A Little Order

I’m feeling perky. Things have been going well on the home front. Little Inara will turn 3 soon and we’re going to have a big family party. It’ll be fun. But I have to clean some, this place gets so dusty, even with the air filters.

I’ve decided to get a bit more linear about this diary. While I like to type my thoughts and memories as they come to me, they are out of context, disconnected to the world that they occurred in, and that makes it all feel very distorted.

Lets see. How about we start with a quick overview of Academy time? It was hard, dull, and long. It held none of the excitement I had hoped would come with training to be a military officer. I made some friends, but most were neutral to me. And that’s the way I liked it I was a year behind my best friend. She graduated and then I was truly on my own for my final year. That was hard. Could someone tell me the wisdom behind fostering a sense of intense competition amongst a group of people whose success usually rests entirely on the ability to those people to work together? Which ever or’dinii that came up with that should have been shot, repeatedly. Personal ambition caused many problems aboard the ships of the Republic, particularly amongst the younger officers. The older officers seemed to put the good of the Republic ahead of their own. But that was a dying breed, most literally.

I graduated in the top part of my class and was on a ship two weeks later. But it wasn’t until I had to battle on the ground that the war, that war itself lost it’s mystique, that it became veman, real.

When the Battle of Geonosis occurred, war became momentarily surreal, but I’ll get to that later, I have cake to ice.

Various

I was not a fan of the Jedi Order. I met individual Jedi that I liked quite a bit, strong courageous beings. But I never felt that the good feelings I had towards a few should be extended to the whole Order. There were also many pretentious members who felt they knew everything because they could touch the Force. The Order was a flawed system, though at the time, I had no idea how much so. It was only after the fall of the Jedi that all the little cracks that were certain individuals came to light. And interestingly enough, it was the flawed ones, the imperfect Jedi, that seemed to survive in the greatest numbers. Perhaps they knew something, had a feeling that inside of them that they nursed that allowed them to evade the danger that awaited them. Still, that was a heart breaking day.

I was raised to believe in a set of ideals, to value the beliefs over the government and people who represented them. This could have put me at odds with my superiors, but I never shared my thoughts with them. I held no illusions about the state of the Republic. It was falling apart, it’d become too big to support itself, a creature that’d become fat and slow. The basic laws of nature vary little within the galaxy. That which becomes fat, slow, and arrogant become useless and often fall to the sleek, agile, quick creatures. Such was the case with the Republic. I cherished the ideals they claimed to represent, and in theory, the Republic was a wondrous thing, but the reality of the situation was that the ideals often fell victim to personal ambition and greed.

I left the Navy 3 months before Order 66. I remained active in an unofficial capacity, working with the Special Operations Battalion. I did this for several reasons, most of them self-serving. I’m good at intelligence gathering, I love exotic weapons, I love using them even more, but the main reason was that it kept me close to my husband, Mereel. He and his brothers had been working on finding a particular Kaminoian for quite some time, I figured now I could help out without having to worry about the military getting too curious. That and I could finally live with him without strangers prying into my life and telling me I’d made a mistake. I guess I should mention that Mereel is a Null ARC, N-7 if you want to be specific. We married in the traditional Mando way two years before the fall of the Republic. We’re still married, though I haven’t seen him in a while. But that’s how it works, and that works just fine for me.

Family

I grew up on Alderaan, happy little pacifist planet in the core world region of the galaxy. My father’s family had always lived on Alderaan, as far back as their history went, and that was pretty far. We lived close to his siblings, and as a result, my extended family was as close to me as my immediate family. My mother’s family was a mystery to me while I was little. I knew that she had two brothers and an older sister, but I never met my uncles or my aunt. Her mother had died when Mom was 13. She was pretty much on her own to run the household. She left at 16, met my father at 18, and they married within a year.

I could tell that my mom was different than all of my aunts. She was more aware of things, more cautious, and had a working knowledge of weapons that probably would have put the Alderaanian Royal Guard to shame. I learned early that I shouldn’t share the stories and lessons my mom taught me with my cousins and friends. They never understood them, they thought I was weird, and worse yet, that my mom was strange. I never considered my mom strange. I thought that she was strong, smart, and rather unique, and in my childish way, that she was perfect. The belief my mom was perfect faded as I aged and learned that all being have flaws. But she was still strong, smart, and very unique, a quality I began to see more clearly as I met more people, especially more women. Don’t get me wrong, Alderaanian women are by no means passive wimpy please-rescue-me types. But my mother was different, not only capable of rescuing herself, but probably capable of not getting in trouble in the first place. And she was determined that her daughter be the same.

So here I am, all grown up, practical, a bit cynical, smart, and able to successfully use a variety of weapons most people in the GNR have never seen. I can also tell when people are lying, nervous, hiding something, or are thinking of doing something they shouldn’t. I use the lesson my mother taught me every day in my job. The military might teach you the basic methods of trying to extract information from people, but they don’t teach you how to gauge an individual, how to determine a person’s mental strengths and weaknesses, how to properly observe a person.

I’m sure the people I interrogate don’t appreciate the lessons my mother provided me, but I do. I really appreciate the ones that let me separate how I see myself from the jobs I perform, the ones that showed me how to remain loyal to a set of principles instead of to governments. Kept the lines from getting too blurry.

Where'd You Go?

Where'd you go?
I miss you so
Seems like its been forever that you've been gone

She said somedays I feel like shit
Somedays I wanna quit and just be normal for a bit
I don't understand why you have to always be gone
I get along but your trips always feel so long
And I find myself trying to stay by the phone
'Cause your voice always helps me to not feel so alone
But I feel like an idiot, working my day around a call
And when I pick up I don't have much to say, so
I want you to know its a little fucked up that
I'm stuck here waiting, at times debatin
Telling you that I've had it with you and your career
Me and the rest of the family here singing

Where'd you go?
I miss you so
Seems like its been forever that you've been gone
Where'd you go? I miss you so
Seems like its been forever that you've been gone
Please Come back home

You know, the place you used to live
Used to barbeque with burgers and ribs
Used to have a little party every halloween with candy by the pile but now you only stop by every once in a while
Shit I find myself just filling my time
With anything to keep the thought of you from my mind
I'm doing fine and I'm plannin' to keep it that way
You can call me if you find that you have something to say
And I'll tell you I want you to know its a little fucked up that
I'm stuck here waiting, at times debating
Telling you that I've had it with you and your career
Me and the rest of the family here singing

Where'd you go?
I miss you so
Seems like its been forever that you've been gone
Where'd you go?
I miss you so
Seems like its been forever that you've been gone
Please Come back home

I want you to know its a little fucked up that
I'm stuck here waiting, no longer debatin'
Tired of sittin and hatin' and making these excuses
For why you're not around, and feeling so useless
It seems that one thing has been true all along
You don't really know what you've got till its gone
I guess I've had it with you and your career
When you come back I won't be here and you can sing it

Where'd you go?
I miss you so
Seems like its been forever that you've been gone
Where'd you go?
I miss you so
Seems like its been forever that you've been gone
Please Come back home

Please come back home
Please come back home
Please come back home
Please come back home




Where'd You Go Fort Minor

The Beginning

I will tell my story as faithfully as I can. Time has a way of changing memories, making them less vivid, less true. But the basics still remain true, unchanged, as do the basic reasons behind the choices I've made. I hope only to tell my story, and through it, discover a better sense of self, if only to make myself sleep better

I am Imma

I was born Imma Rameus, born on the planet of Alderan

I married and tried to embrace the Mando heritage of my husband

I retired my commission, then rejected the values of my galaxy, my planet, and many of my friends

I am a mother, a wife, an individual

...and right now, I'm really frustrated with the same damn argument that I always end up loosing.