Heroes (Final pt8) *April Fools

Everyone wants to be a hero, but not everyone is willing to make the sacrifice

Steele never felt so frustrated walking out of the meeting room. He wasn't sure why he thought Aliyah would actually listen to him. Of course, she wouldn't drop out of this mission—no matter how compelling the reason—she wouldn't let them put their lives on the line without hers at the very front. It made him thrilled but so damn angry at the same time.

Turning the corner towards the ship's bunkers, Steele bumped into the last person he wanted to see right now: Hondo.

"One heck of an argument, eh?" Hondo asked knowingly as he stood forth from against the wall.

Steele cast him an unamused glance. "What do you know?"

He attempted to walk past the Pirate Leader, but Hondo forcibly stopped him. "Ah ah ah ah. It's not healthy to go to sleep in this kind of state. Come."

The ship the clones were being transported on was not like the other Republic-issue destroyers they've flown on before. Which was no surprise, it was a pirate ship for crying out loud, but Steele could see why Hondo called it his 'prized star fleet'. There was an entire section of the ship dedicated to drinks. A fully-stacked and equipped cantina with tables, bars, and lights. This was where Hondo took Steele.

The pair sat at an empty table, a mountain of empty glasses before them. They all came from Hondo though. The pirate downed another glass.

"You're not drinking, my friend." Hondo slid the empty cup to the rest of the pile. Steele sighed.

"I've learned that alcohol isn't the cure for everything." He thought back to the night where Aliyah found out what about his investigation. And how his first reaction was to reach for the bottle of liquor. That night was the best night of his life.

"Well. To each, their own." Hondo poured out another drink and slid it across the table, around the pile, to Steele. "Ah, think of it this way, commander. You're finally freed from all those stupid rules written by stupid folks that made no sense other than the fact you'll be court-martialed if you ever dared break one of them. Right? Right. Now, accept that fact. Or keep drinking until you do."

But Hondo was wrong.

They weren't finally freed from all those 'stupid rules'. They were still bound by one. And it was the one Steele wished they weren't forced to obey.

The legion spent all night taking in what just happened, taking in this 'protocol' their commander claimed was the reason for their recently-found brothers' behaviour. It was hard to believe, such a small yet powerful order would make them turn against their war-leaders—and each other—if it came to that. Lux and the other Separatists were being unbelievably understanding. They helped, with gentle hands, rounding up the unconscious members of the first battalion and the search party branch who found them, putting them in the shelters originally meant for sleeping in. Not a word was spoken during the entire process. Even during Vito's burial, everyone was quiet. It was hard to imagine another situation in this war, where they were ever this low.

Steele trekked out the next morning with a small group comprising of Lux, Cleaver, and a combination of their men, to the place where the first battalion claimed Kal was being kept.

"Right up ahead. There's a large clearing where Coal said he thinks Kal is being locked up," Cleaver pointed beyond the location where he and the search party found the first battalion. "I told him we'll come back tomorrow to check it out properly."

All sorts of possibilities ran through Steele's head for what may have happened at this 'clearing'. He led the group forward. At last, they've reached the edge of the forest and were greeted with the vast sight of the rocky location devoid of forest. Now in the morning light, the entire area was made clearer to the naked eye, allowing all the troopers to take in the terrain. It was far from just a flat patch of sandy rock. There were bumps, gouges, and semi-mountainous cliffs as far as they could see. And right there just on the horizon, was an oddly shaped building of some sort. It was large, greyish-black, and bulky, nothing at all like what they expected to see.

"There! I think that's what Coal was talking about!" Cleaver pointed at the building in the distance. "Permission to scout ahead, sir?"

"Permission granted," Steele turned to four other troopers, Dogma and Egad included. "You four, go with him. Stay low! Everyone else back to the treeline."

"Yes, sir!"

But just as the squad of five where about to venture out into broad daylight, they were suddenly called back by Steele.

"STOP!"

The squad all turned around. Dogma was the first to shout back and ask, "What?"

"4th wall emergency break!" Steele was reading off of a borrowed holopad. "It's a message from creative headquarters. Apparently, our dear-sweet author has finally learned that muscling through everything in life is not a good idea. They've come down with a mild case of pneumonia. Caught directly from their mother."

"WHAT!?" Everyone exclaimed. There was a mix of reactions.

"Spring literally just started!"

"Are you sure it's pneumonia and not the…you-know-what-virus?"

"Hey, at least it's a mild case."

"Yeah! Author-lake'll be back in a week or less!"

"Nope." Steele corrected, much to everyone's greater shock. He swept to the second page of the message. "No they will not."

Dogma walked up to his commander and attempted to peer over at the holopad message. "What do you mean? What's written there?"

"Author-lake is going to nuke parts 2 to 8 of this Final arc and revitalize it with more care and more life the second time around," Steele announced while shrugging Dogma off his back. "They've been thinking a lot about this, and after many sleepless nights of non-coffee-related factors, decided to go through with it."

"But why!?" Dogma insisted.

"Yeah, what happened to the story plan?" Egad agreed.

"Y'all remember the professor from a month ago?" Steele asked.

Compass perked up. "Oh! You mean the one who completely obliterated Author-lake and their teammates' codebase? Telling them that it was the messiest thing he ever saw and that they needed to start over, and they didn't know what they were doing, essentially rendering their 2-months worth of blood, sweat, and tears…wasted…" Compass stopped the direction he was going in and turned around. "Buuuut he apologized when he realized they weren't the original creators of the codebase, and offered to help fix up what they've made thus far. So…yeah…I remember the professor. Poor Author-lake was in shambles the day of the code review."

"They're still in shambles now," Steele added.

"Huh? But they've fixed everything and made a better codebase that even the professor approved of—" Compass said.

"—Yes. But at the cost of the story plan!" Steele sighed and sat down. "Never mind. Author-lake can explain it a lot better than me."

He swiped the holopad to the next page and handed it to Dogma. On the screen was a long multi-page letter.

My dear readers,

I'm sorry, but I'm afraid it has to come to this. I'm going to redo my Final arc.

Before you say anything, I just want to make it clear that I DID have a plan. I had a full-blown, drawn-out plan, that was made ever since last year summer. And my vision of the ending of this story is still as clear as day to me as it was when I first made it many years ago. But the path towards this vision has become blurry over the past couple of weeks.

I've been pretty clear in my previous author's notes that I'm not feeling too well and how overwhelmed I am from work. But that's not an accurate depiction of what I'm going through at all. To let you know exactly why I'm going to reboot this Final arc, I'll need to go back to the day my plan began coming apart. The day the Professor code-reviewed my co-op team's work.

I'm currently working as a co-op software developer for one of my University's startup projects. My fellow co-op developers and I are working to build on an existing codebase and put it into production by end of this April. However, it is hard work taking someone else's work and trying to expand on it—or improve it. Our project consultant called in one of my University's computer science profs to review what we've made thus far, and let's just say, he TORE US apart. He was brutally honest with what he thought about the codebase and the worst part is, I agreed with him. I too, thought the entire thing was messy when I first looked at what I was to work with, but I simply thought it was because I've never worked with this kind of software framework before. This review happened right at the mid-point of my co-op term, so essentially, it was like hearing everything we've done thus far from the beginning was all for nothing.

Luckily, the Prof softened after learning we weren't the original authors of the codebase and realized we were struggling due to the messy architecture made by the prototype team. He offered to help us clean up the entire project: by splitting our 4-member team in half, with 2 people working on the old codebase and adding more features, and the other 2 working on a new cleaner codebase that we'll eventually move all the existing features into. I was on the team working on the old codebase. It was unimaginably stressful having to carry the entire backend of the web app on my back. Even before, I was carrying a lot of tasks and responsibilities as the unofficial lead-developer. I just had to carry even more then.

So since that day, my mind was in the coding game. I was out of the writing zone. Completely out. But I muscled through—forcing myself to write new chapters every time I remembered, telling myself that I've made it through worse, that I had a schedule to stick to, a promise to keep. And every night, I'd go to bed, unable to sleep, always thinking about how to fix an issue in my code, how to implement a new feature, and my regrets in releasing the new chapter I'd barely cooked. It was an endless cycle until the week I released the previous chapter. My mom came down with mild pneumonia and is currently getting better. I, on the other hand, caught it from her, and am NOT getting better as fast as she is. I guess it's a combination of my stress from work + insomnia that's preventing me from getting better despite being in MY EARLY 20s!

So this week, my team and I finally finished moving over all the features to the new codebase and we're back on track for meeting feedback changes from our stakeholders. But now, I've had time to look back on my Final arc's plan and my chapters, specifically 2 to 7. I'm not proud. I'm not happy. I'm filled with regrets.

I know I could better. So, SO MUCH better…You guys DESERVE BETTER. Some of you've been here since the earliest chapters. The fact that you've been forcibly digesting these 'things' I dare call 'chapters', is giving me guilt for days. I've broken my own rule #1 for creative writing: never write for the sake of sticking to schedule, write when I'm able to because I love to. Writers out there! Please don't follow in my footsteps, otherwise, you'll end up in a pit similar to mine.

And my lovely readers, feel free to be mad at me. I assure you that I deserve it and that nobody is more upset or disappointed in me, than yours truly. I humbly ask for all of your forgiveness, and to give me a second chance at properly writing the Final arc to this story you've been supporting for over a year. The last thing I want is to look back on this story and regret how it ended. I don't want this to turn into another Game of Thrones S8, The Promised Neverland ending, Beastars ending, or any blatantly bad ending of a good series.

So for the sake of all of us, I'm going to unpublish chapters 2 to 8, take a month-long (or longer) break to heal myself; both physically and mentally, and return with a rejuvenated story plan, and my head back in the writing game. My work ends this month and I get a 2-week break before my summer courses begin. I'll use this hiatus to remind myself why I love to write, and why I made this story in the first place.

Sorry. And sorry again,

Yours truly,

MiraLake

Everyone started heading back to their new base camp to pack up and leave the set. Many of them were upset that weeks-worth of hard work were now wasted.

"Author-lake should've just taken an early break!" Dogma complained.

"Well, look on the bright side. We're still being paid for chapters 2 to 8," Compass offered.

"We'd better be paid double for the revitalized ones…" Dogma grumbled as they reached the campsite. There, more than half of the troopers were packed and ready to go on a month-long vacation.

The Clone's Hero will be back on May. 2021! :)

* In the meantime, I'll keep the current chapters up, in case some odd number of you still wanna read them, but as soon as I return, I'll be unpublishing these chapters and posting new ones starting from part 2 of the Final arc

Happy April Fools day everyone! I'm doing my best fighting through this pneumonia and as soon as I do, I'm going to take a nice long reflective break to ensure when I return to this story, it'll be on my terms.

Luckily it's the long weekend for me this week, so I get an early break from work! YAY :D

Wishing you all the best from my sickbed

- MiraLake :)