OOC:

Gimp
Heavy Weapons
Level 2: Precision Marksmanship
Story 2: Range Finding & Advanced Vector Calculation

Gimp was developing a boredom headache. He had asked Sgt. Pepper if he could fore go the lecture portion of his upcoming class in favor of his own study. He now wondered about the wisdom of that request. He knew that Love would train him properly but it was just so damn dull. On and on with the numbers and formulae and variables, oh my. He was unsure if he could take anymore. The last twenty minutes had been spent with Love telling him all about something or other he no longer wanted to know anything about.

You know, it's probably pretty smart that you are learning this from Love. I think you would have attacked Sgt. Pepper by now.

Most likely. If Love didn't make such good food, she would be in a scrap heap by now.

"Hold on Love. I need a drink." He said as he moved toward the liquor cabinet.

"O.K. Daddy, but hurry back. We've got so much more to do."

Gimp momentarily froze in place as his jaw clamped down. The strain grew in his teeth and he exhaled mere moments before a blood vessel popped in his brain. He continued on to what he would henceforth call his medicine cabinet and fixed up a tall glass of Barabel Blood. He chugged the drink until not a drop was left in the glass and flung it as hard as he could at the nearest wall.

"Don't bother cleaning that up, Love. I'll do it myself." Gimp told his droid as her turned to face her.

"Are you alright Daddy?" She asked in a worried tone. She had risen to her feet at the sound of breaking glass and her metallic frame now seemed to hold a sheepish disposition.

Gimp looked her over and started for the front door. "Come on." He said abruptly.

"But Daddy..."

"Let's go!" He yelled over his shoulder as he left the apartment. Love scrambled to to catch up to her master while leaving things in a organized fashion for whenever they got back. She locked the door and saw that he already had the Swift running and facing the street, an agitated look on his face. She got in the vehicle as quickly as she could as her circuitry made the strangest computations: She thought she could feel her master's irritation. They sped off into the city without any words.



They had driven for a while and she recognized the area. They turned a corner and she saw Crazy Habib's Discount Droid Emporium a couple of blocks down the road. Her processors sped up and she ran calculations uncontrollably. She knew well what happened to droids that got sent back for "adjustments". She simply had to know what was going on.
"Did I do something wrong Daddy?" She spoke much quicker than she normally did.

Gimp watched the road as he slowed to pull into the parking lot. He looked quizzically at her and responded aloofly "Not at all, Love. I just want to make an adjustment."

Her battery nearly lost it's charge at his comment. The vehicle stopped and his door shutting sounded to her like a death knell. Dejected, she followed her master to her doom. The building seemed to be starkly lit, long shadows cut sharply across her view. She could see Gimp speaking with the man she had seen when she first left this place, motioning toward her. The worker turned to go somewhere and her master called for her to follow them. The isles seemed to stretch longer in front of her as she walked toward her demise. A side room around a corner was where she was headed; she stopped in her tracks as she reached the door. In the room she could see what may have been hundreds of her sister droids, all lifeless, awaiting their own masters. As much as she could, she wanted to flee. To escape the inevitable. Yet, her circuitry would not allow her to disobey her master, so she held her head high and strode briskly into the room. Before she knew what was going on her visual receptors went blank and she lost all computing power.

It felt to Love as if she had awaken instantaneously, but her internal clock quickly informed her that she had only been down for about twenty minutes. A self diagnostic check revealed that she indeed had only received an adjustment. It was still a surprise to her, however, when she smiled for the first time. She had received a facial upgrade that made it possible for her to nonverbally express herself. She still looked like a droid, yet this change made her much more human.

She saw Gimp and sprang at him, wrapping him in her arms.

"Oh thank you, Daddy, thank you!" She smiled brightly as she held him.

"You're welcome Love." Gimp said as he hugged the droid back.

She took half a step back and her face seamlessly morphed into a mask of sadness. "I though you were sending me to the scrap heap." She said softly.

Gimp looked into her mechanical eyes for a moment before he responded. "Love, I wouldn't send you to the scrap heap if you got ran over by a mobile base." He smiled broadly as he lightly kissed her on her new lips. He took her hand as they walked to the cash register and proclaimed "I'm ready for more crap about vectors!"



The sky was a strange hue of orange with blood red clouds moving quickly across the heavens. Gimp felt an odd sense of warmth flow through his body. He was on his belly with a long slug thrower rifle looking down a tall flowered field. Through his very old scope he cold see what appeared to be a New Republic general in the distance. He wanted to take a shot but didn't know how far away the general was.

"Pardon me good sir." The very high pitched voice of an obviously well educated and wealthy man came from Gimp's left. He looked and was startled to see what looked to be an adult bantha looking down at him. Seeing the confusion in Gimp's eye, the bantha spoke quickly. "Never you worry young sir, most humans react to me in that way. You appear to be having a spot of trouble pinning down the range of your target, are you not?"

"Uh, actually, I am." Gimp responded clumsily.

"Well, I know for a fact that droid of yours told you that a fully grown Bantha such as myself will go halfway up the vertical axis of a three by scope at two hundred fifty yards. Am I correct in this assertion?"

"Yeah. Yeah she did say that." Gimp smiled.

"Well then." The bantha vanished from view until Gimp looked back into his scope. The bantha was talking to the general and had apparently said something funny because the general was laughing. He set the scope to three times normal magnification and the bantha was just under halfway up the altitude axis. Maybe the bantha was small or maybe he wasn't leveling the weapon right because the flowers blocked the bantha's feet. Either way, close enough. The flowers seemed to sway a bit to the right so he adjusted his aim for the wind and let his shot loose. By the time he could see through the scope again the general was gone and the bantha had red spray on his facial fur.

Almost immediately the flowers and grass started to dissolve. They broke into smaller and smaller pieces until there was no longer any flower dust in the air. Gimp started to wonder if he should stop smoking spice when he heard New Republic troops screaming off to his right. One of them had spotted a "sniper" and now they were all running towards Gimp with weapons raised.

Oh shit.

Gimp got up as quick as he could but blaster bolts still sprayed all around him. He dropped the gun and ran as fast as his leg and a half would carry him, but it didn't seem fast enough. Out of the corner of his eye he saw something flying at his head. He ducked just in time to make it miss and kept running. Seeing a flash come from the same direction, he realized an enemy sniper was aiming at him. The shots he was firing were not slugs or blaster bolts, but rather, vector calculations. As the blaster bolts from the regular troops chasing him whizzed past, he realized there was something wrong with the equation coming at him. He decided not to dodge it and it sailed by harmlessly. More formulae and bolts flew past and yet he knew his time was running short.

Next thing he knew, he was no longer in his body. Gimp was floating above himself watching his body run towards where he now seemed to be. The troops chasing Gimp's body were catching up, so Gimp turned around to see where his body was headed. Perhaps he could tell himself something useful from this vantage point. What he saw was quite troubling. The slight grade his body was running up ended as a cliff less than twenty five yards from where Gimp's body now was. A new thicket of extremely tall flowers would prevent his body from seeing the cliff. He looked at the sniper shooting at his body just in time to see him take another shot. The equation headed towards his body was perfect.

Gimp blinked and he was back in his body. Remembering what he had just seen, he dove to avoid the sniper fire. His head snapped to the right as the formula grazed his helmet. Before he could hit the ground and try to roll to his feet, he burst through the flowers and saw what looked like a mile of empty space beneath him. For a moment he seemed to float, and he felt he could just fly away. It was a very short moment.

He fell fiercely toward the rocks and water beneath him and knew his death would be quick. Suddenly, his body smashed into a large object as he fell. He hung onto it but it didn't stop him from falling. He looked and realized it was his slug thrower. What the fuck? As his body tumbled down through the air he spotted a large ship not far from him. It was the size of a Super Star Destroyer but it had New Republic markings. Form the inside of the vessel he could hear a voice shout.

"Capitan! We must take evasive action! One more shot and the ship will explode!"

Gimp tried his hardest to steady his body in the air but it was no easy task. He brought the scope to his eye and watched a large section of the ship sway back and forth as his body fought the air. He aimed high over the ship hoping that gravity, distance, and the fact that he was falling while shooting would conspire to make his missile arc as he pleased. He pulled the trigger and the recoil sent him spinning hard in a new direction. He spun and spun and was occasionally able to see what looked like a vapor trail heading for the ship. While one of his twists had him facing the cliff he heard a huge explosion. Luckiest shot ever. The shock wave sent him careening into the rock wall and bounced him off it quite hard. He fell toward the water like a rag doll, craggy rocks speeding at him. In the farthest of distances he heard a smoky voice echo through his mind. Just as he was about to touch the water his world went blank, and the voice got clear.

"Daddy. Wake up Daddy." Gimp groaned and looked at Love sitting on his bed. "Were you having a bad dream Daddy?" The droid asked with a concerned look on her face.

"Yeah, Love. Not too bad though I guess." He replied truthfully.

"Well it's time for you to get up. Didn't you hear me calling you?" She continued as she rose and left the room. "Your breakfast is ready. You need to hurry so you're not late."



He strolled into the HWTC and was a little relieved not to see Cpl. Gray behind the counter. He just wasn't feeling that sharp today. Probably the lack of good sleep last night. He made it a point to ignore the fat man who was in Cpl. Gray's spot in the most obvious way possible. He walked into room 2707 as per usual and saw Sgt. Pepper waiting in his seat.
Gimp noticed that there was a blank piece of paper sitting on one of the desks.

"Good morning Sergeant." Gimp said evenly.

"Good morning Private. Have a seat there, flip that paper over, answer all the questions, go in the sim room and do what you need to do. By the time you come out, your written exam will be graded." The sergeant spoke in an upbeat voice but without taking his eyes from a stack of papers.

"Yes sir." Gimp said as he sat to take his test.

Test taking was an extremely rare event in Gimp's life. It irritated him to no end that he had to sit for what felt like days, just to show he knew some things. Couldn't this be done in a more practical way? Of course it could, thats exactly what he had to do next. After two and a half hours of fuming and self pity, he was finally done. He could tell he did a pretty good job because Love had made him write many things down and he recognized the vast majority of the things he saw. He handed the paper to Sgt. Pepper and walked into the simulation room.

Before him was the same range he had performed his last test on. This time he was awaited by a grizzled man on the long distance side of the range. As he got closer he could see the sharp shooter insignia on the man's uniform. As Gimp got into saluting range the man spoke.

"My name and rank are insignificant, Private. It's very unlikely that we will never see each other again after today. My only job here is to make sure you can hit long range targets. Luckily enough for you this is not sniper training. Here, the standards for accuracy are exceedingly low. You will be given two shots to hit each stationary target. Anywhere on the target will do. You will not even need to shoot at any moving targets from this range because no non-sniper can be expected to hit a moving target from this far. Especially not any wanna be Scouts. Get in the prone position and shoot the twenty targets."

"Sir, yes sir." Gimp said loudly as he dropped to his belly. He planned to imagine this sharp shooter was his target. The targets came at ranges from five hundred to three thousand yards. Gimp took a grand total of twenty two shots, only missing when a slight breeze sent a couple of shots errant from the farthest targets. Gimp felt extremely good about what he had accomplished. When he came to the VEA he might had been the worst shot ever to sign up. Now no target was safe. Provided that it wasn't windy, the target was inside three thousand yards and it was standing still. This was still a long way from where he started. He rose to his feet and allowed a bit of his contempt for the sharp shooter to show. As the scene started to blink and flash the older man smiled and took a parting shot.

"You'll still never be a sniper."

Smug fuck.

Gimp walked back into the classroom to find Sgt. Pepper drinking a cup of coffee.

"Excellent work on the written, Private Gimp." The man said looking up at Gimp. "You must be very good at studying, we have actual snipers that don't score as well as you did."

"Well sir, I have a private tutor. A very good tutor, I believe." Gimp said with a warm smile.

"I have to agree Private. On your way. Don't take so long to take your next test either." Said the sergeant kindly.

"I won't sir."

Gimp smiled with pride as he left the HWTC, ready to take on the rest of the day.

OOC:

Passed, I enjoyed the read both from character and the actual spec concepts and I like how you blur them together at times.  Normally I would groan at a length like this, but I was entertained while reading it.  Good luck with the next spec.