I am Leal

Underdogs

0600.

We stood outside of the canteen. The yelling and laughter of our brothers could be heard from outside of the still closed doors. No one of us moved. Kara just looked at the doors with her best killer look on her face. Euphoria squared her shoulders and looked determined towards the door and what laid behind it a smile on her lips. If anybody could see them now they would think they were going to a war. Naz looked uncertain towards the door and then to me. I said toward her. "Relax, they will see that you are uneasy." She looked at me and smiled. " I wish I had your confidence or Karas potty mouth or Euphorias optimism. I just ...." she sighed. From all of us she was the youngest. We protected her no matter what. Whatever she did like eat Kara's candy or hiding my blasters it was all forgotten when she needed us. I would go to the ends of the galaxy for her. Like right now. She felt like she didn't belong. She never spoke it out aloud but we knew, she felt like all of us did. Outcast and not wanted. 

"You are you and that is enough. We are nothing without you because you are enough. Every single one of us is enough and if they can't see that, then they lost some damn good soldiers!" I laid my arm around her shoulder and pulled her into a hug. Kara and Euphoria joined in. After a while we let go of each other and looked at the doors again. I sighed. "Well here goes nothing!"

I opened the door and was the first to enter. We made our way trough the canteen. Slowly all noise stopped. Everybody in the room stopped what they were doing and just stared. A few started whispering again as we passed them. They all wore their blacks, because of the training we had to do at 0700. We wore the same.

I made my way towards the serving counter. Naz, Euphoria and Kara were right behind me like always. We always had each others backs. I grabbed a tray. Naz nervously eyed right back at the boys but quickly followed behind me. She always was very intimidated very fast. Kara growled. I smirked at her and Euphoria chuckled softly.

It seemed to encourage her to say what was on her mind and then she suddenly turned and spoke up. "Oh bloody hell, have you wankers never seen girls before for kriffing sake?" I didn't have to look at her to know that she rolled her eyes in a dramatic fashion. I knew she did it because I taught her how to do a dramatic eyeroll.

I laughed and Naz tried to make herself a little smaller. I winked at her and she relaxed. The faces changed from disbelief into shock in a matter of seconds and then it happened. Euphoria laughed. It started with a small coughed laugh and then she just lost it. She had one of her most rare flashes of pure laughter where she couldn't contain herself. In this state she could laugh for hours and now was a very bad timing for those. They where usually triggered by Kara but I didn't thought she had one right after yesterday. After Hardcase had left us she had begun to snicker and then she laughed for almost a hour. She recalled sequences of our conversation with the Jedi and then another hit of laughter hit her. I think it was some kind of disease. Even the Kaminoans tried to stop her at one point in time when we were cadets but they failed.

I ignored her and Kara and simply pulled Naz with me to get our food. Kara followed dragging a  laughing Euphoria behind her. We collected our food and found a table which wasn't occupied and started eating. Euphoria's laughter resonated from the walls.

Suddenly a chair was pushed back and none other than Hardcase slumped himself next to Naz. "Morning. Ready for training?" He acted like nothing was wrong. That there weren't all those eyes on us and a still laughing Euphoria who looked a little bit blue because of the lack of oxygen she received. But she was fine. She had a thousand of those as cadets so this one wouldn't be any different. Naz smiled at him. They had an extra long  conversation about the consistency of some candy of some kind yesterday. I was pretty sure they would get along dangerously. "Care if some of my brothers join? Hey, Jesse come on over here and bring the rest of the boys." He didn't even wait on our answer.