Perhaps with a little less bloodshed. Results do vary when the
variables are altered, after all. This particular variable couldn't wipe the grin off his
face as he casually strolled down the paved walk, a slight swagger to his stride. He was
on a small Outer-Rim world with an equally small name and reputation; Balmir, he recalled,
a planet where the most developed areas were nestled tight around a tiny rather primitive
space port. The city in which the space port resided was called Knessharr. It had been
designed with symmetry in mind; in the very center of the circular city was the space
port, while business offices, market places, residential zones, and industrial factories
all were wrapped around in thick layers. Roads that were patched with dark splotches of
primitive cement ran through each circle-layer in parallel rows, connecting it all
together in somewhat of a neat package.
The Slave IV was docked somewhere on a crumbling platform
in the center of Knessharr while the bounty hunter roamed the market places. He reckoned
it was time to get some fresh air, anyhow. He thought somewhere deep inside, the people
that inhabited the small world around him were rather tolerable, in deep contrast to the
people of other worlds; there was something strange about them, something different...
Fett thought a moment while he walked and decided that it was the
way that the people paid so little attention to him, as if he wasn't even there, that made
them appealing. The market place zone itself was huge, but the area that Fett roamed was
composed of only a few blocks of road-side stands, tents, and small buildings. Farmers,
craftsmen, butchers, people from all sorts and forms of work were gathered and actively
voicing their wares. Fett paused at a stand to look over a table of fresh Balmirian fruit
while the woman with child beside him did little more than glance at the glossy T-slit of
his helm, then resume rolling a pulpy red piece of vegetation in her hand.
He grinned some more onto the one already soldered to his face; he
rather liked this anonymity. The hunter moved on, strolling with his hands in his pockets
towards one particular stand with a large crowd gathered around it. A narrow column of
smoke was billowing into the air and the strong smell of some sort of native cuisine was
strong, even through the filters of the helmet. When he paused in the back of the
gathering, no one shrieked the name of their deity and fled; no one scrambled over his
fellow men to put as much distance between himself and the hunter as they could manage. A
young boy, a teen, even dared to give Fett a slight push so that he may wedge himself
somewhere between the masses.
Boba Fett was amused, though he wasn't quite sure himself why; the
respect and fear his very silhouette induced from beings around him had been something of
comfort in a rough existence. With his reputation as razor-sharp as it was, he knew that
there was little danger of being attacked should he need to just wander for a while; there
were few enough people with the guts and lack of sense to even try. The boy was nothing
more than a clean-shaven, tan-skinned runt, and he had pushed aside the very physical
incarnation of death himself.
It had been quite a while since Fett had any sort of verbal exchange
with another human being.
"Excuse me," he started, his voice adjusting to the low
and menacing tone known throughout the galaxy. "But I do believe I was here
first."
The boy took a moment to register that he was being spoken to. His
round, bald head swiveled on his toothpick of a neck and he arched a black brow at the
hunter. "You had your chance, you didn't take it," he grunted, then quickly
turned to try and push himself deeper into the tangle of bodies.
Fett reached in and pulled him back by the shoulder before he could
escape. "No, I don't think you understand... I don't quite like being snubbed aside
by little boys." Intentionally, he injected the traces of a hiss into his words,
merely to see what kind of rise he could get out of the youth.
"Little boy my ass," came the venomous reply. "You
don't take advantage of time, you lose."
"Ah, but you see, people don't try that sort of thing with
me... They get hurt, you know."
A snort. "Good for them, now beat it, jackass, I've got some
food to get."
Fett arched a brow, his grin widening again. Normally, he wouldn't
let a snot-nosed little punk speak to him like that, and the urge to take the shiny dome
of his skull and slam it into the rough sand-paper pavement nipped at his senses. He
paused, tilting his head ever so slightly to try to look as curious as he could, and asked
in a smooth and level tone, "You... do know who I am, don't you, boy?"
The other was obviously getting agitated. His fists twitched in and
out of small boney fists, and one of his eyebrows looked as if it were about to fly off,
judging by the way it fluttered above an eye. "No, and frankly, I don't give a damned
piece of shit just who the fuck you are, now shut up and go get some fucking wax for your
fucking self."
It was hard for Fett not to chuckle, so hard that he failed holding
it back. Shaking his head slowly, he said, "Boba Fett," and waited for the
expression that he had seen on countless faces on countless occasions. First, the eyes
blinked repeatedly, then his cheeks became confused and began to wonder which way they
should flex, pulling his lips from a scowl to a nervous grin to some sort of aghast
"o" formation. Knowingly, Fett nodded and patted the boy's shoulder. "Don't
freak out; it doesn't happen often enough for me to get agitated over it."
The boy stuttered a colorful curse, managing to blend words with
fragments of Fett's name, and started an awkward mix of stumble and walking backwards
deeper into the crowd. The crowd did not move at his will, however; rather annoyed beings
turned to gently shove the boy back towards the way he came. On the second or third shove
he acquired, he was sent straight into the watching hunter, and shrieked a new string of
curses.When asked by a piggish man why the boy was screaming indecencies in public, the
boy so eloquently shouted above the clamor of the market, "It's fucking Boba Fett!"
Fett blinked, hoping that people would not take the phrasing
literally. For a dead moment, the entire crowd and the crowd gathering around them turned
to look at the armor-clad hunter, silent as ghouls. In the next moment, it was as if a
giant bird had been shot; people jolted from all directions in an explosion of bodies.
Cries of alarm sounded as a familiar scene played before Fett once again. In a matter of
seconds, the road had gone from crawling with people to inhabited by the scant few, with
screams and roars trailing into the alleys where the hunter was not.
He sighed, but noticed that the food stand was clear now. A dazed
cook stood behind a large oven, looking over where the phantoms of his customers were
still admiring his cooking.
A soft grumble buried beneath layers of cloth and metal reminded
Fett of business he would need to attend to. And since the place was deserted now...
He raised one hand towards the cook while stuffing another in his
cred pocket. A few minutes later, he was heading towards an abandoned table set not too
far away to enjoy a nice warm meal, smiling for the first time in quite a while; how he
loved peace and quiet.