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It was a quiet, uneventful night at one of Coruscant’s hundreds of Flangth-2-Go. Ari, a human teenage girl, reclined in her seat at the drive-through window. She wished she was anywhere but work right now. While she needed the credits, her chemistry assignment wasn’t going to do itself.
She checked the chrono. She still had an hour. Ugh.
Ding!
She tapped her earpiece.
“Welcome to Flangth-2-Go,” she monotoned, “what can I get you?”
“Damn, Kix, she sounds just as bored as you.”
Ah. Clones.
“I too would be bored if I worked for a Flangth-2-Go.”
“Echo, stop poking me! Fuck, we’ve been out of the barracks for like, ten minutes. Grow up.”
“But we’ve been stuck in parade all day and I’m overdue to annoy you.”
“Um, sirs?” Ari said weakly. “What can I-”
“This poor girl is trying to take our food order. Come, children. Let’s try help her out.”
“Ugh, I don’t know what I want! It all looks so yum!”
“Just get the nuggets, ‘Case. Yeah, uh, I’ll get the cheeseburger and fries! Oh, and a fizzroot shake!”
“And I’ll have a bantha burger, a blue milkshake, and one of those apple pie pockets.”
“Ugh, I guess I’ll get the nuggets. Uh, the twenty-four pack.”
“Anything to drink, Hardcase?”
“…lemonade.”
Ari had no idea how many of them there were. They all sounded the same. Her fingers flew across the datapad, inputting the orders with practiced speed.
“Kix? What d’you want?”
“Fries. No salt. Water.”
“Dude, a little flavour won’t kill you.”
“If only it did.”
“Don’t scar the poor girl. Excuse me, ma’am, would you mind reading back our order so far?”
At least one of them had manners.
“Sure.” Ari cleared her throat. “Cheeseburger and fries, a fizzroot shake, a bantha burger, a blue milkshake, an apple pie pocket, twenty-four nuggets, lemonade, fries with no salt, and a water. Is there anyone else still to order?”
“Yes, just me. Could I please have a nerfburger and ardees? And that’ll be all, thank you, ma’am.”
“Alright. Please drive to the second window.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Ari considered calling a co-worker over and going on a spontaneous break. She really did. However, in the time it took for her to ruminate over the decision to run away, a Republic-issued landspeeder appeared on the other side of the drive-through window, and with it came five almost identical faces clad in blue-accented armour.
The first clone had most of his face covered by a massive tattoo of the Republic logo. He sat in the driver’s seat, smiling at her serenely, seemingly unbothered by the chaos unfolding on the seats behind him.
For there were three more clones seated behind him. The first, his face lined with geometric patterns, yelled incoherently at two others. Of the other two, one looked incredibly generic with neat hair and no beard, while the other had a short goatee and a small tattoo of the number ‘5’ on his temple. The one with the beard sneered at the one with the geometric patterns, while the third plain clone looked like he was trying not to laugh.
With all the chaos in the back seat, Ari almost missed the fifth clone seated silently in the front passenger’s seat. His skull was covered in tattooed lightning bolts and Aurebesh spelling ‘the only good droid is a dead one’, and he stared forward with the same blankness in his eyes as most kids in Ari’s math class.
She really wasn’t sure what to make of this group.
“Hello,” she said weakly.
“Hello!” The first clone smiled and hefted a jingling wallet. “How much do we owe you, ma’am?”
“Forty-three-eighty.”
Behind them, the argument continued, and the overlapping voices made Ari wince.
“Wonderful.” The clone handed her fifty credits and rolled his eyes at the three behind him. “Keep the change as an apology for those idiots.”
“Yeah!?” the clone with geometric tattoos yelled at the clone with the beard. “I’ll show you whose growth tank had a leak!”
Before he could lunge forward, the first clone’s voice cut through the air like ice.
“Stop.”
They all froze. Even Ari froze. She stared wide-eyed at the first clone, who still smiled serenely.
“You’re frightening her,” he continued. “Apologise to the poor girl.”
“Sorry,” the three in the back chorused. Ari swallowed.
“P-please move through to the next window for your food.” Her mouth felt terribly dry.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Then the clones drove forward, and they were no longer her problem. She leant back in her seat and sighed heavily.
She hadn’t been frightened. Confused? Yes. Frightened? No. They weren’t like the usual rabble that came through her drive-through at this time of the night. They were almost like teenage boys, in a sense, and when she compared their behaviour to that of teenage boys at her school, she couldn’t help but chuckle.
Oh well, they’d made her last hour interesting, and for that she was grateful.
o.O.o
After receiving their Flangth-2-Go, Jesse’s squad somehow found themselves at Monument Plaza because it’s an easily-recognisable place on Coruscant. It was a busy night, with hundreds of people bustling to and fro, and even in their armour, the five clones blended in relatively easily.
They found a bench close to the summit of Umate to eat their food. Hardcase handed his box of nuggets to Kix.
“Why?” Kix monotoned.
“Toss them!” Hardcase stepped back and squatted. “I’ll try catch them in my mouth.”
“But why?”
“Because it’s fun!”
Kix heaved a long-suffering sigh, plucked a nugget from the box, and half-heartedly tossed it into the air. Hardcase dove forward, twisted onto his back, and caught the nugget between his teeth. He rolled back onto his feet and thrust his arms upwards in victory. His triumphant shout caught the attention of several passers-by, who all shied away from the group of clones.
While Kix continued to toss nuggets for Hardcase to catch, Fives and Echo sat shoulder-to-shoulder and dug into their meals with gusto.
“Okay.” Fives munched on his cheeseburger. “So, all you have to do is squint your eyes a little, like this, and pout your lips. Oh, and raise your eyebrow just a little bit.”
“Like this?” Echo swallowed a mouthful of his bantha burger and attempted a smoulder. Fives grimaced.
“Echo, you look like you’re constipated.”
“Oh yeah? Well show me how it’s done, rizz master.”
Fives said nothing. He used his thumb to lift Echo’s chin and graced Echo with a smoulder so strong that Echo feel like a look alone would impregnate him. The rizz was also so strong that his apple pie pocket slipped off his lap and splattered on the ground.
“Aw.” Fives broke the smoulder, stooped, and scooped the ruined pocket off the ground. “Sorry.”
“My dessert.” Echo sniffed. “It’s ruined.”
“I’ll get you a new one!” Fives leapt to his feet and saluted. “I’ll be back!” As Fives darted into the crowd, Echo happily returned to his burger, keen to see what kind of dessert his brother found for them.
Meanwhile, Jesse sat on the bench behind them, his nose buried in a cooking holobook. He enjoyed his nerfburger while he read, perusing recipes to make burgers of his own because he found himself very inspired by their trip to Flangth-2-Go. His frying pan practically vibrated on his belt in anticipation of being used to do something other than whack droids or brothers.
So engrossed in his holobook, he didn’t notice that, in their game, Kix and Hardcase had moved dangerously close to the summit of Umate. They were down to the final five nuggets, and Hardcase had yet to drop one.
“I have the reflexes of a Tooka.” Hardcase flexed his biceps and waggled his fingers. “You’ll have to toss harder if you wanna beat me.”
“Competition is meaningless.” Nevertheless, Kix tossed the nugget, and Hardcase leapt backwards to catch it.
Falling right against the summit of Umate.
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
“STEP AWAY FROM THE SUMMIT.”
Two police droids instantly materialised, and Hardcase yelped and pushed Kix behind him.
“It was me.” He lifted his hands. “Sorry, sirs. My bad.”
All nearby eyes were on the unfolding scene: the two clones being waylaid by the police droids for touching Mount Umate. With bated breath, they awaited the outcome.
“Alright, what’s going on here?”
The familiar voice of a brother made Hardcase sigh in relief, only to tense up once more as the red-accented armour of Commander Fox appeared, flanked by two other members of the Coruscant Guard. He hastily saluted, and behind him, Kix lazily did the same.
“Sir! We were, uh, playing a game and got too close to the summit, sir.”
Fox glanced Hardcase up and down.
“You’re part of General Skywalker’s legion?” At Hardcase’s nod, Fox shook his bucket and turned his head to the heavens. “I should’ve known. Where’s your commanding officer?”
“There, sir.” Hardcase pointed to where Jesse sat on his bench and stared dreamily at his holobook. Fox and his men strode towards Jesse, and Hardcase breathed a sigh of relief and glanced at Kix. “I thought we were toast.”
“Oh, to be a humble slice of toast amidst the turning universe.”
While Hardcase tried to make sense of Kix’s words, Jesse glanced up at the new arrivals. He grinned easily at the approaching Fox.
“Commander,” he said, “to what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Your men touched the summit of Umate, corporal.”
“Did they?” Jesse’s eyes flashed. “Excuse me.”
Then, before Commander Fox’s very eyes, Jesse strode towards Hardcase and Kix, hefted his frying pan-
WHACK! WHACK!
While his men groaned and cradled their heads, Jesse re-sheathed his frying pan, joined Fox, and saluted with a serene smile that sent a fission of fear rippling down the commander’s spine. Fox wasn’t scared of anything. He dealt with the chancellor and senators every day. He ate bounty hunters, serial killers, and petty criminals for breakfast.
But the look in the corporal’s eyes? That terrified him.
“Consider them disciplined, commander. They won’t do it again.”
The men of General Skywalker’s legion were something else.
Meanwhile, nearby, Echo perked up on his seat as he spotted Fives racing through the crowd towards him. Oblivious to the frying pan madness nearby, he couldn’t stop a grin from breaking through as Fives skidded to a halt before him and proudly displayed two wrapped packages.
“I have returned,” Fives announced, “and with the dessert of all desserts. This’ll put your apple pocket to shame.”
“I’m ready.” Echo licked his lips. Fives flicked his wrists and the wrappings around both packages came undone.
Melted chocolate steamed atop the fresh-cooked pastries, and the unmistakeable scent of butter filled the air. Echo inhaled deeply, every sense coming alive, and he was suddenly glad that he’d dropped his previous dessert.
“Behold!” Fives puffed out his chest. “A croissant, on Coruscant, for mi corason.”
…
Okay, just because of that bad joke alone, Echo was no longer glad. But he still smiled because Fives looked so dang proud, and honestly the croissant looked and smelled amazing.
o.O.o
Rex had just turned off his datapad and settled in for the night when his comm chimed. He checked the comm code and blanched.
Why was Commander Fox calling him?
Though he asked the question, as he moved to answer the comm, he sighed because he already knew the answer.
“Commander,” he greeted, “what did Corporal Jesse’s squad do?”