Hi.

Um, so I think we should start a support group for MIA fanfiction writers with longstanding stories that don't seem to like to be updated. (KnightedRogue: "Hello. My name is KR and I have a problem ..." Limelight and others: "Hello, KR!")

Regardless, I have a snippet of what's supposed to be humor here to ... entertain ... you. I think. Whatever it is, I wrote some of it on a different continent, so I can attribute at least part of it's insanity to that.

And I'll stop stalling now.

"TheSemi-Dead Family Reunion"
KnightedRogue

Yep. I'm dead.

Completely dead.

I didn't mean for it to work out like that. I'm the hero. Officially. It might as well be tattoed on my forehead. "Need rescuing? I'm your guy." Or I could have worn a shirt with a sign on the back that said: "If you're a Jedi, potential Jedi, or in some way related to a guy that wants to kill me, and need assistance in whatever potentially lethal scheme you've devised, count me in!"

I was so not supposed to do the whole Accidentally-Slipped-And-Cracked-My-Head-Open thing.

But this place is ... it's got potential.

"Solo!"

Or maybe not.

"You slimeballed, thick-headed, nerfbrained idiot son of a Hutt-slimed cheap streetwalker!"

Mmm. Well. I happen to know that Leia's not, you know, dead like me, so this must be -

Honestly, I have no clue who this is.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

I glance around the room, pop my neck. "I'm one-ing with the Force."

"Damn it! You're not Force-sensitive. And, on top of it all, you're only forty-two."

"And still looking good. Yeah." I wink at him, though he looks like he's ready to split in half. Inner peace my ass. "And I think I wheedled my way in because I married into the Forceness."

"You have to be kidding me! Obi-Wan?" He pauses, waiting, I think, for an answer. "Kenobi, get up here and fix this!"

Fuse-light goes on. "Oh, hey. Yeah. I know him. Ben. Scraggly. Kinda creepy. Waved the fingers around a lot?" No response. "Want to tell me who you are, then, buddy?"

"You don't want to know." His chest suddenly expands past the possible size for a guy his size. "I'm totally your worst nightmare."

I got to give the guy points for the attempt. He's sucking in enough air to fill the Falcon's main hold. "A hint? If I'm going to be beating you down into the Ethereal Ground here, I could stand to know which era you lived in, at least."

"I am - "

"Skywalker, this had better be something important - oh, holy crap."

You know, for an old, wheezy guy straight out of Geriatric Jedi Land, Ben Kenobi really looks good. Hair's lighter, browner. And the guy's got some serious muscle, too. Go figure.

"What the hell are you doing here, Solo?"

"Vacationing. Kuat was booked, so I took my second pick."

"Skywalker, why is Solo haunting us?"

"Oh, come on. Everything gets blamed on me."

Kenobi grins. I think. I couldn't even read the guy when he was decrepit and alive, much less when he's a corpse-soul-whatever. "For good reason."

"So, wait." I'm talking to the as-yet-unintroduced member of this little death party. "Please tell me you're my great, great granduncle-in-law four times removed. Any other explanation is bound to get messy. Give me the news I want to hear."

Skywalker scrunches his eyes up. "I wish you were removed about four thousand years away from me, but no." He dropped his voice into something more ... menacing? "I'm your ... wife's father."

Oh, no. No, no, no. "You've got to be kidding me."

Kenobi grins. Again. "Solo, meet Darth Daddy-in-Law."

"Shut up, Obi-Wan."

"You know, one of the benefits of marrying an orphan is that her parents aren't supposed to show up."

"Hey, pal, you showed up here."

"He's got a point, Solo." Kenobi looks like he's finding this whole thing too amusing. "Personally, I don't think you can be here unless your Force-sensitive better half comes around."

"Kreth. How long is that going to take?"

Skywalker shrugs. "Depends. I wasn't supposed to deal with you for another eighty years or so, so whatever."

"Look on the bright side, Solo. There's no shortage of people here who are, I'm sure, ecstatic to see you." I want to wipe that smug look off Kenobi's face so bad it hurts. He keeps shaking his head around to make it look like the wind is running through his hair. It makes him look like a damn taun-taun.

"You mean all the people I've sent here." My eyebrow goes up on its own. I don't control it. "No thanks, old man. I have no desire to see any of them any time soon."

Skywalker's grin shows teeth. "They can't hurt you."

"I can hurt you."

"I swear, you boys just can't shut up, can you?" A new voice, female, came in, and I think maybe the words had a kind of slapping effect on grandpa and theboy that apparently became Darth Vader, although, to be really honest, I think this kid was about two meters too short and missing about half the muscle of the average six year old girl.

"Padmé, come here and fix this!"

The female voice - kind of a nice one, too - answered back. "Ani, I've told you. If I fix all your problems for you, you won't learn anything."

Darth Paps looks a bit red there. Huh. "Just get out here!"

The not-so mystical fogs part and a coat rack with a chandelier on top walked out into the Ethereal Plains. The coat rack - or maybe it's the woman, I can't tell - seems to be unable to balance the chandelier too well; she suddenly careens off her path and spends another fifteen minutes getting upright again.

"Damn it! Why do you stupid idiots get to choose which outfit you spend eternity in? Just because of Force-sensitivity... " she trails off. "Who are you? Who is he?" She turns to... Leia's dad.

"Padmé, meet the bane of our existence."

She takes a step back and breathes through her nose. Which is funny, when you think about it. Why does she need to breathe? "Han Oswald Frederick Cornelius Solo, you ruined everything!"

I what?

"Do you have any idea how screwed up things got because of you?"

I'm eyeing the chandelier on her head and not paying attention. Which Leia would say was typical, but she's not here, so I can be as typically me as I want to be."Why are you wearing that?"

She huffed - the Skywalker women (I'm assuming that's who she is, because she's a midget with brown eyes that take up half her face and therefore remind me a great deal of my own personal midget) really seem to get that action down in a hurry - and stalks toward me. Stalks. I'm mildly frightened.

"We had the whole blasted thing all worked out. Before you showed up."

"It's not my fault Threepio waxed the floor this morning - "

"No, moron. I meant the Death Star and the hero thing with the seducing our daughter so she'd have a relatively happy marriage." She throws up her hands, and I'm thinking maybe she'll fall backwards, but she stabilizes herself in time. "Happy marriages, even relative ones, don't happen. Gods, we - " she pointed at her husband, whostill looks younger than my breakfast " - we got married in secret! Elopement doesn't ever work out, but we figured that I had to die soon anyway, so, you know. Who do you think you are?"

"Your mom."

Kenobi grins. He does that a lot. "Good one."

Except something in that little tirade seemed out of place. "Wait, the Death Star? You were involved in that?"

"We had a plan, Solo. You need to mind your own business." She narrows her eyes. And why do people narrow their eyes at other people, anyway? It's not like its really threatening. A blaster is threatening. Little squinty eyes are not.

She keeps going, and I start to wonder what Threepio was planning on feeding my bereaved family tonight. "We were all set to be the Galactic Family before you showed up. Ani had Leia and Obi-Wan was on his way with Luke. And we would have been completely fine if you and that muppet hadn't messed it all up."

"What's a muppet?"

She tosses her head. Kinda. "Small little buggers. Walk around with gimer sticks and teach stupid kids how to wave glowsticks around with ferocity." She pauses. "Though Rygel doesn't fit that description very well, now that I think about it."

"Oh." I turn to my ... to Leia's father. "You knew she was your daughter on the Death Star?"

He smirks at me. "Of course I did. I'm the damn Chosen One. You don't think I could have figured out that she was half me?"

"Why'd you torture her then?"

The Vader-ish guy throws up his hands and turns to the coat rack and Obi-Wan, who had found an Ethereal Mirror and was flexing his biceps on the sly. "See! I told you. Younever believe me and I'm right."

"For the first time ever," she mutters.

Ani ignores her. "Leia has a few issues with telling the truth. Well, actually, she's sort of a - " He pauses and looks toward the ceiling. "I'm hungry."

Obi-Wan turns back towards the group with an oh-so convenient Ethereal Tear ripped down the center of his Jedi robes that displays an impressive amount of tanned muscle and pushed Darth Vader out of the way. "Go sit down." He looks at Padmé with what I assume was pointed-ness-icity, but the angle is weird and I'm kind of hungry, too, so I can't be sure. "Leia is a pathological liar. She tends to make things up that didn't happen, purely because she doesn't like to appear to not know something." He nods toward Padmé, who was studying his chest. "Like the time she described her mother to you. She only saw Padmé for about three seconds before Bail and Captain Antilles the First started fighting over who bought her the better baby shower gift. Padmé escaped in the fallout."

"You're telling me she lies about everything?"

"Not everything. But ... well, you know Jacen?"

"Yeah?"

"After she had Jaina, she figured it would suck to tell you that she actually was only pregnant with one child and not two like she said, so she stole another one from the nursery."

"You know, that makes so much more sense. I always wondered how that kid could possibly be related to us."

"Right." It's the woman again. "So, you see. We don't like you."

"And I don't like your face," my evil henchman-in-law adds in around a mouthful of Ethereal Crackers.

"If I could go, I would." I say it because it's my goal in life to contradict everyone in the galaxy at least three times. "I don't know how I got here in the first place, if Leia's supposed to come first."

"You know what? I think we should take him to the Ethereal Guardian. He'll know what to do, I bet." I'm sure that chandelier can't possibly withstand another collision with a wall, or a floor, or an eye. Just moving her mouth has to be a strain on her balance act.

Kenobi grins. "Absolutely. Well done, Padmé."

She nods halfheartedly, but is concentrating on his pecs and doesn't quite catch what he says. "Sure."

As we set off to the Ethereal Guardian, I begin to see why Leia and Luke are as demented and screwed up as they are. No wonder they're always trying to go and get themselves killed, if these are the Force ghosts that they have to put up with. We seem to be walking a long ways, but I can't really tell, because the scenery doesn't change. Ever. It's like walking through the Imperial Palace before Mon Mothma changed all the decorations to aqua chic materials and colors. Not that I know what that is, but Leia complained enough about it to add the phrase to my vocabulary.

"Okay. Here." Kenobi stops the group and turns to me. "Say something."

"Why?"

"So the Ethereal Guardian can guard ethereally."

"Um." It's a lot harder than it looks to yell things into thin air. "I have a bad feeling about this?"

Kenobi, Ani, and Padmé all groan, but the sound is lost in the laugh that echoes around the place. It's deep, mildly frightening, like Padmé stalking, and sounds a lot more like Darth Vader than Ani ever will.

"What?" The voice sounds pissed off.

"Hey. Look, Ethereal Guardian, I think you screwed up."

"I don't screw up. Everything was planned beforehand."

"But I'm not supposed to be dead. And I'm here with these idiots who don't know anything and act more like children than my illegally adopted son does. Something's wrong."

"Nope. I don't see any mistakes here."

"So, you aren't slightly concerned that Kenobi here can't do anything but grin and pose? Or that Padmé dresses herself like she's six? Or that ... " I glance at Ani, who's picking Ethereal Flowers near his feet. " ... I mean, how do you explain him?"

"It doesn't matter. It was all planned out before. I had it all up here."

I throw up my hands. Right now, I could care less. "Just get me home, Your Guardiannessness."

There's a pause. "Well, I guess I should keep them all separate, shouldn't I?" A bit of garbled talking, then the Guardian comes back. "Okay, Solo. Just walk through this Ethereal Gateway of the Semi-Dead."

I start to go through it, not even looking at the idiots behind me, ready to just be away from the whole thing, when the Ethereal Guardian's voice comes back. "Hey, Solo?"

"Yeah?"

"Can you do me a favor? Will you just remind your kids that there's no hope? Seven, Eight, and Nine are not on the table. Thanks."

"Sure." Whatever.

And then there's a light, and some tingling in my toes, and suddenly I'm standing right next to our kitchen, alive, and able to see the shiny floor Threepio had obviously just waxed this morning. And I take the foot that's poised above the tile, ready to step, and about-face so that I never, never have to meet those lunatics again.

But, damn, I'm still hungry.

How's that for writing something completely different? Yeah. Take that.

Thanks for reading. If you put that much time to read it all, take three more seconds to review. Just 'good job' is sufficient if you liked it. Thanks again!

KR