Worst Job Ever

Heya, peeps! Yes, I know it's not more angst. But with me posting some of this other stuff, you never know when I'm going to violently assault your feels next, now, do you? >u>


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IT'S STORY TIIIIIME!


Meet Shlak and Dirk (left to right), two of my little sister's OC's. They're peon guards who always get assigned to protect the crappiest, most boring places in the entire universe. For some odd reason, a majority of their jobs have come down to them guarding broom and utility closets. You'd think that there'd be other, more important places to assign them to but nooooooo. Because you never know when the Resistance might show up and steal those ohso precious dust pans and mops for their own misguided use against the Empire. That's what everybody tells them, anyways. Not too sure if that's true or not but anyways...

Shlak has always wanted to become a cook. Ever since he was approximately two minutes old, he had his heart set on becoming the best Irken cook in the universe. But, while he is quite handy with food, he didn't get to choose his job and was promptly fitted with a career as a guard. He tried to look on the bright side of it despite the fact that he was horrendously disappointed that his talents hadn't been recognized and had more or less been put to waste, telling himself that it wasn't all that bad and that if he showed how good he was at guarding, maybe--juuuuuust maybe--he could get a job guarding a kitchen or a restaurant. Sadly, that was not going to be the case. His first assignment was to look after a very rarely-used hallway by himself. It wouldn't have been that terrible if only Shlak actually had much of an imagination to space out with when nothing was happening and nobody was around. So the seconds dragged into hours and the minutes dragged on into eternity. He hated having to stand there at attention the entire time when absolutely nothing was going on but there he was. It was his job and he couldn't disappoint his Tallests nor his division leader, Antimony, by slacking off and being bad at being a guard. Because it wasn't even the Tallests that he was worried about upsetting. Antimony is scary as hell even on her good days and is nothing short of pants-ruiningly terrifying if she's the least bit disappointed with you and it's even worse when you have to see her multiple times every single day because she's in charge of you. He couldn't get away from her.

Poor old Shlak had to stand there guarding one of the most boring hallways ever completely solo for about a week. Then Dirk was assigned to be his guarding partner. Which would be fine if Dirk wasn't one of those overly-optimistic rays of sunshine who kinda bothered everybody else with his never-ending spouting of encouragement and imaginary rainbows. He was near-impossible to anger or annoy by any conventional or unconventional methods. He was always all smiles and pride. So while Dirk was perfectly happy to stand there and do his guarding thing with a grin plastered to his face at all times, Shlak was even more miserable. Mostly because Dirk could space out at will and go on magical adventures faaaaaar, far away in lands unknown while Shlak had to stand there and scowl at the door on the other end of the hallway. Not only that, Dirk, for some reason, was able to impress his higher-ups without so much as a second thought. Shlak, however, couldn't seem to garner the same amount of praise or attention that Dirk did even if he made a conscious effort to be the an even better guard than Dirk was. Because nobody likes Shlak.

In the midst of drowning in his own misery, Shlak hatched a plot to make Dirk look as horrible as possible so he could get all the praise he so rightfully deserved. For nearly two weeks, he went to great lengths to bathe Dirk in a negative light by lying about status reports, blaming Dirk for various accidents made by other people, and even trying to purposefully make it look like his partner was sitting down on the job. None of his attempts worked, though. His lies were rather empty and obviously false, other peoples' accidents were other peoples' accidents and not Dirk's, and Mr. Smiley always managed to snap back to attention with even greater posture and a stronger stance before anybody else could actually see him breaking formation. Dirk got all of the praise and Shlak got none.

Shlak, feeling defeated and worthless compared to this guy, sat down in the cafeteria one day, by himself, and practically gave up right then and there. He convinced himself that he'd never be as good at his job as Dirk was and that he'd end up spending the rest of his horrible life working a passionless career while his dreams and aspirations died in a puddle of their own refuse. Hell, he might as well go find one of the control brains and request to be deactivated because as far as he was concerned, life freakin' sucked. Then Dirk appeared. Again, never frowning and always exuding an air of indomitable confidence and happiness, sat down across from him, going onto this long rant about how he'd just gotten promoted to a higher rank. Shlak seriously thought about offing himself right there. Dirk just got a promotion after being at the job barely half as long as him. Life wasn't fair. But then Dirk kept on talking and then very animatedly said that he didn't want to be promoted without a partner because he'd get lonely and guarding was a lonely job in the first place. Shlak hardly listened to him, figuring that Dirk was just being a malicious jerk by telling him all of this on their break. Dirk would go get to guard some other place with someone else--probably would get to guard the cafe or something. Bah. At least Shlak could finally get some peace and quiet for once if Dirk was gone.

But then Dirk mentioned that he'd thought about his promotion very hard and he couldn't pick anybody else to be his guarding buddy after all of the great times he'd spent with Shlak (of all people) and told about how he'd begged both Antimony and the Tallests to promote Shlak along with him so he wouldn't have to leave his partner for greener pastures, so to speak, and that they'd both finally agreed to promote his partner along with him. Needless to say, Shlak was absolutely flabbergasted. Dirk did that? He actually did that? For him? Oh, Shlak couldn't believe his antennae. He was touched. He'd been so mean to this guy and what Dirk had done in return was get him promoted. Man, he'd been such a jerkwad.

So from that moment forward, Shlak and Dirk became friends. Shlak never tried to get Dirk in trouble ever again and Dirk was just Dirk. They coexisted in harmony. But their happy moment didn't last too long because Shlak got food poisoning from his rationed lunch and spent the next three hours heaving into a bucket in one of the restrooms while Dirk stood by and patted his head and uttered happy little nonsense songs to comfort him.

And no, they didn't end up getting a better place to guard. Instead of abandoned hallways, they get to guard broom closets! Yay, promotions!


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As a side note, Dirk didn't really have to beg any of his superiors to have Shlak promoted along with him. They all knew that Shlak was the first individual ever who could actually put up with Dirk's disgustingly cheerful disposition. It freaked everybody else out. It was better to keep him with the person who could actually had some sort of strange natural resistance to his unnaturally upbeat personality instead of torturing any of the other, much more talented and devoted, guards by pairing Dirk up with them.


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Shlak and Dirk belong to my little sister

Antimony is mine

Art is also mine