Author's Note: This chapter wouldn't have been possible without laloga, who not only came up with the name "O'sic", but also its amusing origins. Any and all who are interested in an explosive, captivating and creative tale, should check out her newest story, "Fearless". It's a must-read.

Distracted

RMSU-6 didn't have anything approaching a waiting area, its designers not having figured on clones having visitors, so the officers made due with the floor outside of the surgical area - much to the annoyance of the staff.

O'sic had made himself as comfortable as could be expected, using his bucket as a footrest and tucking his hands beneath his armpits. With his eyes half-closed and his chin resting on his chest, most would have thought the marshal commander had fallen asleep.

Gaff, on the other hand, was a bundle of nerves.

The younger trooper paced up and down the corridor, hands clenched behind his back. He'd clipped his own bucket to his belt, but only after being tartly informed by one of the nurses that comm-traffic was severely restricted within the surgical wing and he'd have to be a minor deity or the Chancellor to be granted access to those few designated channels.

"You're wearing the floor out, Commander," O'sic said, eyes still half-lidded.

Gaff shot him a bland look that did not quite hide his irritation and kept on pacing.

He was grey-faced beneath the stubble growing on his chin and cheeks, with eyes that had sunk deep into their sockets. Minor scrapes and bruises lent his complexion the only bit of real color and none of it was healthy.

O'sic knew he didn't look much better.

Sleep had been short and far in-between these past six weeks and they were all feeling the effects. Even the general.

O'sic glanced past Gaff's pacing form and towards the sealed door leading to surgery. His kid general was behind that door, no doubt with a surgeon - organic or otherwise - laboring to put him back together.

Fatigue. There was no other way O'sic could explain Arhen getting caught by that Seppie patrol. His general was usually quick on his feet, but this time...

Slugthrowers did a lot of damage. Plasma at least cauterized the wound upon impact, but slugthrowers left gaping holes, ripe for the picking for Drongar's eclectic collection of poisonous spores.

Thirteen of his men were down with one fungal infection or another, suffering the widest variety of symptoms O'sic had ever seen. He could only hope the Rimsoo docs figured out the right mix of antibodies to stop Natter's seizures and reverse the nerve damage in his right arm. A trooper who couldn't lift his arm enough to help him take a leak wasn't much good on the battlefield. At best, Natter would be transferred to a desk job on Coruscant in GAR logistics. At worst, O'sic was going to have to send the heavy gunner back to Kamino.

As if picking up on his troubling thoughts, Gaff began to tap out a dissonant rhythm on his bucket with his fingers.

O'sic drew a hand over his face, feeling the irregular stubble on his scarred left cheek, where droid fingers had managed to punch through plastoid and skin.

The rookie was working himself into a fit; so fatigued his legs were trembling, but too shabla high on adrenaline to keep still.

"Do you need a nervestick, Commander?" he asked.

Gaff didn't even slow. "I have my own, thank you, sir."

All ingrained politeness and completely missing the point.

"How long is this going to take? They've been in there for two hours already."

"One of the nurses will let us know." O'sic's voice sounded thick even to his own ears. He rubbed at his face and eyes again, but that did little. The thought of taking a stim crossed his mind, but he dismissed it. He and his men had been practically living off of stims since setting foot on Drongar and coming down from a stim-high was no doubt a partial reason for Gaff's nervous pacing. The rest of his officers weren't much better off and at least one of them should keep a semi-clear head. He supposed he should be grateful that not all of Blazer Corps had been detailed to a rotation on Drongar. Nearly forty-thousand stim-and-battle crazed clones would have exceeded his capacity to contain.

"Sit, Commander," O'sic tried again, putting just a hint of an order behind the suggestion. "You look as beat as I feel."

"I'm fine," Gaff snapped. "I'll be more fine when they tell us what's going on with the general."

"Perhaps you'd like to check on the rest of Elix Company. I'll let you know if there's word on General Arhen."

Gaff stopped dead in his tracks, head turned towards the surgery - no doubt so his CO couldn't see the flash of anger darkening his pale face. "I know my duty, sir," the commander said in clipped tones. "Lieutenant Wess and Captain Kase have updated me on my men, none of whom are currently red tagged. The general is."

And he has no one but us to wait for him, O'sic added silently. RMSU-6 was crowded with walking wounded waiting for a brother, but within the greater community of Blazer, General Arhen stood alone. It was good to know that his newest commander was building such a rapport with his Jedi general, but O'sic needed both in one piece and functioning.

It was time for a different approach.

O'sic allowed for a few minutes to pass in silence, while he watched Gaff's hypnotic trek through the corridor and listened to the tread of his boots.

Then: "Have I ever told you, Commander, how I earned my nickname?"

Gaff shot him a startled look from bloodshot eyes. "No, sir."

"It's quite the anecdote, or so I'm told."

The exhaustion cleared from Gaff's face just long enough for the man's general quick intellect to shine through. "With all due respect, sir, I don't feel much like being distracted."

O'sic cocked one dark eyebrow at this. "Oh? And did I ask whether you wanted to be, trooper?"

Gaff heaved a sigh, glancing back towards surgery.

The dynamics between the Blazer Corps' officers had shifted significantly since Gaff's victory over Whynge. With an indisputable winner and loser, the other company commanders had ceased picking sides and the ranks had followed their lead. It was a lovely example of what one pioneering clone captain called picturizing - putting someone in their place, only in this case, on a grand scale. But Gaff was either oblivious or willfully ignorant of the results.

Since the fight, there was a new curtness in the commander's voice whenever he addressed O'sic, that was not quite disrespect, but certainly a deep-seated disapproval. O'sic let it go, because unlike Whynge, Gaff understood that bringing personal feelings into the chain of command was unacceptable and dangerous. Still, that didn't mean O'sic wasn't prepared to get his hands dirty and do a little picturizing himself.

He straightened as much as he could in his supine position from the floor and levelled his best command-glare at the rookie. "I didn't think so. Now, pay attention, trooper. This is classified Intel."

As expected, Gaff reacted to the tone and look by coming to a halt before his commanding officer. O'sic gestured at the wall behind Gaff. "Sit, Commander. It's against company policy to remain elevated above your superiors."

Gaff didn't look happy about it, but he finally settled down; taking a seat across from O'sic.

The marshal commander shifted to make himself more comfortable - one of the best features of the Phase II armor - and looked up at the ceiling, trying to pick the best spot to begin.

"Back on Kamino, I was just plain Oh-Six. This was before clones were encouraged to pick nicknames and calling us by our designation numbers was just easiest."

Gaff nodded, clearly hoping to hurry this story along. His eyes kept tracking back to the surgery, as if hoping to ambush an unwary nurse or even doctor foolish enough to leave their bloody sanctuary.

O'sic ignored him, knowing the story would work for him in the end.

"Once we started the live-fire exercises, my batch was assigned one of the Mandalorian trainers." A rare, wry smile curved his lips at the memory. "A real harpy; all vitriol and bile and did she ever have a mouth on her."

Kamino, six years ago...

"Move your di'kutla shebs, chaakare!"

"Sir, yes, sir," chorused the line of cadets.

"Does this look like an ass-wiping contest, hut'uune?"

"Sir, no, sir!" Twenty voices, all sounding like one and pressing the words out between ragged gasps.

"Then pick up your shabla feet, haar'chak!"

"Sir, yes, sir!"

They saw nothing except what the barrage of plasma fire deigned to illuminate: rugged terrain, full of rocks and holes for an unwary cadet to trip over or fall into and break an ankle - or worse. And they were running full-tilt, trying to get through the exercise with fifty-kilo packs on their shoulders and the howl of artillery in their unprotected ears.

And yet, somehow, their sergeant still managed to make herself heard.

Oh-Six couldn't even see her in the wild dance of light and dark and her voice seemed to come from everywhere all at once. He had no HUD, no armor - none of them had. The pack was scraping his back raw, while sweat ran into his scrapes and made them burn.

He burned all over; his muscles, his legs, his lungs. Even his eyes. His whole body was on fire.

Plasma shot between his legs, making him jump. Behind him, one of the cadets yelped and fell, right into Oh-Six. His legs couldn't bear the extra weight and both cadets went sprawling. A rock jabbed into his chin, he bit his tongue and the blasters kept screaming. Something hot and blue momentarily obscured his vision and then his scalp began to scream in tandem with the blasters and singed ozone and hair filled his nostrils.

"Get the shab up!" Sergeant Ceruti's voice was suddenly right in his ear, louder than any artillery. "You di'kutla nibral! Up, haar'chak, up! Nar dralshy'a!"

Though he didn't know most of the words she yelled at him, he wanted to obey - even at the tender age of five, obedience was deeply ingrained - but his body wouldn't comply. Oh-Six felt empty, like a suit of armor laid out for inspection.

The cadet atop him shifted, trying to follow the sergeant's orders.

That's when the screaming started.

Not blaster-screams, but the high-pitched, breathless screams of a wounded clone.

"Shabiir!"

Abruptly, the lights went on and the blasters went silent.

Three-Nine rolled off of Oh-Six and he saw, for the first time, the other training sergeants operating the repeating blasters from their mounted platforms.

One of them, dressed in sandy-gold armor, jumped from his platform and limped hurriedly down the line of cadets, towards where the screaming still continued. Oh-Six, still on the ground, turned his head to see.

The two Mandalorians were kneeling by the downed cadet, examining his left side. Oh-Six couldn't hear what they were saying and couldn't read their lips with the helmets on. He let his head drop back onto the ground and tried to gulp in some air, ignoring the dirt that was being ground into his sweaty skin.

"Osik!"

His ears were ringing and his scalp throbbed where it had been grazed by the plasma, but Sergeant Ceruti's shout nonetheless penetrated the fog settling around his mind.

As if slapped, Oh-Six jumped to his feet and was trotting towards her before even his exhausted body knew what he was doing. He teetered, the pack threatening to unbalance him, but he kept going; running down the line of trembling, sweating cadets by focusing on setting one foot in front of the other and nothing else.

Until a strong hand slapped him upside the head.

"What the shab do you want, di'kut?" Sergeant Ceruti snapped irritably. "Need a shabla bathroom break, then do it in your pants, nibral."

His head felt like it weighed as much as the pack, but Oh-Six managed to lift it and stare into the sergeant's T-visor. "Sir, Oh-Six reporting as ordered, sir."

"What?" For once, she sounded utterly flabbergasted.

"Sir, CC-two-one-oh-six, reporting as per your instructions."

The injured cadet was being propped up by the second Mandalorian. Oh-Six cast him a critical look and decided the injury was non-threatening, in need only of a quick application of bacta. The burns incurred from the plasma, he knew, would be hurting a lot more than the deeper tissue injury.

The sergeant began to chuckle.

Bent over the injured cadet, the Mandalorian in the gold armor looked up, irritation in every line of his body. "Care to share the joke, Ceruti?" he asked in a tone that made Oh-Six cringe.

"Osik, Skirata" the sergeant said and slapped her belt-spat with one gauntlet. "Oh-sik," she said again, repeating his designation more slowly.

Oh-Six looked from one to the other. He wasn't sure how - his head hurt too much to think - but he was keenly aware that he had misstepped somehow.

Skirata gently helped the cadet to his feet, his helmet swivelling from the sergeant to Oh-Six. "Kaysh mirsh solus," he finally said and escorted the wounded cadet back to the OD. "The both of you."

Sergeant Ceruti merely gave a snort, then slapped him upside the head again, hard enough to rock him where he stood. "Shab'ika, this look like a shabla Twi'lek dancing show for you to gape at? Back in line, O'sic!"

Gaff was doing a valiant job of trying not to laugh, but the tears running down his dirty cheeks betrayed him.

"Something funny about my nickname, Commander Gaff?" O'sic asked archly.

He tried shaking his head, but his entire body was in convulsions by that time. At least half of that mirth was pure, adrenaline-fuelled exhaustion and tension, but the rest...O'sic chuckled.

"M-my apologies, sir." The rookie finally had himself back in hand enough to form a coherent sentence. He wiped the tears from his face, leaving more smudges of dirt in their place. Aside from spores and bota, what Drongar had in spades was mud. "That was, ehm, a very interesting tale. Rest assured I will keep it under lock and key."

The corners of O'sic's eyes crinkled in amusement, but the rest of his face remained professionally serious. "My thanks, trooper. And, Commander?"

"Sir?"

"Consider yourself distracted."

"Yes, sir."

The door to the surgery slid open and both clones sprang to their feet.