February 2005 | |||||
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CHAPTER 3
The mysterious sniper is now seen as one of the many Battle Droids that are loyal to the Separatist Army. This is the first time we have seen a Battle Droid using a sniper rifle, and I would think they're probably not the best snipers.
The firefight has just begun for these heroic soldiers, but somehow the ARC Trooper above who was in the crosshairs of the sniper's rifle didn't get shot. Instead, it was a regular Clone Trooper who was shot and killed. Looks like these ARC Troopers are better than we might have thought, or these Battle Droids are worse than expected. The ARC Troopers are now under heavy gunfire from above.
Instead of just one Battle Droid using a sniper rifle there are two Battle Droids, but does having two Battle Droids mean it’s better than just having one?
The Clone Troopers and ARC Troopers look to be pinned down by the sniper fire, but luckily they have their Gunship to give them some protection. I'm still curious to know though what happened to the Clone Trooper Pilot who was flying this Gunship. Did he die in the crash? Did he take off running in the opposite direction of the fight?
Here we have the ARC Trooper captain giving a command to his squad of Clone Troopers, and look closely at how they are listening to his every word. Well, he wasn't actually speaking to his squad, but was using hand signals to get his orders across to them. I'm not entirely sure why he couldn't simply talk to his Clone Troopers. Perhaps the firefight is so deafening that it's better to simply use hand signals instead of screaming his orders to his troops. But then I'm thinking, why couldn't they just communicate to each other using communication devices in their helmets? The ARC Trooper captain almost looks like a peace protestor from the late 60s, but ARC Troopers weren’t made to bring peace but to bring chaos to those who get in their way.
The command looks like he was asking these two Clone Troopers to provide cover fire, so that he can then order his next move.
The next set of orders from the ARC Trooper captain is to have one of his Clone Troopers use some sort of a scanning device, which allows him to see how many enemy units are inside the buildings nearby. From this initial scan, it appears there are only four Battle Droids inside, and then another three further down the in the same building as the first four. So, only seven Battle Droids... shouldn't be too much trouble for this squad of Republic soldiers.
After finding out what they were up against, this Clone Trooper informs his captain on how many Battle Droids they would have to take out. The ARC Trooper captain probably laughed here, and thought to himself, “Is this all they have for us? This should be a piece of cake.”
In a quick move one of the other ARC Troopers runs into the picture, armed with a rocket launcher, and fires a missile toward the Battle Droids in the building above. One thing I would like to know is what’s up with the skirt these ARC Troopers wear? I don’t see a true purpose in wearing these. If you look in the background you
can see that Clone Trooper who was previously scanning the area for Battle
Droids, is now scanning once again. Why? They just spotted Batlle
Droids in the surrounding buildings, so why does he need to continue scanning
the area? Maybe to see if there are reinforcements coming to the battle?
This Clone Trooper should have a Blaster Rifle in his hand, or some other kind
of a weapon, and should be attacking the enemy in full force instead of merely
scanning the area. Worry about that later.
The missile is just seconds away from striking the building it was sent to hit.
Bullseye! That should have wiped out any Battle Droids that were in that building.
More missiles were fired into the surrounding buildings, just to make sure they got all of the other Battle Droids in the area. These Clone Troopers don’t mess around when they start getting into their groove, do they? They were firing at will, launching missiles like blowing up buildings were going out of style.
Instead of being in the crosshairs of the Battle Droids' sniper rifles, the tables have turned and this ARC Trooper is about to blow away those Battle Droids who had him in their sights. Take a look at the Clone Trooper that’s sitting down just above and to the right of the ARC Trooper. Why is he sitting down? Is he tired or something? Maybe he’s taking a five minute breather? If I were that ARC Trooper captain I would be telling the Clone Trooper to get off his dead ass and get back to fighting. At least the other two Clone Troopers in this picture are fighting.
These Battle Droids don't have a chance in surviving this battle. Why they’re even trying to run away from them missile is beyond me, but maybe they think they have a chance of surviving this blast. They’re about to be scrap.
The ARC Trooper captain inspects the scene. His squad of ARC Troopers and Clone Troopers have done their jobs well. Don’t you think he’d have that Clone Trooper with the scanning device scan the area now? These binoculars only show the exterior damage, but what happened inside the building? Were the Battle Droids destroyed?
After seeing that things were finally starting to go their way, it was time to continue moving toward completing their mission. The ARC Trooper captain orders his team to move out. All enemy units should have been destroyed in this firefight, especially after the Clone Trooper with the rocket launcher was blasting away buildings.
As they continued on with their mission they ran into a small creature, and even though this creature wasn't doing anything harmful to them, they took a quick shot at it just for fun.
After tormenting the small creature they start walking cautiously down the walkway, always prepared for a fight. Nothing was going to stand in their way.
The ARC Trooper captain orders his troops to stop moving, and prepare themselves for a possible battle.
The ARC Trooper captain knows something big is coming around the corner, and will soon be finding out what exactly it is.
What was coming toward them was something bigger than they were expecting... a Trade Federation AAT. Now how were these guys going to get past an AAT? Did they have any more rockets for that rocket launcher? Could they hijack this tank?
The AAT turns around the corner and fires a blast from its main blaster cannon toward the ARC Troopers and Clone Troopers. In a last second effort the ARC Trooper captain narrowly dodges the blaster fire that came from the AAT. Hopefully these guys have special technological devices in these suits to help remove human waste, because this ARC Trooper captain had to have crapped his pants here after almost getting whacked by this AAT.
Now the real battle begins! The next order of business obviously is to take out that AAT, and that is exactly what the ARC Trooper captain orders one of his ARC Troopers to do.
This ARC Trooper repels down from somewhere (no idea where he actually comes from though and reminds me of Spiderman swinging in on his spider web), and is making his way toward the AAT. The only way they can take this thing out is by throwing some grenades into the tank, and for an ARC Trooper that's going to be a piece of cake. All he has to do is to blast away the entry hatch on the top of the tank, jump down inside it, drop a few grenades in it, and get away as quickly as possible. When he was running away from the blast that was about to happen, it sort of reminded me of Mario bouncing around in Nintendo 64’s video game, Super Mario Brothers. I didn’t know ARC Troopers could bounce around like that.
And in a nick of time the ARC Trooper escapes the enormous explosion of the AAT. Talk about a piece of cake for these guys, because that AAT sure didn’t put up much of a fight.
Once again it's time for the squad to move on toward its mission. The ARC Trooper captain informs his unit that it’s okay to continue moving forward.
The ARC Trooper captain tosses up a spherical device that is used for scanning the surrounding areas, and this device looks very similar to the training device Luke Skywalker used in “A New Hope” on the Millennium Falcon.
After this spherical device has done a 360 degree scan it relays the image back down to the ARC Trooper captain's holographic projector, and they now know where they must head toward... that big building in the middle of the holographic image. What is that building though? What’s the significance of it? It almost looks like someone's profile.
The ARC Trooper captain points out to his unit that this building is their target, which happens to be a very large blaster cannon.
The ARC Trooper captain is now inspecting the large tower in the background, and inside the building are more Battle Droids. This is the tower that is controlling the blaster cannon immediately next to it.
He then notices there's a number of Battle Droids patrolling the base of that cannon. This shouldn't be too difficult of a mission to complete, but it's still best practice to survey the area before pursuing their target.
The ARC Trooper captain communicates to Obi-Wan Kenobi, "General Kenobi, target sited." Obi-Wan then replies with, "Very good, continue with the next phase."
After getting the go-ahead from Obi-Wan, it was time for the squad to continue on with their mission. Even with their Gunship being shot down and facing an AAT, their mission was moving along as planned. I still want to know what the hell happened to that damn Clone Trooper Pilot!
One of the Troopers threw up a grappling device, which was about to bring them closer to where the action was about to heat up.
A Battle Droid, who was standing just above where the grappling device hooked onto, became curious as to what it had just heard below him.
Little did this Battle Droid know that this would have been the last time it would be looking somewhere, because one of the ARC Troopers below just shot his head off. Stupid Battle Droid!
After the Battle Droid was taken out, it was time for the ARC Troopers to make their move. They hopped over the small wall with their guns firing at will. This was too easy for them. As Rowdy Roddy Piper said in the movie They Live, “I came here to chew bubble gum and kick ass, and I’m all out of bubble gum.” That’s the same feeling I got right after seeing this scene.
After the ARC Troopers got control of the immediate area, it was time for the Clone Troopers to make their way to the top of this building. Why couldn’t the Clone Troopers jump over that wall when the ARC Troopers jumped over it? Do the ARC Troopers always have to have all the fun, and save the cleanup work for the Clone Troopers?
The ARC Troopers continued to hold their ground, while the Clone Troopers pushed forward.
The ARC Troopers normally carry a heavy blaster rifle with them, but in this case the ARC Trooper captain sported two blaster pistols. This reminded me of the old western movies where cowboys used two pistols, and also had holsters on their hips to hold this pistols when they weren't being used.
These Battle Droids didn't stand a fighting chance against these ARC Troopers. Why would Count Dooku or whoever was in charge of this Federation outpost, leave a bunch of Battle Droids responsible for maintaining and protecting this blaster cannon? Why wouldn’t there be some Destroyer Droids helping protect the area, or some gun turrets? Anything else on top of the Battle Droids would have been a good strategy. Not a very intelligent decision on that person’s part, now was it?
Even with all of the fighting going on, the blaster cannon was still firing on its targets. These Battle Droids just don’t ever give up though, do they? I guess that’s one plus for them.
Rolling into the picture is none other than the ARC Trooper captain, and after he kneels down he immediately starts picking off Battle Droids.
After taking out those Battle Droids it was time to take out that tower.
And that's when this ARC Trooper launched a rocket at the tower. How many rockets can this guy carry?
When the ARC Trooper captain knew the coast was clear and all Battle Droids in the immediate area were cleared out, it was time to show off a little bit by spinning his blaster pistol and then sliding it into his holster. This captain is truly one major bad ass.
Unfortunately the job was not yet over, and it was finally time to take out that blaster cannon. The squad started laying out several explosives to put an end to the cannon. Why couldn’t the Clone Trooper with the rocket launcher fire a bunch of missiles up onto that cannon? Didn’t he have an unlimited supply of missiles, or was I just imaging things?
It's good to be an ARC Trooper.
You can tell that it's going to take quite a number of these explosive devices to knock out this blaster cannon. Now why would the ARC Trooper in the lower part of this image have to repel down, to place explosive devices underneath the cannon? Wouldn’t it have sufficed by placing all the explosive devices on top of the cannon?
After the cannon was destroyed it was now time to head on up to the tower that controlled it and take it out.
Here you can see the squad moving up on the tower.
Victory at last, but what happened to the Battle Droids that were in this control tower? Did the ARC Troopers and Clone Troopers take them out?
What will happen next? Stay tuned for Chapter 4 of the exciting animated Clone Wars, Season 1.
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