The rumbling and pounds became louder and louder. The Delta Squad rushed out into the grass-heavy area to see what was the matter. Delta 07, Sev, snuck forward to take aim with his sniper rifle; but Delta 38, Boss, ordered him to stand down. They took cover as the rumble got louder, shaking their dropship. It was like footsteps, but more powerful - a rattling mess of mechanical clanks, like twenty steps in one...
"Intruder alert!"
"Roger roger!"
"Drop your weapons!"
"Blast them!"
A sudden stream of blaster shots flung towards the crew. Battle Droids appeared from behind huge stalks of grass, their blasters cutting through the greenery. Thankfully a few rocky structures made for good cover.
Delta 40, Fixer, calmly returned fire. "Counting twenty B1 Droids, five B2 Droids, and a Dwarf Spider Droid."
Delta 62, Scorch, backed him up. "Aww, they must've thought we were lonely here."
Boss kept firing, looking for a route away. "That malfunction must've affected some Separatist ships, too. There may be more."
Sev's DC-17 aim was steady. "Long as they keep coming, any battlefield is fine by me."
The two groups kept shooting, with the Delta Squad landing more hits; but the stream of droids had reserves to replace them. They soon ended up on the defensive; trying their best to hold the lines back, with the army marching closer and closer in...
BOOM!
And a giant, dark monolith fell from the heavens on the Battle Droids, flattening them instantly.
Above, a dark-skinned schoolgirl lifted her sandal, looking at the twitching, sparking robotic pieces adhered to its sole. She spoke: "Hey! Did some kid leave their toy robot around here?"
Another girl wandered over, in the same school uniform, and looked at the mass of shattered scraps. "Ew, is that a spider? Who would want an ugly toy like that?"
One other girl leaned over it, casting a shadow across the ground. "I think it's merch from a sci-fi show... Like Star Trek!"
Her friend held a hand around the first girl's shoulder, high in the air to the Deltas - who stayed hidden in the shrubbery. " Dang, Debby, it looks expensive. We'd best get outta here before some nerd asks you to pay her back."
The first black girl - Debby - shook her head of brown hair. "Nah, I'll take it to the lost and found. I wanna know what it looked like in one piece." Using an embroidered handkerchief, she wiped the remains of the crushed Battle Droids, the ground troopers of the CIS, into her purse.
As the three went stormping off towards a building in the distance, the Deltas stayed in place, waiting for the flurry of gigantic steps to end.
Scorch rubbed the back of his head. "Talk about air support."
Sev turned to him. "Yeah. That support of yours nearly had us in small chunks, and stole my kills."
Scorch shot back, "Any crash you can walk away from is a good one. Rule 48."
Fixer went to some shattered droid parts, mapping out the dirty, deep footprint surrounding them - and taking soil samples. "Female. All of them. Perhaps it's some training or education facility."
Looking to the massive building in the distance, Boss readied his weapons. "We have years of training with the best the Republic has to offer. What do they have?"
Fixer answered, "They have a large shoe size. Greater than our dropship, and by a wide margin. How well our shields could hold up... Indeterminate." He then picked up the steely parts around him, buried in muck. "But if they've stepped on any more clankers, that saves us half the trouble of looking for hyperdrive parts."
Sev went forward. "Then let's go hunting, boys."
The ship's small crew scouted ahead through the grass - beneath massive bleachers, around discarded cans, staying on guard for any sudden movement. The grass got higher, blocking their visibility. But the sensors indicated some huge mineral deposit in the distance. They ventured forth, and discovered, gleaming in the distance, a massive set of scrap metal.
Sev mused, "Vulture droids. Still crispy."
Scorch approached. "Did they forget they could fly?"
Fixer noted, "They're not completely totaled. Their innards can be salvaged."
Boss moved ahead cautiously. "And whatever totaled them looks long gone..."
boomboomBoomBoomBOOMBOOMBOOM
Faster than they could duck away, a humongous stampede of bulky, blindingly huge running shoes approached them. The Delta Squad had nowhere to escape, it was like an unbreachable pack of moving mountains. They shot away with blasters and threw detonators, but nothing stopped the massive treads from falling on them all.
SMASH-SMASH-SMASH
All at once, Sev, Scorch, and Fixer were stepped on. Boss narrowly dodged; and was horrified to find no trace of his men.
A plump, curvy redhead with glasses had Scorch right beneath gum on her shoe's toe - gnashing and crushing him into it with every step. He yelled out in agony as it buried him deeper - every step giving him only a moment of light before he was covered in darkness and pink wetness again. She moaned: "Uuufgh, I stepped in something weird! It's stuck! Cooooach!"
A Latina right behind her, with a ponytail and large earrings, panted. "It's waaay too hot... My feet are killing me..." Her shoes had the ruins of Separatist ship parts in them, along with a heavy helping of muddy dirt, and Fixer. He would have been tormented by a horrid smell if he didn't have his mask.
And right beside her, a girl with long dark hair and a severe look on her face kept marching ahead. "This is nothing... Hah... I was born to do this... hah... I'm gonna crush the competition..." Beneath her heavy, hard pounds into the track, Sev suffered, body gnarled in a groove in her heel.
Boss tried to ready a rescue; but he was so distracted that he didn't see the other shadow falling on him until it was way too late. The coach, a woman in her 30s with short blonde hair and a muscular build, trailed behind them, blowing a whistle. "Keep moving, ladies! This ain't the time for mani-pedis and shoe shopping!" Her own running shoe, which was much bigger than any of the students', easily crushed Boss in its treads.
The gym class had been running laps around the field for a long time; having annihilated massive amounts of Separatist air forces beneath their mighty feet, without taking a moment to notice. Their shoes had enough grime and dirt beneath them, and the right tread shape, to protect the Commandos from lasting injury; though they were rattled to their core with every terrible, forced STOMP.
Sev felt the pressure getting more and more intense as it dragged on. "No way... Not here..." The sunlight singed his eyes every time his body was flung in the air.
Fixer coiled in a defensive posture, seeing the same wreckage pass him by - more thoroughly ground to bits with every lap. "We can abandon THAT mission."
Boss was cushioned by the larger amount of shoe pressing in a less concentrated area; but the coach had a running posture and speed that kept a huge force concentrated on him, and made the world swing around like crazy. "No way out..."
Scorch, having unglued a single arm from his gummy trap, reached into his abdomen. He held his breath as his face was ground again into the soil; before pulling out a small explosive. "Might be crazy enough to work..."
POP!
The bubble gum absorbed the shock; protecting him, but sending the redhead off-balance. Alarmed at the sound and pressure, she suddenly dashed forward; and ended up as the first girl stumbling across the finish line. The others congratulated her as she dusted herself off, rubbing her sole with her hand.
"Finally! I want out of these now!"
"I feel so gross... but sooo good..."
"I'll have to try harder..."
The girls all went to the bench to relax - taking off their shoes to brush the dirt off, or enjoy the feeling of cool air. And it was there that the Delta Squad reunited, under the clouds from girls' smelly socks and bare feet.
Sev took deep breaths. "Love the smell of gum in the morning..."
Scorch had trouble pulling the stuff off his visor. "Couldn't do that again even if you ordered me."
Fixer looked to the scraps. "Some of it's barely salvageable."
Boss got used to solid ground again. "Take what you can, but we need to get to a safe place- before they start moving again--"
At that, the coach got up. "Remember your stretches!"
The squad of clones rushed away from the huge, scattering feet. They blasted open a small vent in the school. From there, they began moving inward.
"Just like the vents in Kashyyyk," Sev said, looking at the dark passages.
Scorch followed. "Yeah. If the Wookies were all 400 Kamino Feet tall."
Fixer, behind them, said, "it could be to our advantage. If their tech is bigger, we can dissemble it for more raw resources."
Boss added, "If they don't catch us."
Scorch looked back. "Maybe they're friendly rampaging monsters?"
The vent ended up carrying the Republic Commandos...
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