Darth Vader and the Spirit of Christmas Joy
Small crystal-esque snowflakes were visible through the spaceship’s overly-sized window. Darth Vader brought his hand up and placed it flat against the cool glass separating him from the empty vastness of space.
A stormtrooper standing next to him let go of the grip of his blaster and placed it on a small holster on his side. He lifted his index finger and pointed at the window.
“Sir, may I ask you a question?”
Darth Vader did not verbally respond; however, he nodded in confirmation.
“How is there snow falling outside? It’s fucking space! You know, planets and shit?”
Darth Vader pondered the validity of the trooper’s question for a moment. A snowflake suddenly smashed against the glass and melted upon impact. Vader kept his gaze on the drops of water which trailed down the glass.
“Do you not feel the magic? It is Christmas… How do you not believe in magic on such a magical time of year?”
The stormtrooper shrugged, “Sir, we all know magic doesn’t exist. Besides, it makes no sense!”
Darth Vader twirled his hand and replied, “Ah- but seeing is believing~”
The stormtrooper placed an armored hand on the back of his helmet, “Yeah, and I saw the snowblower gone from the janitor’s closet.” The trooper waved his hands with flair as he finished. “It’s like you said… Magic!”
Vader held his breath for a moment before asking uncertainty, “Did you tell anyone else?”
The stormtrooper crossed his arms and held himself in a position to express criticism as he questioned Vader, “Just answer me this: Did you space walk to the top of the ship just to strap that dumb thing on?”
Darth Vader’s shoulders tensed.
“No…”
His muscles relaxed as the stormtrooper let go of his metaphorical balls.
“Alright, Vader. Whatever you say,” the stormtrooper sarcastically stated as he rolled his eyes beneath his helmet.
Vader caught wind of his insulting behavior but brushed it off and instead asked, “Enough talk about things that are obviously not true! Did you get what you were sent out to fetch?”
The stormtrooper shifted uncomfortably; it became obvious who was gripping who’s balls now. “About that…”
“What?” Darth Vader turned and glared at the stormtrooper through his helmet.
The stormtrooper took a cautious step forward. Visibly pitying Vader’s situation, he explained, “They told me we ran out of cookies in the mess hall. Looks like we’re going to need to do another resupply.” He then patted Vader on the shoulder. “This time, though, can you not go to 7-11 for all of our food?”
Darth Vader turned away, embarrassed. “I can’t promise anything.” He looked outside and spotted a large planet. Knowing a new solution to their predicament, he stated, “We’ll be buying our supplies locally today.”
The stormtrooper glanced over Vader’s shoulder to try and spot what he was looking at.
“So…?”
Darth Vader raised his arms up from his sides, almost as if worshipping one of those fictitious deities the zealots from sector three five slash two seven created.
“Walmart,” Vader stated with a hint of excitement. “The cookies will surely be there.”
“Fuck…”
A delta-class squad transport ship lowered itself down to the ground. The regrettably (not really) unnamed stormtrooper walked out of the ship’s hatch. He held a GPS in his hand, not really paying attention to his surroundings which included a thin coat of snow upon the almost summer-esque grass..
The stormtrooper smacked the side of the GPS. “This makes no sense. This space GPS says the Walmart should be right here…” The Stormtrooper looked up from the GPS and gazed around the open field. There was nothing in sight but a few trees.
Darth Vader stepped out of the ship, following the sulking stormtrooper. “Could it be mistaken? Or is it you who has failed…”
The stormtrooper pressed a finger against the GPS screen and showed it to Vader, “No, no! I-I’m not failing! I’m simply stating that there’s no Walmart here, and the GPS says there’s supposed to be one!”
Darth Vader rubbed the underside of his armored chin. Using maaaaggiiic the force, Darth Vader forced (get it? heh… no? you’re not very fun at parties, are you?) a clump of soil from underneath the Stormtrooper to rocket upwards, sending itself and the stormtrooper flying up in the air.
There, in the spot where the soil that Darth Vader excavated had sat, was an ancient and forgotten Walmart.
The stormtrooper landed on the ground with a dull thud. After taking a few deep breaths, he pulled himself back up and looked over at the new crater that held the answer to the GPS’s seemingly malfunctioning state.
Disappointed and hungry, he stated, “Oh… Tough luck, Vader. Looks like we’ll have to go somewhere good to get your cookies.”
Darth Vader dropped to his knees and threw his arms out, almost as if a heretic in the system of three five slash two seven would to yell at his society’s self-claimed false deities.
“NOOO!”
Vader collapsed to the ground in a bundle of self-pity and despair. “H-how could the inhabitants of this planet let such a fine establishment fall into ruin?” He pushed himself back up with his left arm and smashed his right fist on the ground in a mixture of anger and a sense of duty. “It’s a crime against The Empire! I won’t let this stand!”
The stormtrooper stood up and walked up to a spot beside Vader. Bending down, he placed a hand on Vader’s shoulder.“Sir… They’re only cookies…”
Darth Vader shrugged off the stormtrooper’s hand and jumped up onto his feet.
“ONLY COOKIES?!” Vader bitchslapped the stormtrooper and then reached out with his right arm. Focusing his force, he put his poor companion in a chokehold. “Those are the best damn cookies in the entire galaxy!”
Through small gasps, the stormtrooper uttered out, “H-how do you know that, s-sir?”
Vader tightened his grip on the stormtrooper’s throat. “It said it on the tin when I bought it last, you fool!”
The stormtrooper placed both hands on his throat, struggling to fight against the intangible force that restricted his breathing. “Okay! Okay! I trust you! Please, let me down!”
Darth Vader flung the stormtrooper to the side and started to walk away. “I hope that you aren’t as arrogant next time. It would be awful to see what would happen to you… For your sake, I suggest you shut up.”
Darth Vader scanned their surroundings and spotted smoke rising from what looked to be buildings in the distance. “Now, we must get back to our mission.”
The stormtrooper pulled himself off the ground, still gasping for breath. After a small moment’s struggle, he managed to stand up and saluted Vader whilst he wheezed, “Yes, sir!”
Darth Vader pointed his index finger at the smoke. “I think I see life on this primitive planet.” He closed his eyes and the haunting memory of the desolated and abandoned Walmart flashed through his mind. He stumbled to the ground and started to take deep breathes in an effort to fight back against the nightmares invading his thoughts. After a few seconds, he successfully regained his composure and stood back up.
“Let’s go,” he commanded.
The stormtrooper closed his fist and used his thumb to point at the squad transport behind them, “Why don’t we take the ship, sir? My legs are tired.”
“The ship?”Vader turned his head to the stormtrooper, partially shocked at the stormtrooper’s naivety. “Are you mad? Do you even know how much gas that beast burns while it’s in orbit?I’m here to get cookies, not drive The Empire into bankruptcy!”
Darth Vader trudged through the snow, and raised his arm in defiance against the world’s rigorous natural barriers.
“Onwards!”
The Stormtrooper wordlessly followed behind; however, after a few steps, he tripped on nothing and fell down, hurting his knee and creating unnecessary conflict by injury which won’t be mentioned again in the story.
Darth Vader casually strolled into the small town whilst being followed by none other but nameless stormtrooper himself! It was obvious that Vader was not surprised by the equines inhabiting the planet. His space travels surely must have taken him to see both the majestic and unique whilst also seeing the terrifying and horrifying; however, the equines seemed not to have explored the universe nearly quite as much as Vader since they stared at him with shock and fear.
Vader walked up to a pony running a vegetable stand and stated, “Excuse me, worker-”
“Ahhhhh!” the pony bolted away whilst screaming uncontrollably.
Vader, unsure what step to take next, resigned to entering a random nearby building. The stormtrooper silently followed him inside. At the sight of Vader, the ponies inside dropped to the ground, their front legs over their heads and their rear legs stretched out, causing their ~~majestic~~ rears to be propped up.
Annoyed at their definitely-not-unique reaction, he growled, “Can I get some service from you miserable whelps?!”
The ponies all launched off of the ground and haphazardly scrambled around the room. One or two random unnamed ponies defenestrated themselves, seemingly unaware of the fact that they just vandalized the store’s front windows.
Miserable at their unfair treatment, Darth Vader sulked back outside the door. He made sure to close it shut despite the shattered glass littering the ground that the chaos has created just moments before.
The stormtrooper, which I and Vader totally did not forget, stepped through one of the smashed windows and giggled like a~~n anime school girl~~ normal person as he caught up to Vader.
Matching Vader’s pace, the stormtrooper laughed, “I don’t think they’re going to talk to you if you’re going to be so mean to them.”
Darth Vader’s snapped his head to the side to glare upon the blank, emotionless helmet of the still-nameless stormtrooper. He raised his arms up like one of those Russian circus bears to express his frustration. “These workers should help me! I’m a customer!”
The stormtrooper walked backwards until he found a random pony to sit on whilst he arranged himself in a The Thinker position. “But what if some of them are also customers?”
The pony shot an uncomfortable glance towards the stormtrooper sitting on him, but decided to just ignore it and let it happen.
Darth Vader placed his hands on his hips and sighed. He resigned to try and find someone a bit more… innocent? Yes, innocent to ask for directions to the manager of the town’s Walmart.
He spotted a brown colt doing… something in the grass. He hesitantly walked up to the colt and tapped him on the shoulder once he was close enough.
“Ummm, I’m sorry to bother you, fellow customer, but who runs the local Walmart?”
The colt’s eyes shot open as he started to hyperventilate. A small lollipop that he had held in his mouth fell out and dirtied itself by landing in the grass. Darth Vader lowered himself to his knees and stared at the colt with his usual cold and cruel expressionless gaze of his helmet.
“I am here to buy things of value with my currency, just like you. Now, who is in charge?”
The colt dropped down and plastered himself to the ground whilst simultaneously pointing a hoof towards a nearby tree. With windows. And a door. And other housey stuff.
Darth Vader lightly patted the colt on his head and praised him, “Thank you, fellow shopper!”
The stormtrooper chuckled as he trailed behind Vader who was heading towards the tree(house?), “It wasn’t that hard, now was it, Vader?”
Darth Vader lifted a hand and applied the force directly to the stormtrooper’s head. The stormtrooper in question flew backwards and landed on the not-so-quilt-esque snow-covered ground.
Vader plodded up to the tree’s door. With a new jump in his step, he knocked on the wooden frame.
After a couple minutes of very enthralling and intense waiting, the mare nicked Twilight opened the door. At first sight, she stumbled back, shocked by the armor-clad bipedal waiting patiently at her doorway.
Not asking for permission, Vader stepped inside her house with the I’m-not-going-to-name-him stormtrooper in tow. Once inside, he turned around to properly question her with all the etiquette required when one lacked the morally and politically undesirable option to lop off an arm or two.
He looked down upon her with the grace of an immobile statue which obvious to others, but somehow not him, visibly disturbed her to no end.
“Are you the manager of the local Walmart? I wish to make some purchases.”
Twilight gulped, attempting to drown the collision of fear and curiosity which followed Darth Vader. She tilted her head up to face his still-expressionless helmet and stuttered, “I-I… What’s Walmart?”
Despite not being visible and it being a rather minute detail of this story, Darth Vader’s eye twitched. He bent his head forward as far as it would go as he clenched his teeth and forced his eyes closed. Unable to resist the fog of rage clouding his vision, he lunged at Twilight.
He would have crashed into her and eviscerated her with a lightsaber and slept inside of her for the night for her heresy; however, he was just barely stopped by stormtrooper #?? as the stormtrooper grabbed onto Vader’s shoulders and pulled him away from Twilight.
Vader yelled as his arms flailed madly, “You uncivilized peasants! I knew you let that store fall into ruin! It’s all your fault! How could you let that happen?”
The stormtrooper had wrapped his arms around Vader’s and was pulling him away from Twilight despite knowing such a savage species was at fault and deserved punishment for such a horrid crime.
Starting in a spiralling path of despair, Darth Vader let his arms fell limp, causing the stormtrooper to let him go. He then turned around and let the stormtrooper hold him in a comforting embrace.
Burying his face in the crook of the stormtrooper’s neck, his actions were met with a dull thud as his tears begun to fill his helmet. “Why!? Why do the beings of this planet not like amazing deals?!”
The stormtrooper sympathetically rubbed the back of Vader’s helmet as he spoke sweet promises. “Shhh, Vader. It’s going to be fine. We can always go to another planet…”
Darth Vader lifted his head away from the stormtrooper and in an almost impossible circumstance, two blank gazes met each others; however, one was a bit more damp than the other.
“I don’t want another planet,” Vader sobbed. “If I don’t get those cookies today, then Christmas will be ruined!”
Darth Vader placed his head in his hands and started bawling even harder than he had been previously, knowing that if things were not solved that Christmas would be ruined for him. Forever.
The stormtrooper turned to face Twilight, whom is still trying to figure out what is going on. “You should be ashamed of yourself. Making the poor leader of the known galaxy cry! Tell me, what’s wrong with you?”
The words reverberated in Twilight’s thick, rock-esque head.
Leader of the known galaxy. Leader. Galaxy. Leader of the galaxy. What the buck is a galaxy?
Regardless of her naivety, Twilight knew she fucked up.
Attempting to calm the sobbing monarch, Twilight dipped her head in respect and apologized, “I-I’m so sorry we don’t have what you want here.”
The stormtrooper shook his head in disgust. “You should be.”
Ponies started to crowd at the front of Twilight’s home as Vader took deep breaths in a difficult attempt to stop from drowning himself with his own tears.
Twilight bit her lip in anxiety as she tried to compromise with him. “Do you need a certain store? We have a very nice sweets place in Ponyvill-”
“No!” Vader held up his hand in a ‘stop’ gesture and argued against her vain attempts to bribe him with inferior sweets. “Walmart has the best cookies in the galaxy! Do you have that?!”
Twilight knew Pinkie’s cookies were good, but ‘best in the whole galaxy good’? Twilight heavily doubted that and she shook her head sadly. “No, I’m afraid we don’t…”
Darth Vader futilely pleaded with the universe itself for the possible restoration of the fine shopping establishment as he questioned Twilight, “Why couldn’t your people just have let Walmart live!? It was such a nice place to shop for all my shopping needs!”
The stormtrooper standing beside him punched the air above him with a fist much like a protester from sector three five slash two seven attending a separation of church and state demonstration would have. “Amen to that!”
Thankfully, one of the local townsponies trotted up to Vader and handed him a small tissue. Vader reached out with a thankful hand and wiped off his bone-dry helmet with it. He handed it back to the pony with a small nod and a thankful, though not visible, smile of appreciation. Thus, all he received in return was a confused glance.
“Listen!” Twilight pleaded to get his attention. “You said this store has what you want?”
“Y-yes…” Vader mumbled with despair lingering behind his seemingly improved mood.
“I can let you talk to Princess Celestia about building a new one! In fact, if you let me take you to Canterlot right now, I’m sure she’ll see you right away!”
Breaking the chains of self-pity, Darth Vader yelled, “Finally!” Using the force, he pushed the stormtrooper outside Twilight’s house and into the middle of the crowd of parting ponies, thus causing his ass to make a loud thunk as he landed.
Darth Vader reached into one of his various not-known-until-now pockets and pulled out a small device that consisted of a box with a button and antenna. Before Twilight could ask what he was doing, he pressed the button and the same delta-class transport ship from earlier swooped down and destroyed at least five houses entirely and the roof of another as it came to a stop just in front of him.
The hatch on the ship opened up as several stormtroopers streamed out of it with guns up-and-ready for firing. With great accuracy, they opened fire on the ponies and their town, hitting practically everything but the ponies.
Ponies ran away and sought cover; however, Vader did not worry as he had never doubted the true aim of his soldiers. Without a casualty, the stormtroopers followed him inside whilst continually randomly firing towards the ponies’ general direction.
The hatch of the ship closed behind them and it took off, leaving all the ponies in the town wordless and a little bit singed.
After a few seconds, Twilight rhetorically asked, “What the buck just happened?”
Darth Vader sat in a plaid chair along with several others in the waiting room to enter the Celestial Court. Knowing that all eyes were on him, he attempted to casually glance around the room whilst messing the small ticket in his hand by rubbing it in-between his fingers.
He paid great zeal in his continual efforts to repeatedly confirm that he did indeed have ticket number three; however, this failed to make the waiting process proceed any faster than it already had been despite him checking the ticket every couple seconds.
A voice called out from an intercom, “Ticket holder number two, please make your way into the Celestial Court.”
A stormtrooper leaned down from his spot next to Vader to whisper, “Don’t you wish we went to a different planet? Waiting really sucks, right?”
Darth Vader turned to face the stormtrooper’s helmet before he shot his hand forward and gripped the stormtrooper’s neck. Even in death, the stormtrooper stayed silent as Darth Vader used a combination of physical and ethereal force to snap his neck; however, those in the room did not show nearly as much restraint as they all gasped in fear at the sight of the stormtrooper landing with a thud on the ground.
Without question or opinion, a storm trooper jogged inside the room and picked up his fallen comrade before jogging right back out. Feeling the joys of Christmas reach his core, Vader turned to a filly that sat next to him with her mother.
They turned away in hope that his unfeeling gaze would pass over them; however, they were not nearly as lucky as they had wished. Darth Vader looked down at the visibly shaking filly before asking, “What do you want for christmas, little one?”
Neither the foal or her mother replied as he continued to talk, “Do you know what I want?” The pony shivered as Vader spoke to her. “I want this planet to become civilized like its counterparts in this galaxy. The only way to do that, though, is to give you a very special present.”
Darth Vader leaned in even closer to the foal, now just a few inches from her face as he whispered, “Do you know what that present is?”
“That’s it!” Vader sat upright once more as the filly’s mother screamed at him whilst she scooped up her filly and placed her on the ground. “We’re coming back a different day, alright! I don’t want to know what your present to my girl is, but I want you to stay away!”
Grabbing the filly’s hoof in her own, the mother marched towards the waiting room’s door. Darth Vader watched silently as the mother opened the door before slamming it behind her and her filly as she stormed out.
He tapped his idle fingers on his armored knees before looking around the room once more at the various ponies who continued to avoid eye contact.
“It’s a Walmart,” Vader mumbled to himself. “That’s the present...”
“Number three, please enter the Celestial Court,” a voice over the intercom said.
Darth Vader made his way to the large, double doors and opened one. He wasn’t sure of what, or who, he would meet on the other side, but one thing was for sure: He was going to get a brand new Walmart for the people of this awful planet.
With a sales pitch in mind, Darth Vader was slightly thrown off his plan as a scream echoed through the throne room’s halls, “What the buck is that thing!?”
Author's Note
Hard to believe we wrote this only on the thought of, 'snowing in space'.
