your presence, I would've just looked in the mirror."

They both snickered and when they had finally regained a little composure, Rex began to tick the time away on his fingers. When they got to one, Rex would enter the room, distract Osto Tei and then Cody would commit the crime. It would be one of the finest pranks in all of clone history.

Rex depressed the button for the door and it hissed open. He strolled into the sterile lab with a swagger that befit their host, Jango Fett.

"Ladies," he smirked as he hooked his thumbs into his belt.

"What are you doing out of your barracks?" Tei demanded in that smooth Kaminoan voice which was so infuriating to clones. Why didn't they ever get really upset?

"I was out for a stroll and wanted to see what you gene twisters were doing," Rex said smoothly leaning against a cabinet full of all kinds of petri dishes, test tubes, flasks and beakers.

"You are not to be out of the barracks," Tei said her voice sing songie as she got more upset at him. "I will have to find you and escort back."

"Don't bother sister. I know my way around here."

Cody ran into the room, helmet gripped in his hands and jumped onto the table in front of the grey scientist. He plopped the helmet on her head and the foam inside expanded. Cody gave Rex the thumbs up and jumped from the table, their escape almost secured.

Osto Tei lumbered around blindly, her hands looking for something they recognized. As she approached where Rex was standing, her neck swayed, in the way Kaminoan's necks always swayed when they were upset. He tried to dart out from under her, but she crashed into the cabinet sending all the glass shattering around Rex and him to the floor under her.

He remembered the sound of tinkling glass fragments and then blackness. Nothingness was such a strange feeling.

Waking again, Rex found himself laying on the floor of the lab, a Kaminoan wearing a clonetrooper's bucket was slumped on top of him and he could feel something wet running down his chin. Reaching a hand up, he wiped at the wetness, it was blood. He had gotten cut on the face. Regarding the glass laying around him, Rex was lucky that was the only place he had gotten cut.

"Cody!" Rex shouted and then heard alarms blaring and the scrambling of booted feet against. Cody had run! Rex was left with the punishment and a scar that would always make him just a little different then his brothers.

But it was okay to be just a little different.