Cuyan~ (OC x Clone wars)

Party!!!

Wolffe:

I was still unsure about how I felt about Commander Helagen. She had the arrogance of a fully grown man but had managed to make it look good on her. Her strategy capabilities were sound and I had heard good things about her fighting abilities. She was mentally sound, and while she acted childishly, it disguised a high level of maturity. She was clearly a capable, sensible person.

But beneath the mask and the maturity beneath that, she was only fourteen. When she had seen General Kenobi's ship blowing up, everything had dropped away to a level of vulnerability she obviously didn't show often. She had been trembling a bit, and staring at the ship as if she could will it back together. I'm not really a touchy-feely person, but I had put a hand on her shoulder to anchor her. I didn't tell her that the General would be fine, or that everything would be okay. This is war, we can't make guarantees, and she knows that as well as I do.

I thought about what she had said to me, that being called 'commander' and 'sir' made her feel old. A teenager shouldn't have the rank of commander, regardless of training. It's a huge burden, and while Ellor bears it well, she shouldn't have to. My brothers and I may be younger, but we were more mentally and physically mature than her, if not in standard cycles. She had a deep loyalty to her men, too, similar to my General. Overall she was a complicated person, but one I was glad to have met.

My thoughts were interrupted by Plo walking in. "Sorry to disturb your 'deep thinking,' Wolffe, but the 501st is hosting a party and I am to 'make you come if I have to levitate you by the ears,' in Ellor's words."

"Obviously her words. No one else has the gall to say that to me." I get a high level of respect in the GAR, but she's the type of person who wouldn't act deferentially to the Supreme Chancellor. She doesn't even call her master 'Master,' or any of the other Jedi for that matter. I push myself back from my desk. "The paperwork can wait," I decide. "A 501st party is not something to miss." I never have alcohol, I'm the responsible one and I like to be in complete control of my facilities, but the 501st is Skywalker's legion and therefore a bunch of rebellious rulebreakers who definitely know how to throw a party.

When we get there, loud music is playing alongside the chatter of the 212th, 501st, and 104th battalions' chatter. The 212th's commander drops in in front of us, apparently she had been hanging out on the ceiling? That seemed appropriate for her, oddly enough. "Oh good, you're here," she says to both of us.

"Of course, you still owe me a story about the whipped cream incident," I remind her. She laughs, and Plo leaves, spotting General Skywalker.

"Ah yes. So it's the middle of the night, and I wake up. And I don't want to go back to sleep. So I execute a prank that I had been planning for a while. For two weeks I had been stockpiling whipped cream for that day. So I sneak out of my room and head down to my stash. Then I take as many bottles of whipped cream as I can carry without dropping any, and I slowly replace every
trooper's
waterbottle
with
whipped
cream."

I allow myself a grin. That's amusing. "How did they react?"

She grins again. "Well, Obi-Wan sprung that test on me, but when I got back everyone was a little bit mad and a little bit happy, because whipped cream." She paused. "Cody went with me to Kamino, to report back to the General on how I did. When we were leaving with the clones I had saved, I gave Cody's to the ones I couldn't rescue. His face was hilarious. He was mad at me, but I think most of that was giving his whipped cream to his brothers."

She sounded bittersweet. I remember when Plo told us about her taking some of the 'defects' for the 212th. Having been the one to save the padawan commander from a bounty hunter, he was quite fond of her and told us things about her sometimes. He told us that story in the mess hall, of how the council had failed her on the test because while what she had done was admirable, it was not the purpose of the test. He told us how stressed the importance of the test was, and how impressed he had been when she saved my brothers at the risk of the assessment. It had really cheered me and my brothers up, there was another Jedi out there who thought of us as living people.