Left, right-on-left, right-on-left, right left, yo left.

Left.

R-ight on-left.

Left.

1.  2.  3.  4.

1 2 3 4 - Shoot, Move, Communicate, Kill!

1 2 3 4!

SHOOT

the e-313 heavy repeating blaster is an air-cooled, shoulder-fired magazine-fed, semi and fully automatic capable handheld blaster weapon. Assume a proper prone-supported firing position. the 4 fundamentals of marksmanship. Flip your selector switch from Safe to Semi.  immediate actions, remedial actions, fix your malfunction any way you can.  And Watch.  clear every weapon you pick up, you never know who fucked with it.  Your Lane.

MOVE

keep a low-silhouette when moving over walls.  Cover me while I move!  violence of action.  I got you covered! do not cross lanes.  Moving!  you should be eating dirt while you low-crawl.  Set!

COMMUNICATE

comms are key.  Hey you.  you have fired shots, be loud, communicate with your team, they already know you’re here.  This is me.  status, 1 up, 2 enemy down, door.  This is what I’m saying.  move move move.  I’m done speaking.

KILL

shoot him in the chest.  If you see a red lightsaber.  the enemy will spare no effort to kill you, return the favor.  The bad guy is probably a Sith.  he is in your sector, so what if 3-man just shot him, shoot him again.  You should probably shoot the fuck out of him.

SHOOT, MOVE, COMMUNICATE, KILL.

SHOOT, MOVE, COMMUNICATE, KILL.

KILL, KILL, KILL, KILL!

———

Brown eyes open slowly, staring at the same dusty broken fan in the same dusty room.  With a groan brought on by aches and pains and discomfort, a dusty body rises from a dusty bed enveloped in dusty covers, bringing the eyes up to look over a dusty desk littered with dusty items.

One item however, stands out from the rest.  Free of dust, it shines in the light filtering into the room from the open window.  The eyes recognize the item, it’s the item that has the image of the woman.  The beautiful, beautiful red-headed woman, so amazing and kind and nice and tender and

The eyes look down.

They see a dusty communicator that’s run out of batteries from a night of talking with the woman, for once after so long, and for the last time for a long time.

The eyes brighten.  The body leaves the bed, stretching, groaning, and staring out of the window into the sandy, dusty desert filled with so much pain and death and hate.  And yet the body dresses, and retrieves a weapon, and opens the door.

A smile.

Another day.

And the most amazing woman in the galaxy to come home to.

Shoot, move, communicate, kill.

Okay.  So.  This has been the best week of my goddamn life.

Me and Nea went on that vacation.  It was fucking great.

We went down to Nar Shaddaa.  Not the place I usually see, but the place where she grew up after the whole crash dealie and I got to meet some of the people she worked with, who knew her from her street-fighting days.

Goddamn there are some good people there.  I’m happy they found her.  They took good care of her.

Anyway then Nea took me to a very- private place for her, she said she hadn’t really gone back in a long time and it meant a lot- it meant more than a lot that she brought me there and why am I using dashes and shit like I’m talking I am writing this is dumb I should just erase that crap.  Oh I’m using a pen fuck.

Anywya Anyway so we had our moment.  I don’t really wanna record it all here cause it was private but we had our moment, and then we went and Nea got us a room at those big-as-fuck floating casinos.  The real high-class ones.  Someone on the inside owed her a favor and it was great.

We did a lot of stuff in that room, but not a lot of gambling.  I’m not sure that’s good for business.

So we spent a few days just with each other, we went and saw the sites but mostly we just talked and held one another and joked and laughed and smiled and kissed and ate and drank and had a lot of fun.

I gave her my dogtags.  I’ll get new ones.

We spent a lot of time sad too, cause we both know the shitstorm we’re both about to step into once I go.  We can face anything together, we both know that, but apart?  Well that’s gonna be the real test of our commitment to one another.  And I know commitment.  I can handle it, I think she can handle it too, but we won’t know until it happens, and that’s the scary part.

On to better memories though, Zentoyo decided to be way too fucking nice to me and organized a going-away party for my redeployment.  That was way too kind of her.  Like legit, I almost teared up when I got the e-mail.  She’s such a good friend, and always has been one.  I didn’t even mention her in this thing.  That makes me feel bad for some reason.

But anyway she threw me a party, and a lotta guys I knew and plenty I didn’t or only sorta knew were there and everyone had a real good time and it was all super buenotasticbonne.  And of course Z being Z went the extra mile and somehow got into contact with Nea and convinced her to dance for me.  That alone would’ve made my jaw drop, but then she got Nea a slave outfit.

Holy FUCK I have the most beautiful girl in the world galaxy.

And hoenstyl honestly the fact she’d even wear that for me - hell the fact she’d just dance in public for me - hell the fact she did either of those things alone would floor me, but she did BOTH.  My god.

We are way too in love here, it is not good for our health.

But the rest of the party was good.  Even some 7th made it to Nar Shaddaa to see me off.  That was real nice of ‘em.

I love those guys, really I do.  I’m proud of them.  I think they can handle it on their own.  They’ll still be here when I get back.

That leaves me a lot more comfortable than I’ve ever been.

God I normally don’t misspell anything but I misspelled three things already wow.

Anyway I’m really tired because Nea and I have been waking up and going back to sleep and waking up and going back to sleep and absolutely nothing else in between for the past several hours on the much-longer-than-necessary-because-fuck-you trip back to Voss.

I’m gonna say my goodbyes to Vy, then leave Nea with my tags, some holos, and anything else she wants.

And when I get back I’m gonna live up to every single promise I made her.

I love this woman so much.

jen-baen:

DUDAL

Warmup sketch. 2 buddies from Lardass.

Haha hooooo shit.

\/|2()()/\/\

____________________-O/#/O - BEEP BEEP

FUCK!  I LOVE life!

(;_;)7 ~~ GOD BLESS THE REPUBLIC

~~~^^~~^^~~~

SO!  I am far happier than I should be, but why shouldn’t I be?  Everything is fucking perfect.  I’ve got a beautiful, beautiful woman cradled in my arms, I’m writing just above her back- which is on top of me, and we’ve got some nice as shit blankets covering the both of us.

I love this woman so much.

So anyway, the past few days Nea and I’ve been talking some more, after the love incident, and I asked her a few times if she wanted me to stop, in case it scared her or she didn’t want it.  She said it did scare her, but she didn’t want me to stop and- Holy shit.  I think she loves me back.

I mean it’s a bit premature to say but- the thing she did-

Okay I’ll start from the beginning.

So every now and again Nea and I’ll get into a little passionate fit, we’ll start draping our arms over each other, kissing each other, tongue, etceterino, but we’ve never had sex, or anything like that.  She wasn’t ready for it and I wasn’t about to push her into something she didn’t wanna do.

WELL.

I invited her up as per usual this past day and, well.  She asked to use my “facilities.”  So I just kinda lied back and relaxed, kinda got a bit of snoozing done.  I heard her come out, and when I opened my eyes she was in this tiny little black nightie.

She was fucking gorgeous is what she was.

And you can guess what happened from there journal, not like I’m gonna write that shit out for you.  The doctors’d probably freak out too given this was SUPPOSED to be for those damn hallucinations, but they’ve been letting up recently.

God she’s beautiful.  I wish I could draw as well as she can so I can just capture this image forever.  The blankets are just underneath her shoulderblades, we’re both in the nude still, her hair’s in a big ol’ clump covering most of her back, her head’s on my chest, her arms are around me.

I could stay here forever like this.  She’s got this tiny little smile on her face too, that’s just the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen.  I love this woman.

I love this woman so much.