Invasion of the Origami Mandolorian by SF Weaver

Chapter 1: Crime and Punishment

Matt

It all started with that kid Dwight from McQuarry Middle.

My science teacher had caught me folding an origami crane when he was giving a lecture on something boring. Snatching the paper from my hands, he held it above his head.

“Aha!” Mr. Jahut said. “I knew there was something up with you, Matthew Carnie! I’ll have you in detention for a week!” He laughed maliciously, ripping the paper in half.

“Your putting me in detention for a week just for folding a piece of paper?” I said incredulously.

Jahut glared at me. “For disrespecting authority, you insolent boy!” Scribbling down a note, he handed it to me and marched me out the door. “To the office,” he said unnecessarily.

I could feel the eyes of the class on my back as I walked out the door.

Needless to say, the trip wasn’t very pleasant. Fortunately for me, the principal only gave me two days of staying after school.

When I arrived back in class, my friend Lucas leaned over and whispered, “Jahut has been going on about how terrible origami is. How it needs to be destroyed.”

“He’s gone nuts!”

“I know.”

Jahut turned around and glared at the class. “In McQuarry Middle, across town, a boy just like you” —he pointed to me—”has been suspended for a lengthy period of time for running around with an origami…creature on his finger.

“Watch out, lest you be dragged down as well by this wicked, wicked practice.”

Chapter 2: The Star Folds

Lucas

Well, everyone in class was shocked by the fierceness of Jahut. All of us, except Rufus Nosseer. He was happy. Rufus hates everyone except for Jahut.

I was actually surprised that we’d lasted this long. We all had folded stuff in class before, but managed to hide it in time.

Anyway, after school I looked up that kid from McQuarry to see if Jahut was telling the truth or not. Sure enough, one of the local newspapers had an article on it about this Dwight fellow.

Apparently, he had an origami finger puppet of Yoda that gave advice and apparently disrupted the learning process.

“Origami and Star Wars—of course! Why didn’t I think of that?” I said out loud. Matt, Emma, Jamie, Lily, Aaron, Katrina and me made up the origami club of Bartleby Middle.

We also all enjoyed Star Wars, and many nights had been spent watching and re watching all the original movies, plus the Clone Wars every Friday.

Spinning my swivel chair around, I scooted over to my origami table.

The rest of the night was spent experimenting with various folds and how they’d look as a Star Wars character. I folded Kit Fisto, complete with green tentacles and lightsaber.

I couldn’t wait to show it to the rest of the gang.

Chapter 3: The New Club

Lily

I wasn’t in Matt’s class, so I only heard what happened secondhand. My teachers were much nicer—I didn’t have Jahut.

Anyway, we all thought Lucas’ Kit Fisto was pretty cool, especially Aaron. He alway dressed up as Kit Fisto for Halloween; it was his favorite character.

We met after school at our home base. Our gathering was a bit later than usual, due to Matt getting caught, but at 5:00 PM we were all in the run down treehouse which was being used as a temporary base of operations.

Matt spoke first. “I call the 347th meeting of the Origami Club of Bartleby Middle to order.”

“I say we rename it to the Origami Star Wars club or something,” Aaron said.

“Agreed,” I spoke up.

Emma, Jamie, and Katrina agreed as well.

“Although we need a better name than the ‘Origami Star Wars club,'” Emma said. “Any ideas?”

A barrage of ideas came about immediately.

Finally, we decided on SWOMB; Star Wars Origami Masters of Bartlebly Middle.

That settled, we started folding. After a while, Katrina held up a large Savage Opress fold.

“Awesome!” Jamie approved.

At the end of the meeting, we all decided to regather tomorrow, right after school.

Chapter 4: Pre Vizla

Emma

That night, I finished what brought around the doom of the town: the Origami Mandalorian. He was a little fellow, with the signiture helmet that made Jango and Boba Fett similar in armor. His helmet flipped up to reveal the face of that annoying commander of the Death Watch with the blonde hair.

When I slipped him on my finger, something really weird happened.

Memories that weren’t mine flashed before my eyes. Blinking several times, I finally cleared my head.

It is time, a voice in my head said.

“Argh! Am I going crazy?!?!” I yelled.

No, the voice said. But you and me together shall rule the WORLD!!!

It then instructed me to fold as many Mandalorians as I could in before morning.

I churned out origami like a machine; they all looked alike, but with different faces doodled on them.

My subconscious realized that I was making an army for Pre Vizla—but what was the point? What was his goal?

Before I went to bed I had three hundred forty-seven Mandalorians—just enough for everyone in school to own one. It had taken me all night, and I didn’t get to sleep until around 3:00 in the morning.

As I slept a quiet voice whispered plans of greatness in my head.

Chapter 5: The Distribution

Jamie

I got up and ready for school as fast as I could, then hustled to the bus stop, excited for what was to come. I felt like today was going to be a big day.

I live right near Emma, so I waited for her at the bus. She was later than usual, which struck me as odd. She was always the most punctual.

Finally I saw her coming. When she got close enough to hear me, I said, “Hurry! The bus is about to leave!”

She walked up to me. “Be quiet, twerp,” she said.

“What?”

“Leave me alone!” Grabbing my backpack, she swung me around an literally threw me into the gutter. As she did so I noticed she had a little finger puppet on.

I came up spluttering. “What in the—” the bus drove away, spraying more dirty water on me.

I decided to stay away from Emma for the rest of the day.

Later I caught up with Matt in the hall.

“Hey, man, you need to call an emergency meeting,” I said.

“What? Why?”

“Just do it! Oh, and don’t invite Emma.”

“Why?” Matt asked again, confused.

“Please! And quick!”

So in about an hour, after our next class (which, as it happened, was science with Mr. Jahut) we gathered in the cafeteria.

“Ok, everyone. I asked Matt to call this meeting because…well, wasn’t herself today,” I said. “It’s almost as if something’s taken over her mind.”

Aaron spoke up. “She totally ignored me in the hall, and when I kept at it, she punched me and told me to get lost. And she punches hard!”

Katrina raised her hand. “She’s probably tired. I saw her, and the circles under her eyes were huge.”

“There she is now,” Lucas pointed.

Emma was standing in the middle of the room, passing small slips of paper to everyone she could reach. “I’ll be right back,” I said.

I walked over to the edge of the crowd around her. “Hey, what’s going on?” I asked one kid moving away.

“Whoever that is—” he pointed to Emma— “is handing out these cool little finger puppets. I think they’re a character from Star Wars or something.” He pushed his finger inside, then stiffened. His eyes glazed over, then, without a word, he walked away.

“Okaaaaay,” I said. “That was creepy.”

The person causing all this madness pushed through the crowd up to me. Without a word, she pushed a piece of origami into my hands. Looking down, I recognized Mandalorian armor.

“What is this?” I asked her.

“The future,” she responded.

I tried to walk away, but a circle of people wearing Mandalorians surrounded me. I was trapped.

I stood on my tiptoes and motioned for the rest of the gang to rescue me. Soon they were pushing through kids to get to me.

“What’s this about?” Matt asked.

“I dunno,” I answered. “Just that something weird happens to the kids who put these on.” I showed him the paper character.

“C’mon, let’s get out of here,” Katrina said. “This is creeping me out.”

“Yeah,” Aaron agreed. But the circle of wackos was closing in on us. Soon there would be no escape.

Emma had faded back away from us and was still distributing her army to the school. Pretty soon everyone would have one—except for the people who refused, of course. I was guessing Jahut and a few other teachers would say no, and maybe thirty or so students, who thought it was stupid and hated Star Wars.

Anyway, a bunch of zombie-looking people were closing in on us.

I had no idea of what they wanted to do with us, except that I didn’t want to know.

Strangely enough, Mr. Jahut saved us. He walked in and said, “Hey! You kids get out of here!”

The zombies scattered and we did too. I didn’t know what to do with this threat, only that something needed to be done.

Chapter 6: The Army of the Republic

Aaron

We needed to stop this before the entire school was under the control of Emma!

If we had any qualms about stopping her before, one event changed that.

It was the same day that Emma was giving out the origami. After school, we were walking our regular route home. We ride the bus to school in the morning, but we all walk home.

Anyway, we were just outside school grounds when we saw a group of zombies chasing after this one skinny kid with glasses (Author Note: this is me.). One grabbed him and punched him in the face.

“Ow!” He yelled. The kid held up his glasses. “You broke-” His voice was cut off by a blow to his stomach.

They surrounded him, then one of them grabbed his arm and twisted it behind him. They were trying to force something on his finger—then, finally, he went slack and fell to the ground.

Then he stood up and walked away, with a black eye and swollen lip.

This convinced us this needed stopping.

So we formulated a plan. We would fight fire with fire.

Since I was the computer geek, I had to hack into the schools computers and get the passcode for the intercom system. This is slightly illegal, but it was for a good cause.

It was really pretty easy. School cyber security isn’t very high.

That done, we moved on to phase two (aka the Fun Stage). This is when we folded the army of the republic. We got together after school and speed-folded as many clone troopers as possible.

We used regular paper, not origami paper, because we were making hundreds of ’em.

After about half an hour my fingers were really sore, but we had to continue.

An hour later we were finally finished: three hundred forty clone troopers. We left out a few for us—since we were commanding the army, we had to be something special, so I folded a Kit Fisto. Matt made a Obi-Wan Kenobi, Katrina made Adi Gallia (she’s one of the Jedi council in the first movie), Lucas made Plo Koon, Lily  folded an origami Mace Windu, and Jamie decided on a  General Kota (from the Force Unleashed) fold.

The next day would be phase three.

Chapter 7: The Alliance

Katrina

I think I had the most dangerous part of the plan, but I didn’t complain.

I was on my way to complete my part of the plan when I was stopped by a short kid with black hair. I tensed up, ready to run, but he didn’t look like he was under mind control.

“Excuse me,” he said. “May I talk with you and your friend? We want an alliance.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“The New Empire,” he said. “After Jacob was overthrown, his closest advisors and his army formed the New Empire. We aren’t the bad guys anymore.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Yep.”

I asked, “Who’s Jacob?”

“The Emperor,” the kid said matter-of-factly.

“Hmm,” I muttered, still not entirely convinced that he was a good guy.

“So can I please talk to your group of friends? We should make an alliance. Neither of us alone can face this threat.”

I made a decision. “Fine. Meet us after school, under the big oak tree south of school. But you have to be alone.”

“Great,” he said. “I’ll be there.”

So I had to pass on the news that I hadn’t completed my mission because of extenuating circumstances. We postponed the plan until further notice.

A few hours later found us waiting beneath the tree for that kid.

Finally, he walked up, a piece of origami on his finger. It was a strange type of Stormtrooper, with red markings.

“Ah, you came,” he said.

“So what’s this all about?” Matt asked.

“Several of us have formed the New Empire—basically the Empire after Palpatine was overthrown. We have defenses set in place in case of emergency, and this is definitely an emergency.

It’s obvious that you aren’t under their control yet, and none of our members are.”

I said, “So what are you suggesting?”

“An alliance. Together we may be able to do what we can’t alone,” the kid said.

We told him to hang on a sec while we discussed.

“You think this guy’s for real?” Jamie whispered.

“I’m not sure,” I answered, “but we do know he isn’t under the control of the Mandalorians.”

“I trust him,” Aaron said. Lucas agreed.

Lily shook her head, “I don’t think it’s a good idea, but if he really can help us, we should accept his offer of an alliance.”

“So are we in agreement that we accept for now?” Matt asked.

There was a chorus of yeses, so we turned back to the negotiator from the New Empire. “We accept,” Matt said.

“Splendid,” he responded.

So Aaron filled him in on the plan.

As he was walking away, I called after him and said, “Hey! I didn’t catch your name.”

“Call me Landon,” he answered.

Chapter 8: Sick as a Dog

Matt

We planned to put our plot into action Monday of the next week.

When that day actually came, I was so sick I couldn’t stand up without throwing up. I tried to call Aaron to inform him I wouldn’t be able to be a part of the plan, but he must’ve turned his phone off for class.

Oh well. They’ll just have to do without me, I thought.

I hoped they could finish the plan. If not…well, I didn’t even want to think about that.

To be continued…

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