DVANDOM _____ ______ _____ _______ THE DEATH DUCK SAGA part 7 of 7 [ ]__ [ ] [] [ ]__)) [ ] ` [ ]__ #96 - "The Dvandom Menace Too" [ ] [ ] [] [ ] \\ [ ] [ ] copyright 1999 Dave Van Domelen [_] [_]__[] [_] \\ [_]___/ [_]____ -------]==+ <*> +==[------- [cover shows Darth Mallard standing triumphantly over the corpses of the various Dvandom Force members. Cover copy reads "Quack down!"] They were trapped. Queen Amitanna, her loyal Faboolean troops, the two Net.i Knights who accompanied her and a small child had just managed to take the hangar bay of her castle in the capital city of Faboo. But now the hangar doors were blocked by a trio of Federation Pegwarmer robots...much tougher than the battle 'bots made from synthetic zweiback...and the only other door out was blocked by the robed Darth Mallard. "You done with the recap?" Queen Amitanna asked. Almost. You just need to reprise your last line. Amitanna nodded, then put on her "acting face." With a look of shock and horror, she gasped, "I...I know you...." sQuid-Gon looked at Darth Mallard, then back at Amitanna. "You mean from when he attacked me on Tunisia VI?" "The Queen and I go back farther than that," Darth Mallard sneered. "And she is starting to see the truth...and I can't have that," he added, pulling out a short metal tube. "Not yet, anyway." The two Net.i fell into fighting stances, drawing similar tubes out of their own robes. However, while everyone else had been watching this exchange, Katarin had figured out the controls of the fighter she was in. Heavy blaster bolts ripped into the Pegwarmers, blowing them into tiny little pieces and splines. "Fighters, take off! Queen, get to the Federation leaders, we'll detain the Spliff Lord," sQuid-Gon shouted, pacing warily around Darth Mallard. WHOOSH! Suddenly, the hangar bay was empty except for the three robed warriors. In another blink of an eye, all three had ignited their lightcabers. Immense shafts of light extended to the ceiling, and the warriors struggled to keep their weapons under control. "You know..." Poki-Wan grunted, "one of...these days...we've GOT to... figure out...how to...make these things SMALLER!" "Give it up, Spliff Lord," sQuid-Gon snorted. "We have two cabers to your one, you cannot defeat us." Darth Mallard merely grinned (well, not that you could tell through the mask) and extended a second energy shaft from the other side of his weapon. Which immediately sank into the floor, taking out half the power grid and turning out the lights. "Er, maybe we should take this outside?" Poki-Wan suggested. * * * * Amitanna led her strike force down the hallway, trying not to trigger any alarms or rouse any suspicion. Unfortunately, when you're a heavily- armed strikeforce in full assault gear running down a marble-lined and terribly opulent corridor in jackboots...well, let's just say they felt awfully self-conscious. They stood out like a bunch of Vampire LARPers on a crowded public beach in July. "Should we shoot some more sculptures?" one of the men asked. "No," Amitanna shook her head. "I think the property damage level is high enough to wring reparations out of the Federation, hold your...FIRE!" she gasped as a squad of robots trooped down the stairs at the end of the hall. Both sides opened fire, then tried to take cover. "C'mon!" one of the soldiers sneered. "These guys fall apart like Spawn action figures, we can take 'em!" he shouted, jumping out from behind cover. Fifteen blaster bolts immediately struck him in the head and chest, turning him into a charred mess vaguely resembling university cafeteria roast beef. "They're also heavily armed," Captain Boxer added. "And they can keep us pinned down here until reinforcements arrive." "Recommendations?" Amitanna asked over the sporadic covering fire. "We run up the property destruction level a bit," Boxer replied, shooting the reinforced glass of a nearby window. It shattered and fell away. "Grappling hooks, everyone!" Suddenly, the James Bond theme started to play as they jumped out of the window and fired lines up to the roof. Ba-naa-ba-NAAAAAA! * * * * "This looks like a good spot," sQuid-Gon nodded, looking around at the wide open shaft at the center of the palace. "Plenty of catwalks to jump around on, space to swing our lightcabers without hitting the ceiling OR the floor." "Then let us get it on," Darth Mallard snarled, activating the twin cabers on his weapon and swinging them around menacingly. The Net.i Knights followed suit, the laser blades extending several meters from the hand-held projectors. Dramatic choral music swelled in the background. "YAAAAH!" Poki-Wan shouted as he somersaulted into his attack. "AIIIEEEEE!" screamed half the choir as the spinning lightcaber sliced through the alto section. "Um, oops?" * * * * Katarin struggled with the controls of her fighter. The moment she'd cleared the hangar bay, some sort of autopilot had kicked in, overriding her control of the craft. She wasn't even able to turn on the radio or long range sensors, making the journey all the more aggravating. On the plus side, she was out of that madhouse and seemed to be headed offworld. On the minus side, she had no idea where she was going, or if she'd have control once she got there. Showing up in the middle of a Federation fleet in a Faboo fighter she couldn't control was *not* preferable to hanging around on the surface. Then she saw the giant kazoo-shaped craft in the distance, getting larger, and decided the minus side was getting bigger too. And since she was in space, the idea of breaking something was not exactly attractive. Not that it had taken more than a few heartbeats to clear the atmosphere...she was in space before she could contemplate vandalism. Suddenly, systems came back online. "Okay, everyone, looks like we have control back," declared the electronically munged voice of Macr Olie, squadron leader and ace pilot. "What the Hell(TM) happened?" Katarin demanded, the modulation making her voice sound somewhat less like that of a child. "Well, Faboolean fighters are hand-crafted, individually numbered collectors' items," Macr explained. "My guess is that they were planning to send the whole wing up to be shipped off and sold to interested parties on other worlds." "Geeez," Kati sighed. "You know the merchandizing blitz is getting bad when it infects the actual plotline!" "Brace yourselves," Macr shouted, "they've figured out we're not delivery boys!" Dozens of robotic ships came screaming out of the main carrier, guns blazing. The Fabooleans fought back, scoring several initial hits without any losses. "Robots on the planet, robots up here...they can't seem to fight worth spit," Kati noted aloud. "Why don't they get some real pilots?" "One, the Federation is capital-intensive, so machines are easier to come by than people," Macr explained. "Two...whoa, almost got splashed there...two, the main control computers on that ship will learn as we fight, so the robot fighters won't be so lame in a few minutes." "And three," interrupted another pilot, "parental watchdog groups aren't as freaked by mass slaughter of robots." Kati never found out who that other pilot was, because the robot fighters chose that moment to get a little smarter, and he was the one they took out. The battle turned up a notch. Several more flights of fighters launched from the carrier, and these all had the benefit of their control computers having watched the fight and analyzed the weaknesses of the squishies piloting.... Kati caught herself. Squishies? Why was she thinking of herself and the Fabooleans as "squishies?" * * * * "I'm all for taking this outside," Darth Mallard snarled, "but after I kill you two, I'm going to find the architect and give him a rectal probe with my lightcaber!" Poki-Wan struggled to free his robes from yet another revolving door. Bits of all their attire littered the fifteen other revolving doors they'd just passed through. "I'm tempted to agree with that sentiment." "Normally I'd warn you against giving in to the Dirk Side," sQuid-Gon sighed, pulling his braid out of a revolving door, "but I think slaying that architect would bring balance to the Farce." * * * * Back on the planet's surface, the standard battle robots were not faring too well. They didn't dare use their heavy weapons for fear of hitting the Shields their foes had erected, and the insane and inane behavior of the Wargans was starting to trigger spontaneous combustion in the logic circuits of several of the robots. "Do you want to see my pet?" asked a female Wargan, who then opened a box and unleashed a hideous swamp beast which had been created solely to be part of the action figure line. Blaster fire ricocheted off its thick, oily hide, and its massive claws cut a wide swath through the notoriously fragile battle robots. ^^DEPLOY AGAS-E,^^ commanded the lead robot for no very good reason, since they were all controlled from orbit anyway, making the whole idea of rank separation among the robots a rather silly concept. A balding robot with a headband and a tennis racket stepped out of one of the carriers, tossing an energized sphere lightly in one manipulator. He served up the sphere, which streaked towards the hastily-constructed tower in the middle of the Wargan formation. It missed by inches. "Fault!" declared one of the Wargans, who was sitting in a line judge chair. ^^FAULT? THAT WAS INSIDE THE LINES!^^ AGAS-E protested, waving his racket at the Wargan. "Double Fault," the Wargan smugly replied. "Love-fifteen." AGAS-E growled and stomped back to his service line. This time, his aim was true, and the tower was wreathed in flashes of electricity and other fancy special effects you can't see because this is a text medium. The tower started to float into the air, carried aloft by the antigravity field generated by the energy ball. ^^SHIELDS ARE DOWN...ER, SHIELDS IS UP! FIRE AT WILL!^^ the lead robot commanded. Hundreds of Really Big Guns popped out of hidden recesses in the transports or extended from the torsos of the battle robots. The air vibrated as the guns charged up. As one, the Wargans turned to the camera and asked, "Ladies and gentlemen, is there a doctor in the house?" The BINXX held up a small sign that read, "Mother!" * * * * The three masters of the Farce looked down the deep shaft at the center of the room. Faint flickers of energy lit the very bottom, suggesting that this was a ventilation shaft for the fusion core that ran the palace. "I don't know about you," Poki-Wan stepped back from the shaft, "but there's no way I'm going to fight in here. You'd have to be an idiot to want to fight in a room with a nearly bottomless shaft leading to a fusion reactor." "You know, I changed my mind," Darth Mallard mused, lighting up a quick roach. "When I find the architect, I'm dropping him down this thing. With a grenade strapped to his backside." * * * * Kati shook her head to try and clear the muzzy feeling she was starting to develop, and barely avoided a barrage of blaster fire from a trio of robot fighter craft. Faboolean numbers were rapidly dwindling, while the number of enemy ships never seemed to drop. The computer controlling them was wisely not committing its entire forces at once, so there were never so many robot fighters in the area that there was an imminent danger of the robots shooting each other by accident. Even Macr Olie, for all his speed, had been disabled and was spiraling out into high orbit. "That's what happens when you try to set squishies against MACs," Kati snarled, slamming her tiny fist against the armrest of her control chair. "Too slow to adapt, too slow to think." She blinked. Before she had time to mentally frame the question "What the heck was I saying," everything fell into place, like a document becoming clear once the encryption had been broken. "I'm not Katarin, I'm not a little girl...haven't been a little girl for nearly a century. This isn't real...I'm in someone else's dream!" she shouted, pounding her adult fist against the armrest. "I may be stuck in here," she realized, "but I'm not stuck in this body!" Time seemed to freeze for a moment as she concentrated on her body, bringing back memories of her old life, the life she'd led for most of the decades she'd been around. Flesh melted away, revealing the dark metal body she'd worn as the mercenary RoboMAC known as Kopikat. That metal itself seemed to melt and flow, seeping into the cracks and input ports of the cockpit. She was no longer flying the fighter craft, she WAS the fighter craft. Her enemies started to fall like cheap videogame targets as she pirouetted through the near vacuum of low orbit. She'd never really been a space jockey, but she had decades of combat experience and a quick mind, allowing her to see the enemy's stratagems and counter them. One of the few remaining Fabooleans made a run for the carrier, in the hopes of disabling it while the fighters were tied up. But an explosion from just within the bay told Kat that there were autodefenses ready to shoot down any fighter that approached. "Try this on for size, you pathetic excuses for RoboMACs!" Kat shouted, and suddenly the Faboolean fighter craft started to split and rotate and change. What had been a sleek twin-engined space fighter was now a humanoid robot with twin engines on her back and a double-barrelled blaster rifle cradled in her arms. Kat arrowed in on the fighter bay, clearing a path with her blasters as she went, even more deadly now that she was no longer limited to firing at targets directly in front of her. The sensors which had integrated with her eyes spotted the defense guns inside the bay, and she blew them up before they could resolve their confusion over a humanoid target profile. "Power source ahead," intoned the fighter's onboard computer, which Kat had placed in charge of various peripheral functions as a "tailgunner" drone. She gunned the engines on her back, venting them so that she flew ahead in an upright position. A few of the robot fighters had transformed into walker mode while no one was looking and tried to stop her, but they had not had any time to adapt to her ground combat style and were quickly reduced to scrap. A few doors between her and the power core were taken out easily enough, since the conventional wisdom was that nothing with ship-level weapons would ever get down the corridors this far into the carrier. Some Pegwarmers rolled into her way but were easily swatted. "There it is," she exclaimed as she entered the power core. "What idiots! No shielding or anything, you could throw a wrench at it and make it crash! Well, here's a really BIG wrench!" she shouted, firing both barrels of her blaster into the power core. Without another word, she transformed into a modified flight mode, bringing the engines closer together so she would be able to fit through the corridors she'd entered by. Secondary explosions started to rock the engine room behind her as she darted out at top speed, blasting anything that got in her way. Kat found open space just ahead of the blast wave from the exploding carrier. "That should clear things up for the Wargans downstairs, now that there's nothing up here to control...the...robots...." She looked around. Fifteen more carriers had just dropped out of hyperspace, practically on top of her. Sensors showed that control of the planetside robots had been picked up by the newcomers. All of which rapidly became academic as the carriers opened up with their main guns and turned Kat into a fine mist.... * * * * Boxer blasted a hole in the top floor window and waved the other soldiers through first, then helped Queen Amitanna through the opening. She shot him a quick, "I can do it myself" glare, but said nothing. None of the unnamed soldiers had been killed in the few seconds this took, so Boxer nodded and said, "It's clear. For now. Let's hurry, though, they can't be so stupid that they wouldn't figure out where we're headed." They raced down the hall, headed for a large set of double doors at the far end. Those doors opened, revealing a squad of battle robots which immediately opened fire. Two soldiers were shot before the Fabooleans could cut down the enemy forces and rush into the room. A pair of aliens in odd hats stood inside, flanking a holographic display of a vague figure in a vague robe and [hey, we already did that gag last issue, move it along! - Ed, had more of a leading role in mind for himself, but will have to settle for this cameo...and who was really disappointed that EdTV wasn't about him]...well, it was Yahoo Sidious, okay? A hologram of him, anyway. "Call off your forces, ambassadors," Queen Amitanna threatened, her posture and tone of voice as regal as she could muster after running down a long corridor and being shot at. "Or what?" sneered the hologram. "I'm not really here, so you can't threaten *me,* and they're expendable." "We are?" asked the alien in the larger hat. The alien in the smaller hat checked the tag in his hat. "Do not machine wash...drip-dry only...wearer is expendable. I guess we are." "Oh dear," the alien in the larger hat sighed. "Then I suppose it is a very good thing that we are merely decoys," he grinned. "The real me left Faboo days ago...why stick around and risk being in the middle of a coup?" "Damn!" Captain Boxer spat. "No hostages, there's bound to be reinforcements coming down that hall, and our fighters must not have destroyed the carrier yet, or these decoys would be inactive." The decoy with the larger hat chuckled. "It gets worse." "How?" Amitanna asked. The decoy with the smaller hat blinked, and his pupils lit up with numbers, counting down to zero. "We do an Austin Powers II riff!" it cackled. "No, you idiot," the decoy with the larger hat sighed, his eyes also now numbers. "We EXPLODE." Amitanna felt the blast wave wash over her before she got halfway out the door.... * * * * sQuid-Gon, Poki-Wan and Darth Mallard stood on a vast, sandy expanse which looked suspiciously like a reused set from a previous scene on Tunisia VI. "This good enough?" Darth Mallard sighed. "Yes," sQuid-Gon and Poki-Wan said in unison, igniting their lightcabers. "We're ready to fight," Poki-Wan added, going into an elaborate series of fighting moves which were frankly nigh-impossible considering the size of his weapon. Darth Mallard just sighed, pulled out a revolver, and shot him. "AGHK!" Poki-Wan gasped as he dropped to the sand. "Wait a moment," sQuid-Gon protested. "You're poaching from the wrong movARRRGH!" he was cut off by a second shot. "Well, that's enough from you two," Darth Mallard said with grim satisfaction. "But...but...the Farce should have protected us," Poki-Wan gasped, spitting up blood. "The MIDI-chordians...I don't understand...." sQuid-Gon levered himself up on one elbow. "After the pigeon incident at the palace, I can see why you were able to shoot my apprentice...but how could your bullets affect me?" "The MIDI-chordians know their master. I used Glass bullets," Darth Mallard replied. "And now, to go write the end to this little...Farce." * * * * Amitanna sat outside the bombed-out throne room, cradling Captain Boxer's head in her lap. She'd known for some time that his feelings for her went beyond the simple loyalty a captain of the guard gives his monarch. But even if voicing his feelings didn't count as a breach of centuries-old protocols, Boxer wasn't the sort of man to broadcast the contents of his heart. Nor had Amitanna wished to admit she knew, because she would be forced to break his heart. Now his heart was stilled forever. He'd jumped between her and the exploding decoy, accepting a fatal blast so that his queen might live even another moment. Amitanna wished she wore a crown...she wanted to throw it away in despair. They had lost. The plan hinged on taking the Federation ambassadors hostage. All the other forces were merely diversions and would not stand for long, could not win the war on their own. She lowered Boxer's head to the floor and stood. She suddenly flt a vivid pang, and somehow *knew* that Katarin had just died, and with her the last of the space fleet. Looking out the window, she could not see the Wargan battleground, but she could hear the dying screams of the last of them echoing through her mind as if she were there. Amitanna staggered against the wall with the realization that the Net.i Knights, who had pledged themselves to protect her, were also dead. Dead at the hands of Darth Mallard. How could she know this? She was no Net.i, in tune with the ways of the Farce. She was queen by popular vote, not because she possessed some mystical power. Or...was she queen because she had slain the shade of her father? Her head spun with contradictions. So much confusion...so many questions leapt unbidden to mind. Why hadn't Boxer simply armored up, letting his steel skin absorb the force of the explosion? How could any robot fighter be fast enough to hit Macr...oman? Someone or something was toying with her memories, she realized with a rising anger, pushing away from the wall and clenching her fists. But it wouldn't work. Because she was certain of at least two things. She *was* the Queen here. And Darth Mallard needed to die. "We all die, my Queen," growled a voice behind her. She whirled and nearly lost her footing as the world rearranged itself around her. She was no longer in the hallway outside her throne room, she stood on a gentle hillside far from the palace, far from anything she recognized. Or was it? But there was Darth Mallard, in his robes and metal mask. His ludicrous lightcaber was gone, replaced by a scimitar carved from a shard of terror, a nightmare blade that quietly screamed out for release. Anger flared within Amitanna. "This has been your game from the beginning! Toying with me, with my friends and my people! WHY?" she demanded. He smirked, the mask moving like a flesh and blood face. "You still haven't made the...link? Pity." She raised her pistol and fired, but the blaster fire just vanished into the folds of Mallard's robes. He gestured and the gun flew out of her hand and over the crest of the hill behind her. Reflexively, she reached out her arm and tried to will a sword into her hand. Then she realized what she was doing. Why did she expect that to work? The Gauntlet of .GIF was gone, and.... Identity returned to her like a tidal wave crashing down on a city, washing away artifice and revealing the truth below. Darth Mallard took advantage of her momentary pause to lunge forward with his ebon blade, and she stumbled back, her heart chilled where the blade merely came near her. "ENOUGH!" she shouted, raising her fist to the skies. Lightning lashed out in all direction, hurling Darth Mallard away. "I've broken out of your dream trap, Mallard, or whoever you are. And it's time I dealt with you once and for all." "As judge, jury and executioner?" Mallard taunted, leaping gracefully to his feet. "No. As Queen," Rotanna replied, vanishing behind a veil of light. When it faded, she stood resplendent in her ornate dream armor, holding the crystal spear she'd been given in the Dream Court. "We shall see," Mallard shouted, leaping to the attack and thrusting his nightmare sword at a point behind her eyes. Rotanna stepped back and raised her spear to block the attack. There was no clang of metal on metal, but rather a hiss of dark meeting light and being dissolved. Rotanna wrenched back, more with her mind than with her spear, and the scimitar flowed like ink into the shaft of her weapon, where it vanished with a muted scream. Before Mallard could recover, Rotanna spun the shaft around and brought the crystal blade to rest against his neck. "Die," she hissed. "Before you kill me," Mallard said, a remarkable calm in his voice, "you may wish to know who I am. And why that won't work," he nodded at the blade touching his robed neck. "Fine. Who are you?" "You may call me..." he paused, and suddenly a panel in his chest fell open. Rotanna stepped back in surprise, pulling her spear back to a defensive posture. Then a figure emerged from Darth Mallard's chest. Something small. Something black. Something with webbed feet. "...Death Duck," the waterfowl finished. "And my job here," the duck almost seemed to smile, if such a thing was possible, "is done." * * * * Various members of Dvandom Force slowly filtered into the kitchen, seeking coffee, aspirin and answers, not necessarily all in the same order. "That," Squidman noted, "was a BAD dream." "Thank you, o master of the obvious," Kid Pocky snarled, sucking on a mocha Pocky. "Waspinator have headache in whole body," the VAXX opined. "Please please please tell me you killed whatever it was that forced us to dream that space opera parody!" Kat pleaded, her eyes bloodshot and her sides aching from where she'd ripped off the bandages in her sleep. Anna shook her head. "Didn't need to. Turns out he's on my side. Sorta." Everyone just *looked* at Anna with varying degrees of disbelief, shock and hangover. "Oh, don't worry, he's gone. He won't be messing with you again," Anna assured the group. "This was all just a really twisted training exercise, apparently." "That was one Hell(TM) of a final exam, then," Shane grumped, scratching his unruly hair. "What was it, anyway?" "The duck that tore off Baron Umlaut's leg," Anna replied [see Dvandom Force #86 - Ed, back on the job]. "A DUCK?" Kat spat. Macroman started beating his head against the wall at thirty beats per second. Sidewinder slapped his forehead. "Makes sense, actually," Squidman interjected. "You WOULD say that," Kat sighed. "Well, there's been something of a recurring duck theme lately, between Fowlvarran and Darth Mallard. But why was the duck doing this?" Squidman turned to Anna. "Well," she poured herself a mug of coffee, "it all started when I summoned this 'Death Duck' to help fight Umlaut. But my summons was imprecise, due to my lack of training, so it came to render aid in general, not just for that fight. But Death Duck is a creature of nightmare, so the help it decided to give wasn't necessarily something any of us would have asked for. He wanted to show me what a serious attacker could do to me and my friends if I didn't start taking my position seriously and learning how to use my powers. That's why everything was so gradual...he wasn't taking our measure, he was giving me clues so that I could mount a defense. But I kept missing the clues, so he decided to get blatant. I suppose we owe him one. If someone of his power had really meant to destroy me, I'd be dead and you'd all be driven mad by nightmares." "I wouldn't go thanking him so fast," Shane snarled. "This wasn't just smoke and mirrors...real people got hurt because of this duck amok. Some may have been killed." "He has a point," Macroman agreed. "It wasn't a dream that Shane nearly broke my collarbone, or that those Century Pact leftovers blew up a building trying to kill us." Squidman looked up from scanning his laptop's screen. "True. However, according to the wire services, everyone survived. Aside from us, no one was even injured who wasn't a fugitive from the law like the Pact or the Constellation Gang. Indirectly, Death Duck helped us wrap up a few more loose ends." "So, no harm, no fowl?" Kid Pocky smirked, then ducked as Kat hurled an orange at his head. * * * * The sun rose on a new morning in Illi.net. It felt like the perfect late Spring morning, although thanks to continuity snarls it was almost impossible to tell what the actual season was. But for the sake of irony, let's say it's May 20. The various members of Dvandom Force were asleep in their beds, their dreams undisturbed by outside forces. Birds sang in the trees. A few bees buzzed by the house on their way to another patch of flowers. And a small, yellow animal stirred in the longer grass at the edge of the mowed section of the yard. "Pico!" ============================================================================ NEXT ISSUE: "Gotta Catch 'Em All!" A four part story focusing on Shane Boxer starts here, as the mysterious thingy from the last scene shows itself! So be here for, "So Cute, So Deadly!" ============================================================================ Author's Notes: And so ends the Death Duck Saga. As you might be able to tell from the rather long time it took me to finish this 7-part story, I'm running out of steam on the LNH. Most of the writers whose work I read have either stopped writing or slowed down even more than I have, and I'm just not that interested in most of the new crop. While I'm certainly not ruling out regaining interest in the imprint eventually, for now I'm going to say that "Gotta Catch 'Em All!" is probably going to close out my LNH writing for a while. Mind you, it may take me another year to finish it at this pace. Maybe I'll wait until I get my PhD and settle in at a new job, then do a reboot and start the LNH from the ground up once everyone's drifted away. Time will tell. Now, an explanation for those who totally missed the Glass bullets bit. Phillip Glass, experimental musician, is strongly associated with MIDI computerized music. I forget if he invented it or not, but he's a big name in it. And the MIDI-chordians are, of course, a parody of the Midichlorians in Episode One, the little mitochondria-like thingies in everyone's cells that act as intermediaries between living things and The Force.