Jai Muise: Thank you for your kind words. I, too, think clones are the most unappreciated characters in the Star Wars universe. I also hope to alleviate your disappointment soon by posting more chapters :)


Geonosis

I am a clone.

I have finally put my decade of training to use. No longer is my prowess in combat apparent only in battle sims. I have used the knowledge and skills that have been flash-fed into my brain, supplemented by the conditioning my body received over almost a decade of training, to make the enemy submit to my wishes. This is the moment we have been waiting for all of our lives.

I am a warrior. And I now know for whom I fight.

I am a defender of the Republic. I have saved members of the Jedi Order from certain death. I have stopped a droid army from overrunning them. I have watched battle droids fall because of bolts fired from my blaster rifle, earning me twenty-nine notches on the rifle's barrel – one for each droid I felled. I have seen the smoky explosions blow out of their skeletal carcasses. I cheered with my pod mates when we reduced a hailfire droid to flying shrapnel scrap.

I am part of a unit. All of the men who look exactly like me are my brothers. We are each others' lives. We work together, as if we were one. We cover each other. We protect each other. We watch over each other.

We even think like each other. Through our shared genetic code and our years of training together, we know how we will behave in any number of battle situations. We know how we each respond to stress. We know how to comfort each other when one experiences a trauma that others of us do not, for we know how we would all feel when emotionally shocked.

But today is not the day for emotional shocks. Unlike other pods, all of my podmates and I have survived the battle. Several of us have received the first nicks in our armor. I was not one of those lucky ones today, but I will be soon. My armor will bear the marks of my service that extend beyond the dust and debris deposited on it from the desert battlefront.

And I will be fighting in many other battles. The sights, the sounds, the very smells are intoxicating. I now know that no sound is quite as satisfying as that of a blaster bolt ripping a droid asunder. Perhaps this preference was conditioning into me by the thousands of training droids my pod mates and I obliterated during our training with the same blaster rifles and rounds. By the praise we received for each shot that we landed.

And by the same process, my visceral joy at seeing exploding circuitry likely also ingrained itself into my psychological make up. The rending of metallic skins; the sparks jettisoning from charred holes, glowing in their flight; the billows of smoke wafting from the electrical wounds. All of these excite me, make my heart race, my eyes widen, my muscles tense in glee. Perhaps because I was often chosen to hold the droids up when they could no longer support themselves, I also grew enamored of the acrid stench that always emanates from fresh lesions in droid bodies.

Thus, I prefer to fight in closer quarters than many of my pod mates. Whereas they were happy perched atop the gunship, scoring easy kills, I would have been more at ease serving on the ground, smelling the destruction my warrior's skills had wrought. Nevertheless, the time for that will come soon for me.

I will be in the trenches of any battlefront in which the Republic needs me. I will charge any position that the droid army holds, if the Republic demands me to take that ground. I will stay at my post, pumping bolt after bolt into any droids that dare to challenge me and the members of my squad. I will hold the Republic's lines and never fail.

I have a purpose. I keep the Republic secure. Though I have a long fight ahead of me, I welcome the chance to continue proving myself. I have no family, save my brothers, to hinder me in my work. To distract me and my thoughts from the missions facing me. To mourn me, should I fall.

I am a man intent on serving my Republic, protecting it from the Separatist threat.