User:Menkooro/R2-D2

A curious caper
When a deadly series of groundquakes shook the planet Aleen, R2-D2 and C-3PO were assigned to A Republic relief team that was dispatched to the world&mdash;while the protocol droid acted as a translator between the clone troopers and the native Aleena, instructions on how to operate the delivered equipment were uploaded into R2-D2. After riding LAATs into a ruined city, the droids and Clone Commander Wolffe were greeted by the Aleena King Manchucho, who heralded their arrival as a sign that the "Gods below" would once more know peace. When a brief aftershock rumbled through the ground, Wolffe dismissed Manchucho's puzzling claim that his team needed to "make peace in the ground" and dispatched R2-D2 and Sergeant Sinker to the mainframe computer station. Inside the destroyed building, the astromech droid ran metrics on structural degredation. The results were negative, and he began to download his program into the main computer. Another aftershock hit, but an unworried Sinker left R2-D2 to his task. C-3PO arrived just as his friend was finishing up, and a small group of Aleena declared that they had something to show the two droids. R2-D2 and C-3PO followed them to a large hole in the ground that was mostly covered by a heavy seal. When yet another aftershock sent C-3PO tumbling into the hole, R2-D2 ignited his booster rockets and followed him down.

The droids found themselves in a dark, subterranean cavern, and R2-D2's glowrod aided them as they searched for a way out. What they initially took to be daylight ahead revealed itself as phosphorescent plants in the midst of an underground forest. R2-D2 sprayed fire extinguishing foam at a beleaguered C-3PO when what appeared to be glowing insects kept surrounding him, but the action caused several of the trees to stand up and menacingly surround them. In fact members of the Kindalo species, they demanded to know why the droids had come underground and why the surface dwellers has disturbed their peace. As C-3PO parleyed with them, one Kindalo revealed that the ground had shaken to keep the surface air&mdash;deadly to their kind&mdash;out of the underground. The protocol droid offered to help them, and he and R2-D2 quickly departed when they were pointed in the direction of a being called Orphne. They made their way to a chamber, where the glowing insects reappeared and metamorphosed into a radiant female being: Orphne.

Orphne told the droids that a covenant had once existed between the Aleena and the subterranean dwellers, but the movement of surface air to their world without going through the natural filtering process had effectively breached the covenant. Consequently, the underground dwellers had caused the groundquakes. When C-3PO offered to seal the breach and prevent more Aleena deaths, Orphne spoke a riddle before disappearing: "You can run but can not walk. You have a mouth but cannot talk. You have a head but never weep. You have a bed but never sleep. Ask yourself, who are you?" R2-D2 played back a recording of her telling the riddle, and as C-3PO pondered the puzzle, the astromech examined several decorated circles on the chamber floor. He realized that they represented the four elements, and when he reached water, he sprayed some on the circle. He had solved the riddle&mdash;the answer was a river&mdash;and he joined C-3PO inside the central circle as it rose into the air on a jet of water and carried them back to Aleen's surface.

The two were thrown high into the air and sent to a landing next to the hole through which they had initially fallen. The underground air was rising through it and causing the nearby Aleena to become sick, and R2-D2 began pulling on it with his cable gun. An added push from C-3PO helped seal the hole, and the two worlds were once more separated. Several clone troopers arrived at that moment to retrieve them, and as they made their way back to an LAAT to leave the planet, Manchucho thanked C-3PO while an Aleena child hugged R2-D2. With the clones ignorant of the droids' adventure, the group launched to return to their ship and proceed to a rendezvous with Jedi Master Adi Gallia.

En route to Republic space aboard Gallia's Venator-class Star Destroyer, R2-D2 displayed a holographic image of Amidala, who told C-3PO that he was needed back on Coruscant. An attack from a Separatist fleet ruined those plans, however, as the Venator main reactor was hit and an evacuation was ordered amidst the arrival of a Separatist boarding party. When the droids spotted General Grievous engaged in a lightsaber duel with Master Gallia, they fled to search for an escape pod but ended up in a hangar. R2-D2 knocked the R5-series astromech droid R5-L26 out of the way and rocketed up into the droid socket of a Y-wing, and after C-3PO reluctantly entered the cockpit, the astromech took them out into the unfolding space battle. After destroying one vulture droid, he turned and fled to the nearby planet Patitite Pattuna as the Venator was turned into stellar debris. A lone vulture droid followed them into the atmosphere and knocked out the fighter's reactor, but when it lost them in the cloud cover, R2-D2 brought the Y-wing around behind it and destroyed it. However, the Y-wing's reactor shut down, and the droids crash-landed into a marsh.

R2-D2 and C-3PO exited the damaged ship and were quickly greeted by the world's powered spear-wielding natives: the Patitites, a diminutive species who stood less than half a meter tall. Both droids dismissed them as a threat just before being electrocuted by the spears and knocked to the ground. The Patitites tied both droids to the ground as they awaited the arrival of their leader; |the Big Hay-Zu" soon arrived on the scene and banished the droids from the planet, but an offended R2-D2 confronted him after being cut loose. He appealed to C-3PO to "let me at him," and the protocol droid's attempts to prevent a fight ended with him inadvertantly knocking R2-D2 down and turning Hay-Zu into a pile of goo. The Patitites cheered the droids for freeing them from Hay-Zu's despotism and set to work helping R2-D2 fix the Y-wing. While the astromech droid was completing repairs, C-3PO tried to introduce the Patitites to democracy, but his ersatz election caused the group to immediately begin squabbling over who had in fact won. The droids quickly boarded the repaired starfighter and left the Patitites to their new system of government; the backwash of the ship's ion drive knocked all of the Patitites over as it lifted off.

On their way out of the world's atmosphere, the droids realized that both they and their ship were running out of power. They accordingly touched down on the nearby planet of Balnab, where R2-D2 scanned for a viable power source and led his companion off into the fog. It did not take long for a group of Balnab hunters to find them, ensnare them in a net, and bring them before their leader: an enormous hologram of Albee Dewaw, a being who appeared to be of the same species as most of the Balnab hunters. Dewaw immediately killed one of the hunters with a bolt of lightning for showing independent thought by bringing non-living things before him, and as C-3PO negotiated with him, R2-D2 wheeled off and discovered a computer terminal in a nearby canyon wall. After opening a hidden door with his scomp link, the astromech discoverd that Dewaw was nothing more than a hologram controlled by four DUM-series pit droids. One of the droids told R2-D2 to find his own organic slaves, and R2-D2 responded by shoving him out into the open. With the ruse revealed, the Balnab hunters stormed the hidden room, and R2-D2 and C-3PO walked away from the ensuing lightfight as a series of explosions rocked the canyon.

As they neared their crashed Y-wing, both droids were halted by their quickly-depleting power supplies. R2-D2 was the first to run out of power completely, and his companion soon followed suit. However, it wasn't long before a group of Weequay pirates discovered them beneath the cover of a large mushroom; the salvagers brought both the droids and the Y-wing aboard their pirate ship, the Marauder, and plugged them both in. When both droids woke up aboard the vessel, they were ushered into a droid fighting ring, where the ASP-series droid K0-5D was destroying all challengers with his flamethrowers. When it was R2-D2 and C-3PO's turn to fight, they were saved by a hull breach&mdash;General Grievous's flagship had arrived in-system and fired on the Marauder for the sake of target practice.

With C-3PO holding onto his frame, R2-D2 used his booster rockets to fly through the vacuum of space and land in a hangar aboard the Confederate vessel. Present B1 battle droids arrested them and sent them to the incinerator, where a conveyor belt edged them toward their doom. Both droids were saved when a Republic fleet arrived and attacked; R2-D2 rocketed himself and C-3PO away from the incinerator in the midst of the chaos and found both Adi Gallia and Plo Koon destroying a small resistance force of battle droids. Grievous had fled, leaving the Republic forces triumphant, and a stunned Commander Wolffe recognized R2-D2 and C-3PO. As the droids rejoined their allies, C-3PO regaled Wolffe with an account of their adventures.

Cleaning up messes
"That's it, pal. Now we're moving!"

- Skywalker to R2-D2 immediately prior to the Battle of Belderone

Thirty-one months into the war, Skywalker and Kenobi had both been serving on the front lines for nearly an entire uninterrupted year, and were consequently granted a ten-day reprieve. Skywalker and R2-D2 traveled to Naboo to visit Amidala in the lake country for some peaceful time away from the fighting. Shortly into the vacation, Kenobi arrived, and recruited a reluctant Skywalker to help him hunt Asajj Ventress, whom he alone believed to be still alive following a duel with Skywalker on Coruscant. Kenobi left immediately, and Skywalker and R2-D2 took Skywalker's Eta-2 Actis-class light interceptor to rendezvous with him above Maramere in the Karthakk system. Kenobi flew an interceptor of his own, and as they waited in an empty system, a large Separatist capital ship emerged from hyperspace. Skywalker blasted battle droids that waited on its hull, and the two Jedi entered the ship to search for Ventress.

The arrival of the ship had in fact been orchestrated by the Separatist commander Durge, who planned on using Kenobi's obsession with finding Ventress to kill the Jedi Master. R2-D2 waited in Skywalker's starfighter as the two Jedi explored the ship. While Skywalker battled Durge, Kenobi commed R2-D2 and had the astromech droid locate the ship's secondary hangars. Skywalker lured Durge into an escape pod and fired it into Maramere's sun, and Kenobi found a travel log inside one of Durge's droids indicating Ventress's presence at Boz Pity. They returned to their starfighters and escaped from the ship, which Durge had programmed to self-destruct. R2-D2 and the two Jedi prepared to take on a group of vulture droids that were waiting in space for them, but the timely arrival of senator Bail Organa of Alderaan in the Star Destroyer Intervention prevented the need. R2-D2 did not accompany Skywalker during the subsequent siege of Boz Pity, but the siege saw the end of Ventress's role in the war, as the Dark Jedi fled both the planet and her role in Separatist command.

After three years of fighting, Senator Amidala was still seeking new member worlds for the Republic. R2-D2 was assigned to accompany her, Captain Typho, and C-3PO on a mission to the planet Bri'ahl, where Amidala negotiated with President Vuul. Although she told the droids to not stray too far from the Presidential Palace, the two took a ride on a Bri'ahlian Sky-sled and crashed it into a forest. C-3PO's head was separated from its body in the crash, and after a brief argument between R2-D2 and the head over whose fault the accident had been, the astromech left to retrieve the body. As he dragged it up a hill with his tow cable, his companion's head came tumbling down, and R2-D2 rocketed after it before retrieving it from the bottom of a river. On the river bank was a large mammoth, who did not take kindly to being electrocuted by R2-D2, and who responded by swatting both droids high into the air.

R2-D2 and C-3PO's rough landing crushed three Bri'ahlian rebels who had secretly thrown their lot in with Count Dooku. The rebels had planned to storm the Presidential Palace and had outfitted their soldiers with clone trooper armor. R2-D2 made a minimal effort to reattach his companion's head, and when the droids came across the faux-troopers, loose servomotors in C-3PO caused his hand to slap one trooper in the face. The rebel fell to the ground and accidently blasted his companion, which caused the other rebels to panic and begin blasting. When a thermal detonator was thrown, R2-D2 and C-3PO found themselves the last ones left standing. Unaware of the plot they had just foiled, they returned to the Palace, where Amidala chastised them for being out too late.

- groundquake, king (twice), commander, plant (add before), fire extinguisher, Reactor core (add before), escape pod, spear, Hunting (add before), lightfight, pirate, thermal detonator