Disclaimer: We don't own Star Wars. If we did, we'd be feeding the entire Walt Disney cast to the Sarlacc and/or Rancor right about now, and blowing Disneyland off the face of the world with a low-yield Death Star laser blast.

November 25th 2020 AD/ 2 ABY

Orbit of Mandalore

As chaos was ensuing on the Mandalorian homeworld, a single ship was leaving as it flew away at full speed. The ship was identified as a YT-2000 Light Freighter, a little brother of the famous YT-1300-class freighter. In the cockpit of the Freighter, Boc was sitting in the pilot's seat as Shala sat in the one next to him.

"So, any idea of where we're heading?" Shala, who Patriot now recognized as a smart A.I., asked as said Bounty Hunter logged in the coordinates for their destination.

"Iego, it's where me and my friends decided we should go," he said, as he moved the thrust handle forward and the hyperdrive kicked in sending them into Hyperspace. After releasing a tired sigh, Boc leaned back in his seat. "Remind me to get this thing modified sometime down the road."

"Noted," Shala said, "Pretty sure we can find some good upgrades at places like Tatooine, or Corellia… though I'd rather stay away from Imperial worlds."

"Agreed. According to the Nav Computer, it will take us at least 24 hours to get to Iego." he said and then activated his menu, heading for the Prestige Level Sub-class page. "In the meantime… which do I choose? I'm not the type for a bodyguard or sharpshooter, I don't like babysitting, and even though stealth is a good thing, I prefer to fight on the frontlines."

Shala hummed in thought, glancing at the stats. "Hmm… you seem more of a Mercenary if you ask me," she said. "Raiders are handy, but they don't have much in the way of Melee combat. You seem to use blades quite a bit, so a Mercenary would be right down your alley. "

Boc put his hand under his chin, before he smirked. "Mercenary it is, then," he said as he selected the Mercenary Sub-class, and then a window appeared.

"Congratulations! You selected the Mercenary Class! New items obtained: Mandalorian Super Shocktrooper Armor, IQA-11 Blaster Rifle, L-23 Blaster Pistol, Durasteel vibrosword. Credit Pay increase: 10,000"

"Whoa, talk about an upgrade." Patriot said.

"Indeed," Shala said. "Should keep you going until you find something more customized."

Boc nodded at that, and then stood up as he unequipped his Beginner Mandalorian Armor, and equipped his new armor. The green armor disappeared, only to replaced by his new armor. Shala's eyes widened as she recognized the armor her new partner was now utilizing.

"No way…" she said. "Isn't that…"

D.J looked at himself, his own eyes wide, but with a smirk on his face "Mandalorian Super Commando armor…" he muttered. "Just like Jaster Mereel's…"

The armor itself looked like his first armor, with the same type of helmet, but this version was more battle scarred, and was colored a gunmetal grey, with the shoulder pieces and the trim around the t-visor being red, and shown proudly on the shoulder pieces was the sigil of the True Mandalorians.

"And the odds have just went up."

November 26th 2020 AD/ 2 ABY

Coruscant, Landing Bay 445b

Ryu sighed as he walked through the landing bay, heading towards the entrance to the spaceport proper. Taking a look around he didn't immediately see any 'Quest Givers' around so he continued on, weaving through the NPCs and the odd players, a few of them were looking rather lost and desperate. 'The key won't be the Rebel/Empire war, it'll be finding those Strongholds… and from the sounds of it, they'll give whoever captures them a pretty big advantage…' he thought to himself as he walked. 'There's probably quite a few people who would pay a ton of cash for the information on a Stronghold, one or two might be located on a planet like this, but I think for the most part they'll be located on out of the way planets that not many people know about… first things first… a guild needs to be built.'

With that in mind he made his way towards the marketplace. As he walked he mused about Coruscant, it was one of three planets that were designated as 'Neutral Zones' and barring certain locations, fighting was not allowed and any attack made dealt no damage outside of a little shock and a push, outside of duels that is, even then, it seemed duels, unless specified, were not to the death.

As he walked he spotted several players interacting with one another, looking excited about something. "You serious, man!?" one of them nearly shouted as Ryu took a position behind a column to listen in from a distance as to not get caught. "You found an Artifact Location?"

"Quiet man," the other one hissed out, silencing the other. "Artifacts are one of a kind, we don't want people stealing it from us!"

"It's deep in the unrestricted section here on Coruscant," the third one explained. "Not sure what it relates to, but it has really strong enemies spawning there…"

"What do we do?" the first asked nervously. "Should we grind some levels at spawn points?"

The second nodded. "We should, according to the release info, these Artifacts are extremely powerful…" he pointed out. "What level were they?"

"High twenties, low thirties, Imperial Guards too," the third informed. "If we grind to twenty we should be able to handle it, we're only five levels off…"

"Let's get started!" the first said as they began to move.

Ryu smirked from his spot, as he checked his level, 25, he had gotten lucky with a couple of rare enemies in random encounters. 'Should be enough to deal with them,' he thought to himself as he headed towards the speeder rental office. "And with the right strategy, I should be more than capable of handling it."

Meanwhile - WIth Jaden

As he neared the location of the distress beacon, Jaden had went over the current armaments of the Forthcoming Redemption. It was obvious that Khan had done many upgrades to the vessel, as it was heavily armed. In addition to the six concealed solar ionized cannons, the Sith Infiltrator had an additional pair of standard heavy laser cannons, and a pair of fire-linked Seeker Concussion missile launchers within the wings, adding to its overall firepower considerably. This added to the vessel's already deadly speed and maneuverability made it a fearsome foe indeed.

"Dropping out of hyperspace in 15 seconds," the onboard computer warned.

Jaden nodded, as his hands held onto the controls, remembering all of the VR Space Simulators he had played in the past. 'Let's hope this works...'

Moments later, he dropped out of Hyperspace, and was immediately greeted by a space battle as laser fire and torpedoes soared through space. On pure instincts, Jaden banked the Infiltrator to the side, narrowly avoiding stay cannon fire "Shit!" He shouted, as he maneuvered himself out of the fire zone.

After gaining his bearings, Jaden observed the battlefield. He could tell who the defenders were immediately - that being a small force of Light Freighters and Starfighters ranging from Z-95 Headhunters, YG-4210's, Barloz-class Medium Freighters and other smaller ships, firing their weapons and doing what they could to defend themselves.

On the other side were what appeared to be a Black Sun Pirate fleet made up of NPC's. Two Interceptor-class Frigates, three IPV-1 System Patrol Craft, and dozens of Rihkxyrk-class Fighters swarming around the weaker Z-95's.

Jaden quickly armed his weapons and primed his shields. "This is the Starship Forthcoming Redemption to the vessel Red Dawn," he said. "I am here to give you assistance. Please respond, over."

There was a short burst of static on the comm, before the reply came. "Oh thank god, someone actually came!" the female voice said again. "This is Natsuki Ureimo, of the Starship Red Dawn! I can't believe anyone came!"

Jaden traced the call, apparently coming from the leading vessel, a Barloz-class Medium Freighter with a distinct red and white color scheme. "Happy to help, ma'am," he said, before he selected his first target: a trio of Pirate Fighters. "What's the situation?"

"We were ambushed by these damn Pirates after we left Corellia," Natsuki explained, "We wanted to get away from the major areas where there were a lot of players… a lot of the people onboard our ships are kids who logged into SWO, they're all scared! We can't hold them off for much longer."

Jaden's eyes narrowed as he growled. He wasn't about to let a bunch of kids get killed. "Say no more, I've got you covered," he said. "I am sending you some new Hyperspace Coordinates, once you can, make the jump! I will hold them off!"

Before Natsuki could form a retort, Jaden pulled the trigger for his cannons, as a stream of orange and red lasers blasted out of the Redemption, the high energy lasers piercing through the shields of the older Pirate starfighters, shredding them to pieces.

"Woohoo!" Jaden shouted with a grin. "Just like in Star Wars: Starfighter, makes confetti out of everything!" His warnings went off again, as another group of Pirate Fighters were trying to chase him down, firing their own laser cannons which only impacted against the shields, but still caused the insides to rattle.

"Oh you did NOT just shoot that red shit at me!" He shouted, as he put the Redemption into a large U-Turn, and unleashing the Ionized Cannons upon the Pirates, which breached through the shields and tore the enemy fighters apart. He then performed a Split S, as he went after his next target, one of the IPV-1 System Patrol Craft that was harassing the transports, firing its XV7 Turbolasers and VL-4a Warhead's at the fleet.

Jaden began firing both his laser and ion cannons, which chipped away at the craft's shields. While the IPV-1 was an effective ship against standard pirate ships, it could not hold its own against more advance craft like the Redemption. It only took a few seconds of weapons fire for the shields to drop, and he fired a pair of Concussion Missiles at the ship shortly after. The missiles arced forward, and slammed into the underside of the Patrol Craft, causing a large explosion to set off where its weapons were, causing the vessel to go silent, dead in space.

Jaden left the patrol craft to its fate as it was picked off by Z-95's as he searched for his next target: the closest Interceptor-class Frigate. While if he had enough time he probably could sink the whole ship, all he wanted to do now was to draw its fire away from the transports as they plugged in their Hyperspace jump. Meaning he needed to target its weapons: Six starboard and port Turbolasers, and three aft Proton Torpedo launchers. Unfortunately, its shields were stronger than that of an IPV-1, meaning it would be much more difficult to deal with.

As Jaden made his approach, the Pirate vessel quickly noticed him as it opened fire with its Turbolasers. However he weaved through the shots, as they were designed to take on large capital ships, not smaller maneuverable craft like Starfighters and Infiltrators. He fired both his Ionized and laser cannons, which impacted against the vessel's shields. He continued to bombardment for a good few seconds before he was forced to soar over the vessel, before coming around for another pass.

"I can't keep this up forever!" He shouted, as he unleashed the Redemption's firepower upon the Pirate Frigate once more. "How long 'till you Jump!"

"Just a few more minutes! Some of our ships are already jumping out!" Natsuki said, and Jaden took a glance as he saw that indeed several ships were starting to wink out into Hyperspace. "We're doing all we can!"

"Well, hurry up! I'm not Superman here!" Jaden shouted again, as he was nearly hit by one of the turbolasers shots. "Shit! That was close! Damn S.O.B.!" He returned the favor with a volley of his own weapons fire, firing everything he had from his lasers, to Ion cannons and missiles. The firepower was just enough as the weapons pierces through the shields of the Interceptor, and ripped apart the port side Turbolasers, smoke and fire bellowing out of the blast area.

'That should keep them busy for a while,' He thought to himself as he flew underneath the Frigate, as he looked at the transports, the last ones escaping into Hyperspace along with their Fighter escorts. 'Time to go,' he thought as he brought up the Nav Computer, and quickly plotted the course to follow the Transports. 'Don't wanna stay here any longer than I have to.' Once the last transport jumped away, Jaden wasted no time as he activated his own Hyperdrive, and escaped into Hyperspace, leaving the Pirates in the dust.

Jaden sighed in relief, as he was once again in the all too familiar void of Hyperspace. 'Well… that was an adventure and a half,' he thought to himself before he activated the Comm. "This is Jaden to Red Dawn," he said. "Are you alright?"

It was a moment before he got a response, "This is Red Dawn, I read you. Thanks for helping us out back there,"said the captain of said ship.

Jaden smiled a little bit. "It was no problem. How are the kids?" he asked.

"Shaken up, but we're all glad to still be alive…" Natsuki said, "If you hadn't of shown up when you did…"

"Just doing what I can to help, ma'am," he said. "And with these new damn 'rules', its a whole different game now."

"Yeah… but would you please stop calling me 'ma'am', it's Natsuki!" she said. "Ma'am makes me sound old. So… where are we heading?"

Jaden chuckled a bit. "Right, sorry," he said. "Anyways, we're heading for Iego, it's in the outer rim, so there shouldn't be too many players already there. I was heading over there to meet up with my friends until I heard your distress call. We should be safe there… for now at least."

"Iego? Isn't that where the CIS set up that laser grid that kept the populace trapped there?" Natsuki asked, and Jaden nodded.

"The very same, but since this game is set during the Galactic Civil War, and that it was knocked out by Anakin and Obi-Wan in the Clone Wars, we don't have to worry about being trapped there," he said, and he heard Natsuki sigh in relief.

"That's good, I'm not looking forward to being vaporized," she said.

"Ditto," he said. "Anyways, it should take us about 24 hours or so to arrive, so try to relax a bit. And whatever you do, don't tempt Murphy's Law - that is the LAST thing we need right now."

"Don't worry, we got it," Natsuki said with a small giggle. "And again, thanks… looking forward to meeting you in person. Red Dawn out."

Jaden smirked as he stretched out a bit. "Now, while we wait. Time to take a nap." With that, he set the autopilot to his destination before he stood up and went to rest.

Meanwhile, 24 hours later, at said location.

The Planet of Iego, also known as the Planet of a Thousand Moons, was nestled in the Extrictarium Nebula, warmed by the gasses of said Nebula instead of a sun. Formerly a CIS base established in the Clone Wars, the Separatists abandoned the world, but before leaving a Laser Defense Grid to keep the locals and anyone unlucky enough to land on the planet to end up stranded as well.

Of course the grid was later destroyed by Jedi Generals, Anakin Skywalker and Obi-wan Kenobi.

Seeing the planet and the remains of said grid was Patriot as he looked outside the cockpit window of his ship.

"Well, not actually the ideal place to set up a base for a guild, but it's out of way of the Empire, so..." he said as he flew the YT-2000 down to the surface.

Shala nodded in agreement with him. "Yeah. So, you got anything to name this bucket?" she asked.

Patriot scratched his head at that. "I'll get back to you on that," he said before he held his hand up, stopping Shala from talking. "I know, it's bad luck for a ship to have no name."

Shala sighed, shaking her head. "You and your superstitions..." she muttered.

"Hey, it counts when those Superstitions are true," Boc shot back. "Do I need to remind you of Murphy's Law?"

Shala sighed again as she leaned back in her chair. "Whatever..." she said, and then turned back to her partner. "So, do you have any plans for the Battle of Hoth in the next few months, and whose side you're gonna sell your services to?"

Boc shrugged at that. "No clue. Although I'll probably fight for the Rebellion if they can give an X-Wing as a bounty," he said, a clear smirk on his face.

Shala rolled her eyes, but was smirking as well. "I'm sure we can… persuade them one way or the other," she said. "Considering the Reputation you've already made on Mandalore."

Boc looked at his partner. "You mean catching live bounties, or when I shot that corrupt Imperial officer that both the Alliance AND Vader wanted dead?" he asked and Shala held up two fingers.

"Both, you did Vader and the rebels a favor in eliminating that scumbag. And you got into the good graces of a Sith Lord, and a Rebel General." she explained, making the rising bounty hunter hum in thought.

"Ya got a point," he said. "Although Vader may be a very tempting customer, I'd rather not have him as a repeat client."

"Same here," Shala said, shaking her head. "That guy gives me the chills just being remotely close to him."

Boc nodded. "Yeah... and to think that he was once a nice guy at one time," he muttered the last part, which caused Shala to blink at that.

"What?" she asked.

"Forget it. Let's just land so we can meet with the others, and get this crate fitted with the proper hardware," he said as the ship pushed through the atmosphere and the town of Cliffhold could be seen below. Boc noticed that it looked a little bigger than the time of the Clone Wars, as he saw some landing platforms on the side of the cliffs.

"Wow, the locals have been busy," he said, impressed. "Those certainly weren't there during the Clone Wars."

"They look pretty new," Shala said. "They musta put them in a year ago or something like that… certainly will help if we manage to get any… bigger ships." She then stood up. "Well, I suppose we should head out and clear our landing with the dock workers."

Coruscant, Lower Levels, Unrestricted Zone

Ryu smirked as he sighted down his rifle towards the enemy NPCs, carefully watching their movement patterns. He'd been slowly making his way deeper and deeper into the 'dungeon', the enemies progressively getting stronger and stronger as he progressed deeper.

Letting out half a breath, he squeezed the trigger, letting a bolt fly and nailing a lone guard between the eyes, the blow not only was considered to be a 'critical', but he also had a 'stealth' damage multiplier added on, meaning the guard was dead five times over by the time he hit the floor, several shots later and the 'patrol' was decimated.

As he walked he activated the Stealth Generator that his class was capable of using to ensure that any guards that he may have missed would not raise the alarm. Stopping at the door, he quickly checked to see if it was locked, finding it wasn't he ducked to the side of the door before cracking it open. Peeking in, his jaw dropped as he spotted a down right MASSIVE Battle Droid that took up nearly the entire room. "Well that's not fair at all…" he groaned to himself as he pulled his head out the door and carefully considered his options.

The Droid, a futuristic looking Mk IV Tank Droid from SWTOR 2, was quite obviously the boss of the dungeon, and it would take quite a bit of firepower to take it out, for normal Raid Groups, that is. "Fuck it, I'm D&D'ing this motherfucker," he whispered as with a swipe in the air he opened his menu, quickly scanning through his items he took stock of his inventory and possible items he could use were taken out and placed onto the ground before him.

When he was finished he had several of three different grenades: flashbangs, frags and most importantly EMPs, of which he had four, and several more EMP Mines that he had on him along with two rare plasma mines. Aside from the explosives he had three standard blaster rifles, five blaster pistols, two scatterguns, a literal ton of fiberwire, eight vibroshivs, a single vibrosword and… miracles of miracles, a Lightsaber, while he was certainly able to equip it, unless you had a downright obscene amount of Dexterity scores, you had massive penalties to your chance to hit scores, that could easily result in you hitting yourself, there was actually a couple rather funny Beta Tester vids on that actually…

Shaking his mind off of the videos he saw he focused on the task at hand, slowly slipping into the room, he tested whether or not he was capable of sneaking around the boss, not to see if he could just bypass him, that would have just been a waste of time, but to see if he could sneak around the boss, seeing that the Droid did nothing out of the ordinary as he moved Ryu slipped back out of the room and began gathering up his supplies. "Time to get to work," he whispered to himself as he slipped into the room to set his trap.

Meanwhile - with Jessica

The Stellar Freedom circled around as the planet of Iego came into view. Jessica's eyes locked onto the planet and she took note of the old defense grid that remained in orbit, no longer functional. "Looks like this is the right spot," she remarked.

"Yeah. Now all we have to do is get clearance to land," Dave said.

"Nah. Not gonna happen," Jessica said. "If there's one thing that's not gonna happen, it's that. Well, right now, anyway. Let's head down and see if we can find the others."

The man blinked, but said nothing as he nodded and leaned back to let her take the ship in.

Jessica grasped the controls and began to guide the YT-1930 into the atmosphere, her skills at piloting coming into use. While she was a first rate shooter, she was an okay pilot, and she felt that her skills weren't up to the task. But she had to do this, having no other option now that the outside of the vessel was beginning to heat from reentry slightly. The clouds passed by the vessel's cockpit and within fifteen minutes they emerged in the planet's atmosphere.

She spotted the town Cliffhold not a moment later. "There. We'll head there and land for a bit. We may as well see what we can dig up for other weapons for this thing."

Dave nodded. "Good idea. This way we can at least defend ourselves better than with that single laser cannon." He jerked his head back at the cockpit for it and Jessica nodded. Dave had been forced to man the cannon a few hours ago during a retreat from enemy NCP's. But the two managed to hold them off and use the vessel's greater speed to their advantage before making an emergency jump to hyperspace. The Stellar Freedom as a result of that fight had some damage to her exterior plating, but she was still good to go.

"Yeah. We got lucky that we had speed on our side that time," she added.

"What kind of mods are you thinking of?" Dave asked her as she took the vessel closer to the town. "I mean, I know we need weapons, but…"

"Speed." Jessica's eyes were hard as she said that one word. "Speed. We need speed if we're gonna try and outfly some of the other ships. The game's new rules are made to ensure that we do whatever we can to win, and that includes mods to ships that normally are illegal in-game. And some of the Players may try to use speed to their advantage. We need to beat them at their own game by outrunning them."

"Speed alone isn't going to cut it," Dave pointed out.

"I know," Jessica said seriously. "But it will give us an edge that we can't afford to lose. The firepower is what's really concerning. The heavier a ship, the less speed it has. And if I'm right, we may need to mod it to the level of the Falcon, if not more. And that's something I'm not willing to risk unless we have no choice."

The man nodded. "I see where you're going with this. And I have to agree. But...considering what kind of a freighter we're on, we may be able to pull off something similar."

"I hope so. Because these new rules are forcing us to go all out. We need to be prepared," Jessica said as she finally docked the freighter. She shut down the engines and stood up. "C'mon. Let's find the others."

Meanwhile - with Takeshi

Takeshi smiled slightly as the Elsa dropped out of Hyperspace. "Well, here we are…" he remarked. "Iego… the place where my friends and I had agreed to meet up at…"

"The Planet of a thousand moons…" Shion muttered. "It's a perfect hiding place, there doesn't appear to be many players out here yet."

"Which is why we picked this planet," Takeshi said, as the Elsa headed towards the planet. "It's isolated, out of the way, and not a place that players-" however, just as he was about to finish that statement, warning alarms bombarded the cockpit. "The Frak?"

Shion looked down at her instrumentation. "We have contacts coming out of Hyperspace," she reported. "A whole lot of them…"

"What the hell? That's impossible!" Takeshi said as he looked at his scanner. "My friends decided this was the best to be because of the low amount of missions!"

Before he could continue, his ship's comm was beeping alerting him someone was trying to contact him. "The heck?" Takeshi asked, however he decided it was best to find out who these people were, as he hit the comm switch.

Soon, a voice - a rather familiar one at that - came through "This is the Forthcoming Redemption to the Corvette Elsa," he said. "Yo Takeshi! That you? I know you're the only person I know who'd name their ship from something out of Xenosaga!"

Takeshi grinned. "Jorn!" he replied. "Good to see you! Though I am curious - it looks like you have an entire bloody FLEET out there! What happened?"

"Ehehehe, sorry, kinda ran into a snag on my way here," Jaden said. "They were under attack by NPC Black Sun Pirates, and I offered them a hand. We got out of there, but since they had no idea where to head to afterwards since they were running from the chaos around Corellia, I decided to bring them with me to Iego."

Takeshi sighed. "Well, that makes sense, I suppose," he replied. "Well, let's land so we can discuss all that's happened. Though… I should mention one thing."

"What?"

"I do not know if you've encountered this yet, but at the very least the Companion Character NPCs are not regular NPCs." Takeshi took a brief glance at Shion. "They're AIs, and apparently high-order ones."

There was a long pause on the comm, before he heard Jaden let out a long groan. "Son of a… well at least I ain't the only one having weird shit happen to me," he said, causing Takeshi to blink. "I'll explain on the ground… though it might be a bit self-explanatory in a way."

Takeshi only nodded. "Okay, see ya down there, hopefully the others showed up as well," he said.

"Yeah,"Jaden agreed and the Elsa joined with the fleet of ships as they headed for the surface of Iego.

Iego

Landing Platform

Boc was currently outside his ship, making sure that it won't fall apart at the seams. He nodded in satisfaction, thankful the slimeball Hutt didn't leave it damaged, or covered in Hutt slime.

'But still, what to call you?' he thought, as he began searching for a name for his freighter, which he planned to turn into an assault ship when he got the hardware to upgrade it. He then blinked as he activated his menu, and opened the Mandalorian Names for ships. He skimmed through some names until he saw one that caught his attention… Choruk Bes'bavar.

He saw the meaning of the name, and smirked.

"'Stone Cavalry', eh?" he asked himself. "I like it."

However, before he could give it more thought, he heard the unmistakable sound of Starship engines - and lots of them. His head darted up, and his eyes widened as he saw dozens of vessels, ranging from Starfighters to Light Freighters and Transports descending from the sky, heading towards Cliffhold.

"Oh crap…" he groaned out, before Shala came from the ship.

"Hey Boc! There's a transmission for you, some guy named Jaden!" the female Mandalorian shouted.

Boc blinked before his eyes widened as he ran up the boarding ramp to the ship, heading quickly to the cockpit comm station. Upon arriving, he hit the connect button. "Jaden! Jorn! Is that you?"

"Well, look who's already here!" The voice of Jaden '117Jorn' Takeo said. "Yo buddy, still alive I see?"

Boc's eyes narrowed. "Yeah, I am. But now I got a bigger problem and it has to do with a LOT of ships!" he said, and he blinked when he heard chuckling.

"Don't worry, they're with me," Jaden said. "They were under attack by Black Sun Pirate NPC's, and I gave them a helping hand. They're all players who managed to get away from the chaos on Corellia when this shitstorm happened, a lot of them are kids, I didn't want to just leave them."

Boc sighed a bit in relief, thankful that they weren't over desperate players.

"That's good," he said, before he blinked. "Wait… kid players?"

"It's not that surprising," Jordan said. "It's Star Wars, what kid wouldn't want to play a Star Wars game?" he then sighed. "But according to them, apparently Kayaba did something else… he's adjusted the games so that players actually look the age they really are, regardless of their species they play as. I gamble since our characters are already close to our own ages we didn't need to change, but for the others… there's gotta be at least a few dozen kids on those ships."

Boc thought about that before his own eyes widened. "And there's probably 20 times as many all over the Galaxy!" he said in alarm. He could hear Jaden sigh at that.

"Yeah," he said. "It's not looking too good… but at least we managed to save these kids. We should be landing soon, where are you landed right now? Me and Takeshi will land near you."

"Landing Platform C-3," he informed. "It's the third one along the cliff just below the city."

"Alright… yeah I see it," Jaden said. "Looks big enough for all of us to land there. We're coming in now."

"Gotcha, see ya in few," he said and then deactivated his comm and watched the ships begin to land next to his. He then sighed and looked around his ship's cockpit. "Well, congratulations, you are now hereby named from this day forth, Choruk Bes'bavar"

"Stone Calvary…" he turned and saw Shala standing by the hatch to the cockpit. "I like it."

"Thanks," Boc said as he stood up. "Well, I suppose it's time to meet up with my friends."

Shala nodded as she and Boc headed out of the newly christened Choruk Bes'Bavar, leaving the boarding ramp just as they watched a Defender-class Light Corvette, and a Scimitar-class Sith Infiltrator lower their respective landing gears, and gently landed on the ground. The boarding ramp to the Defender lowered first, as Takeshi and Shion stepped out, soon followed by their Astromech Droid. Takeshi had changed out of his starting garments by this time, and was now in the reward 'armor' he'd gotten when choosing his Prestige Class - it looked like a set of traditional Jedi Robes, only modified and streamlined for ease of movement. It was currently the default brown color, though he was hoping to find a Dye Module to apply his signature dark blue with black trim.

Shion blinked as she spotted the two people clad in Mandalorian Armor, however it was the tallest person who had her attention as she recognized his armor, and the sigil on the shoulder pieces.

Takeshi noticed them, too. 'Not very many people I know who would wear that kind of armor,' he thought to himself. And that wasn't counting the fact that Jorn had told him about the conversation with Patriot just after he'd finished said conversation. "Nice armor, Patriot," he remarked.

Boc smirked behind his helmet and reached up and removed it, showing his face.

"Same to you, Taka. I always knew you'd be the one of us to go Jedi," he said, and then heard a clank and he and Takeshi looked toward the infiltrator. Its loading bay doors opened and lowered, as the single occupant came down.

BGM: "Revan Theme" Star Wars The Old Republic OST

Stepping down from the hatch, metallic clanks were here from each step taken, as the armored and robed figure stepped out, wearing a full body armor under a set of black and red robes. However the most distinctive feature, was the red and black Durasteel helmet, with a T-Shaped visor. In either of his hand was a silver device, obviously Lightsabers which were both ignited, one being crimson red, the other being a dark violet in color.

"Hello… my friends," The figure said, as he held the swords in an X formation, "Miss me?"

Boc and Takeshi's jaws dropped comically as they saw the armored figure. Then, they began to hear snickering as the figure shook, before he started full on laughing his ass off.

"HAHAHAHAHA! You guys should see the looks on your faces!" he shouted, and then fell to his knees, his lightsabers deactivating as he did so, as he began to hit the ground with his fist.

"Jorn?" Takeshi asked, recognizing the voice. "How… how did you get an actual set of Darth Revan's Armor?!"

Jaden chuckled a bit, as he got back to his feet. "Well, let's just say I did not go through the standard Sith Warrior tutorial," he said, as he removed his helmet, revealing his species as a Redskin Sith. "Sith are suppose to start off on Thule, however I started off in the Valley of Dark Lords on Korriban, where I met a traitorous Sith Scholar named Khan. He had found Revan's tomb on Korriban, and after some fights, we made it to Revan's Sarcophagus. The bastard tried to betray me, but I kicked his ass."

"Then, out of nowhere, REVAN HIMSELF shows up. He gave me this weird speech about him 'choosing' me, mentioned the other VRMMO's we've played… which was very freaky." He said, "Next thing I know, I'm out of the tomb, my level skyrocketed to 30, wearing Revan's armor, and right next to this baby." He tapped the side armor of the Infiltrator. "But I ain't complaining!"

Takeshi was speechless for a moment. "Wow…" he remarked. "Looks like Companion Characters aren't the only ones that are AIs… and I had a similar thing happen with the level boost - I even got cleared for a Prestige Class at the same time!"

"Me three…" said Boc as he stepped forward, and Jaden took a good look at him before his eyes widen a bit.

"Is that Jaster Mereel's Super Commando Armor?" he asked in surprise as he recognized the armor, which was identical to the one that the mentor of Jango Fett wore, including the greyish red cape, and the True Mandalorian Sigils on the red shoulder pieces.

Boc grinned. "Yup, part of my Prestige Level package, which included the sub-class, Mercenary," he said.

"Nice," Jaden said, nodding. "I picked Sith Warrior, but when I got my prestige class I chose Sith Lord." He grinned. "With all the skills I picked, I feel awesome!"

"Weapon Master here," Takeshi remarked. "Always been an uber Melee Specialist." He paused for a bit. "Oh, by the way, these are my Companions, Shion Urishu and R2-N3, or Enthree for short."

Shion gave a slight bow, while Enthree beeped out a greeting.

"This is my Companion, Shala Tal'rang," Boc said, as said Mandalorian nodded her head.

"Please to meet you," Jaden said with a small bow of his own, "And before you panic - no, I am not a stereotypic 'Evil' Sith Lord. To quote one of my favorite Mandalorians - I'm just a simple man trying to make his way through the Universe."

Shion nodded. "Makes sense," she replied. "Takeshi told me about you two, and your other friends, while we were travelling - he'd said you often thought of yourself as a 'Grey Sith' when it came to Star Wars."

Jaden chuckled at that. "Of course, I always believe that a person that abuses the power of the Force is evil, which I am not," he said. "And I also believe that the Sith could be something more if they embrace both the light and the dark sides of the Force."

Boc nodded, along with Takeshi.

"Something similar could be said of the Jedi," Takeshi remarked. "It has often been said 'without darkness, there can be no light', and the reverse of that is also true. Not to mention that the Jedi reject all emotions as evil or leading to the Dark Side, when it's been shown time and again that the positive emotions, such as love, can actually keep someone from falling to the dark side, or redeem them if they do fall!"

"If one stays too close to the light, they will blind themselves," Jaden said, nodding. "And if one walks too far into the dark, they will lose their path. I have always believed that the key to understanding the force is to walk the middle path, to understand both sides, or better yet simply take the force as one single unifying entity, not divided in such a black and white manner."

"Which is a big problem, since considering such an idea is anathema to both camps," said Boc. "And of course, if I remember correctly, Dorjander Kace was a former Jedi who founded an order of Force-users under the Mand'alor, calling themselves the Mandalorian Knights. He did this all because of his love for a Mandalorian woman. Of course I'm not sure how this affects the way of the Force, but…"

"True…" Takeshi remarked. "Anyway, we can tackle philosophical issues later - right now we have more important matters to deal with - namely, dealing with the Triple-S-Class Charlie-Foxtrot everyone in this game just got dropped into."

Jaden nodded. "Yeah," he said. "We need to get the Guild started. Iego is fine for now, but we need a better base of operations sometime in the future. But it's good enough so that we can all get a good breather, and decide our next move."

"Right… part of me would suggest Tython, but I don't think they'd have the proper facilities for us," Takeshi remarked. "Coruscant's got the opposite problem - tech base and facilities are fine, but it's practically the center of the galaxy, and will be totally swamped. Our other options are to either find a world with a decent tech base, yet still out of the way, or build our own space station somewhere." He paused. "Shion, Enthree, Shala, any ideas?"

The two humans, plus one droid, all hummed in thought.

"Well, there is the abandoned Rebel Base on Dantooine, then there is the Multiple abandoned bases on Rhen Var from the Clone Wars," Shala stated.

"The Rebel Base on Yavin 4 would work, too," Shion remarked. "The Alliance booked it out of there after they blew up the Death Star - I think the Imperials would have gone through, looked for stragglers, and left by now - don't think they have any garrison forces in the system."

Enthree then began making a series of beeps and whistles, and for some strange reason, Jaden and Boc could understand him.

I also have three other locations in my databanks that could suffice: The WTG Trade Settlement on the Wawaatt Archipelago on Kashyyyk, the abandoned Death Watch Base on Zanbar, and the deserted Governor's Castle on Galidraan.

Boc blinked at that. "Wait, the Galidraan Governor's Castle is abandoned? What about his successors?" he asked.

"Something tells me it ended when Jango tortured and killed the bastard," Jaden said, before he smirked a bit. "Those are good locations… but I got one better. Lehon."

Takeshi, Boc, and the others all looked at him.

"You got the coordinates to the System? Already?" Boc asked, however Jaden shook his head.

"No, however, we have a good start," he said, as he lifted up his datapad. "Before I left Korriban, I visited the tomb of Naga Sadow, and I got the coordinates from the Star Map there. All we need to do is find the ones located at Kashyyyk, Tatooine, Dantooine, and Manaan and we'll be in business. If we're lucky, we may not even need to visit them all, since we know they have a self-repairing system, so it's possible that they've repaired themselves over the years. The Korriban Map had a lot of coordinates on it - most having been discovered by now however. Plus, I've got a few other ideas in mind… if we can time this correctly."

Boc and Takeshi blinked at that, but decided to ask him on that later.

"Okay, we got those straightened out. And now, what do we do about hardware for now?" he asked. "At the moment we have a few freighters, fighters, and transports, which I doubt could do well against the entire Imperial Star Fleet."

"Plenty of ways to get new ships," Jaden said. "If we pool the credits we make, we could buy some. We could also try to board and capture imperial and pirate ships, and if we're really lucky, if we get in the good graces of the Rebellion, they could send some ships our way as well."

Boc and Takeshi nodded, before a lightbulb went off in the former's head.

"Hey, what about the Katana Fleet?" he asked. "There's at least 200 ships in that whole group, and the Slave Drive Circuit could prove most useful."

"It's possible," Jaden said. "However, then it comes down to finding it. All we really have to go by is that it's somewhere in the mid-rim, in the Halm Sector, that's still a lot of space to cover."

Takeshi thought about that until it clicked in his head. "Hold on, Garm Bel Iblis had six of those Dreadnaughts, right?" he asked, and Jaden nodded.

"Yes, but he was given those ships," he said. "Garm didn't know the location until Han told him, he got those ships from Captain Hoffner, who sold them to him. The only two people in the galaxy who really knows the location of those ships are him, and Talon Karrde."

Boc sighed at that. "That means we have to look for those two, which is like trying to find a needle in haystack," he said. "This is going to be a lot of work. Not to mention if we DO find those Heavy Cruisers, we gotta be careful of any lingering Hive Virus on the ships."

Shala spoke up at that. "Well, I doubt Hoffner would just leave his precious prizes out there unprotected, he would need to be in a System near it's location." she said.

"True," Jaden said nodding, "And while I don't know where Talon is at the moment, I have a good idea where to look for him at least when the time comes."

The group nodded at that, until a voice got their attention.

"Yo guys!"

They all turned and were surprised to see Jessica approaching them, with a young man beside her. "About time you showed up!"

The three of them blinked, before they looked at her username. "Titanic?" Jaden asked, before he smiled. "Well hot damn! When did you get here?"

"Just landed some time ago," Jessica said. "Been waiting for you guys to show up for a while!" She then glanced around. "Is Ryu 'round here?"

"No, doesn't look like he got here yet," Jaden said, shaking his head. "But knowing the Canadian Bastard, he's still out there kicking ass and takin' names."

Jessica grimaced. "Don't remind me!" she remarked.

"So who is this? Your A.I. companion?" Boc asked, gesturing to Dave, and Titanic blinked, before she grinned sheepishly, and began scratching the back of her head.

"Yeah…" she murmured.

Takeshi then blinked, thinking of something. "So… that's three of us with Companion AIs, and Jorn had an encounter with an AI of Revan that Shanghaied his Tutorial… wonder if Ryu's run into any AIs yet?" He paused, as he thought of something else. "Also, anyone want to bet on if Ryu's going to try and be James Bond, and romance any female he comes across, be they player or AI?"

Jaden rolled his eyes. "Yeah, if he can do that, then I can have a freaking Harem," he muttered sarcastically.

Meanwhile - With Ryu

Ryu let out a sigh of relief as he slipped along the I-Beams that supported the structure up near the roof above the Tank Droid Mk VI, slowly lowering the fiberwire that had an EMP grenade on the end he was lowering until it was about even height with the droid's sensor array. Down below were a massive array of traps that had taken him what felt like forever to set up.

Tying off the other end, he cut off the excess wire before sliding back along the I-beam. He pulled out his Sniper Rifle and sighted at the Droid's sensor array as it neared the EMP grenade, four steps later the grenade exploded in a powerful electrical burst that stunned it as Ryu fired off three precise shots at the weakened array, taking it out, blinding the droid as it stumbled back into the proximity of a trio of Mines, two EMPs and one of the Plasma mines, resulting in a mixed explosion of electrical energy and flames.

Five more shots forced it into several frag grenades and mines, crippling its left leg, as it tipped over, crashing into the ground.

Once it fell completely Ryu quickly ran across the I-beams, using his Dexterity score to ensure his balance until he was above the droid, pulling out the Lightsaber he activated it and carefully wrapped tape around the activation switch, then aimed at the Droid as it struggled to get back up before letting go of the of the handle, allowing the saber to drop.

It quickly bored through the reinforced armor and straight to its power core, initiating a chain reaction that consumed the droid, utterly destroying it.

"Jackpot," Ryu announced as he used some fiberwire as a improvised rope to drop down fro the I-Beams. "And the king of the world is…? Me!"

A small fanfare was heard, catching his attention as an ingame notice popped up before him.

'Congratulations, you have pwned a boss while solo without taking any damage!' it read. 'As you are the first to do so, you are being rewarded with a one of a kind Unique Skill called 'Charisma', what this skill does is massively increase your ability to persuade those around you to see your way of thinking and improve how people view you.'

Ryu smirked as he dismissed the message before moving to the Vault Door that the Droid was guarding and entered into the Vault to find several thousand tons of gold arrayed around it along with a suit of what looked like MJOLNIR Infiltrator Armor from Halo 4, only with slightly less bulky armor with black paint.

"Well now… this… is just plain awesome!" he shouted out ecstatically. "King of the fucking UNIVERSE!"

Meanwhile - Back with the Others

"Yeah, the guy was lucky with those twin dark elves in Gaia Online, but there is no way he could pull off that same miracle here in SWO," Jaden said, shaking his head.

Boc scratched the back of his head at that. "I don't know, odds are those twins might be here as well," he said. "Of course, if we do find out, I'm making sure my bedroom has soundproof walls."

"I don't need to worry 'bout it, since I'll just sleep in my ship," Jaden said, gesturing to the Redemption. "I'll live there if I have too."

"Hey. I got a freighter, so I'll just hang there for now," Jessica said.

"Now that you two mention it…" Boc said with a sigh, causing the others to chuckle at his antics.

"So, what do we do for now?" Takeshi asked. "Start setting things up? Go look for Ryu? Go recruiting?"

"Right now, I think we should check up on our new guests," Jaden said. "We may be able to convince some of them to join us."

The others nodded and turned to the group of people who had disembarked from their ships. In the center of the group were a small gathering of kids, who Jaden knew were the players that Natsuki told him. However, his focus was then on the person who was consoling the rest of them.

"Hey, don't worry now, we're safe. The nasty pirates are not gonna be bothering us again." The person whom the voice belonged to a young woman, appearing Jaden's age, of a near human species, from her pointed ears he made the guess that she was a Sephi. She had long waist-length dark pink colored hair, with Cyan blue eyes, wearing what looked to be a black and gold Kimono-like dress.

Jaden's eyes widened at her, just shocked at how beautiful she looked. 'Oh boy, here we go again…' he thought.

The woman glanced up, as she looked at Jaden before she smiled as she walked forward towards him. "You're Jaden Takeo, right?" she asked. "Natsuki Ureimo, we talked on the Comm."

"Uhh, yeah, I remember," Jaden said, scratching the back of his head. "Nice to… meet you in person."

"Same to you," she said. "Again… thanks for what you did… you saved a lot of lives, doing what you did."

"I just… did what any moral person would do, and help," Jaden said. "I couldn't just leave you all to fend for yourselves."

Natsuki chuckled. "Regardless, thank you very much," she said, and then looked at the others. "So, these are the friends you told me about?"

"Ah, yes! Yes, these are my friends," he said. "Natsuki, this is Boc Werd," Boc nodded with a smile. "Takeshi Yamato," Takeshi bowed slightly. "And Jessica Miller." Jessica simply smiled.

"It's nice to meet you all," Natsuki said, with her own short bow. "It means a lot that you're letting us stay here for now."

Boc waved his hand. "It's nothing. After all, I'm an Honorable True Mandalorian Mercenary," he said. "Just don't compare me to the Death Watch."

"No problems there," Natsuki said, "I like Mandalorians… well, most of them at least, Death Watch being the exception."

"So, what class are you, Natsuki?" Jessica asked. "You don't look like a Combat class."

"No, I'm not," Natsuki said. shaking her head. "I picked Entertainer, since I knew most of the others would pick stuff like Soldiers, Jedi, and stuff like that, I wanted to mix things up a bit, try something different. 'Sides, I played tons of VRMMO's as a combat class."

"Makes sense, I guess," Takeshi remarked. "Myself, I always tend to go for Melee Classes, and was not planning for an exception in this one." He then looked around, seeing all the newcomers from the other ships. "So… out of curiosity, how many of your group managed to get Companion Characters? From our experiences, we've learned that Companions aren't really typical NPCs…"

"A few of them have," Natsuki said. "But a lot of the Kids never got to the point of getting their Companions before everything hit the fan… but now that you mention it, a lot of the Companions have been acting strange… if I didn't know any better, I'd say they were Players themselves or something."

"More like high-order AIs," Takeshi remarked. "I'd think it safe to say that some of them are likely Cortana-level in intelligence and ability."

"AI's?" Natsuki asked in surprise. "Seriously? I mean… I guess it would make sense, but… I know the NPC's were designed to be a realistic as possible, but being real 100% A.I's?"

"We were just as surprised as you are," said Boc. "At first, I thought I was trippin or something."

"Oh really?" said Shala with her hands on her hips and giving her partner a glare.

"What!?" Boc shouted in defense. "You were talking to me as if you were another player!"

Jaden sighed, as he shook his head. "Glad I don't have to worry about that..." He muttered, "Though it would be nice if I actually did have a Companion."

"You don't?" Natsuki asked in surprise, "I thought everyone started the game off with the chance for a Companion."

"Well, my tutorial got hijacked, and I ended up on Korriban slaying Sith war beasts and such," Jaden said, shrugging. "But on the bright side, I got me an awesome ship, and even more awesome armor."

Natsuki, as well as the kids and older players, began to look at Jaden's armor, before it clicked into a little girl's mind.

"Wait a minute, isn't that Darth Revan's armor!?" she said in surprise.

Jaden grinned at that. "That's right," he said, before he put the infamous helmet back on. "In all of its glory, kids."

After one second of silence, Jaden suddenly found himself being swarmed as the kids all ran towards him, constantly asking questions.

"Oh cool! It's actually in the game?"

"Wow, it looks so real!"

"And you got the Scimitar? Lucky!"

"How did you get it? What were the mob levels?"

"Hey, hey!" Jaden said, trying to calm them down, however behind his mask he was smiling a bit. "Alright, if you kids wanna know how I got it, ya just gotta ask! But I tell ya, it's one heck of a story!"

Takeshi, Boc, and Jessica were all chuckling behind Jaden as he was talking to the young players. However, it was stopped when one kid, a young 10 year old boy who appeared to look like a miniature version of the Rebel Smuggler, saw Boc's armor.

"Hey guys…" he said, and two more boys looked toward him and he pointed at Boc. "Isn't that Jaster Mereel's Super Commando Armor?"

Boc blinked at that, before he grinned as well. "Indeed it is," he said. "Glad to see there are a few Mandalorians among ya." But before he could say anything else, he soon found himself swarmed by another herd of children, all asking similar questions.

"Oh my god that looks so cool!"

"When do we get that armor?"

"This is so cool!"

"Ah! H-Hold on a minute guys! Take it easy!" he said, as the young Bounty Hunter-class players, bombarded him with questions.

Meanwhile, both Takeshi and Jessica were laughing their butts off.

"Poor Patriot, been playing this game for only 24 hours, and already he has a fan club," Jessica said.

"Or rather, he's picked up the fan club of the man whose armor he got," Takeshi remarked with a laugh.

"HEY! Not helping!" Boc shouted. "And could someone please help me!?"

"Hehe, you're on your own Patriot!" Jaden said smirking, "Now, where to start… alright, I spawned in on Korriban, where I met this traitorous little scholar named Khan - no Star Trek jokes please…" The others simply laughed as Jaden began his story, and Boc tried to escape his new fanclub.

Meanwhile, in the Hoth System

On the ice planet, the Rebel Alliance's Echo Base is alive with activity as Technicians were tending to the many Starfighters, T-47 Speeders, and other equipment the rebels could scrounge. Standing next to one of the many T-65 X-Wings, was one Luke Skywalker, as he and his faithful Astromech Droid, R2-D2 were looking over their fighter to make sure it was in peak condition.

"Alright, let's try this one..." Luke said, as Artoo used his built-in fusion cutter on the X-Wing "Alright, a little bit more… got it!"

The Artoo unit made a few chirps and Luke chuckled. "Alright, alright, you were right." He said, "Jedi can be wrong, too."

Artoo made a snickering-like sound, before suddenly an alarm started going off, causing Luke to look up in surprise. "What the?"

"Attention all Personnel! Unidentified ship exiting hyperspace in sector 4, inbound to Echo Base!" said the voice of one of the Command Center staff. "All security teams scramble and pilots man your stations!"

"Damn it!" Luke cursed as he closed the panel. "This'll have to do, Artoo!" The Astromech Droid knew what needed to be done as it activated its Rocket Boosters and landed on top of the fighter, locking into the droid port of the fighter as Luke quickly climbed up into the cockpit.

He was thankful he was in his pilot suit, as he strapped himself in. The canopy closed as he started up the fighter.

"This is Rogue Leader to Command Center, is it an Imperial Scout ship?" asked Luke as he waited for the reply.

"Negative… at least it doesn't look like one." The reply came from General Carlist Rieekan. "It's a light freighter, YT-1930 class. It's coming into Hoth's atmosphere hard and fast."

Luke's eyes widened a bit at that.

"What are they trying to do? Get themselves killed!?" he asked in shock.

"Hell if I know, kid!" said the voice of Han Solo, "but whoever is flying that thing is gonna be in for a bumpy ride!"

"We better head out, and see where they're heading," Luke said. "General, where does it look like they'll land on the surface?"

"Scanners show them landing somewhere near the Moorsh Moraine," he said. "If you're going, I'd hurry… it looks more like a controlled crash than anything else!"

"Copy that. Heading out!" he said, and the X-Wing lifted off and headed out toward the destination, along with two more members of Rogue Squadron, as Ground Troopers mounted on Tauntauns, with Han Solo mounting one of them.

"Come on, Chewie!" he shouted to his First Mate, the Wookiee Chewbacca, who roared in response.

Meanwhile - on the Transport

'Shit, shit, shit, SHIT!' The Chiss woman behind the controls of the YT-1930 cursed in her minds, as she tried to slow down the descent of her vessel. She was wearing what looked like your average smuggler attire, with short ear-length black hair. 'Come on, come on come on!'

"I think we need to slow down!" A Bothan said, sitting in the copilot seat.

"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK I'M TRYING TO DO?" The Chiss woman shouted in reply, the ship continuing to rattle as it descended through the atmosphere. "Half the damn controls are SHOT!"

"I KNEW we shouldn't have trusted that Dug salesman!" the Bothan shouted, as the surface of the planet Hoth was getting closer. "We're coming in too hot!"

The Chiss woman cursed as she tried to raise the nose of the Light Freighter up. They escaped the chaos that was Corellia, along with at least 6 kids that were also players. Only now it looked like they were going to die due to a faulty used Freighter.

"Come on, stay up! Stay up!" She shouted, as the vessel broke through the atmosphere, she could see the snowy plains before them. "We're coming in for a rough landing!"

With Rogue Squadron

The three X-Wings of Rogue Squadron approached the projected landing point of the YT-1930, as it prepared it's crash landing. Luke saw the freighter on his scanners, and he noticed that the ship was in deep trouble, trailing smoke and fire.

"They certainly look like they're in trouble," Wedge Antilles said. "Looks like they've been through some kind of brawl, damn thing's falling apart."

"Which means we gotta escort 'em in," Luke said in realization. "Rogue 2 & 3, stay on my wing, and Wedge, try to get them on the horn."

"Got it, Rogue Leader." Wedge said, as Luke continued to look at the freighter. "Attention unidentified freighter, this is Rogue Flight. We see you are in a critical situation, and we can attempt to lend you assistance, please reply, over."

There was a long pause, before the comm crackled back to life, some static still in the air "ell...ello? Are you recieving…" A female voice said on the commlink, "is the Freighter Blackfin, half of our damn controls are shot, we can't…"

"Slow down, captain. And listen to me very carefully. We're reading you, but you're breaking up a bit," said Wedge, as the freighter came into view, and the three Rebel Starfighters began to catch up to the Blackfin. "We're taking positions alongside you."

"R-Right… J-Just tell us what to do here," she said. "We can't lower our landing gear or anything…"

Luke sighed at that, it looked like the Blackfin was gonna have to do a crash landing. Wedge possibly came up with the same conclusion as he began to talk to the captain again.

"Alright, just follow my instructions, it looks like you're gonna have to crash land," Wedge said. "Try to move your nose up, we may be able to help you out in a belly land on the snow and ice."

"Alright… here goes…" she said, as slowly, the small freighter's nose began to tip up, still in its descent but was more capable of a successful belly land at the least.

"That's good… now, are your flaps and drag fin controls still working?" Wedge asked.

"Some of them… a lot of them aren't responding," She said, as the few flaps activated, but not nearly enough to do much in terms of slowing down the craft.

Luke could hear the desperate tone in the woman's voice as he continued to watch the YT-1930 fall like a rock. He cursed in his mind, asking no one in particular of what he could do.

"Use the Force, Luke..."

Luke blinked as he glanced around, 'Ben?' He thought.

"Luke, trust me."

Luke glanced at the Transport, as it continued to fall. 'Could I really move that thing?' He thought, not seeing how the Force could move such an object… however, he realized that unless he did something everyone on that ship was as good as dead. Sighing, he closed his eyes, and reached out through the force.

At first, nothing happened, but then, slowly, but surely, the Blackfin tilted up, before more of the drag fins and flaps opened into place.

In the transport, the Chiss and and the Bothan's eyes widen in surprise, as everything was moving on it's own…

"What the?" said the Bothan. "I thought you said they were dead!"

"They were - and still are!" the Chiss shouted. "Don't look at me, I didn't do anything!"

The two continued to look at each other, until they looked outside, their focus on the escort of Rebel fighters.

"You don't think one of them is..." the Bothan said, while the Chiss understood what was going on.

"No way it's..." she whispered. "It couldn't be… him, right?"

"Alright, you're good! Just keep on this angle!" Wedge said on the Comm. "Get ready for a bumpy landing! "

The two smuggler pilots shook their heads as they turned their focus back to the task at hand.

"Here we go!" the Chiss said. "Time to put our head between our knees and…" What he was about to say was cut off as the Transport finally hit the snow, bouncing once as it trailed down along the ground, picking up snow and ice as it crashed down, the cockpit rattling as it continued down. However, after what felt like an eternity, the transport finally slowed down to a halt.

"This is Rogue flight, the freighter's down on the deck!" said Wedge as the three X-Wings went into a protective circle over the ship. "I don't see any major fires… are you alright in there?"

The Chiss glanced around, before she sighed as she realized they were no longer falling "Yeah… yeah we're alright…" she said, as she relaxed in the cockpit chair. "That… was too close…"

"That's good to hear... Rescue team is inbound," said Wedge, and the woman nodded at that.

"Copy, thanks for the help. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to check on my passengers," she said, and she swore she could feel the pilot of the X-wing blink.

"How many are onboard your ship?" the Rebel asked.

The Chiss sighed. "About eight… mostly kids, really," she said.

It was quiet for a little bit until she heard his voice.

"Wait… did you just say kids?" Wedge asked in surprise as he shared the same reaction as his wingmates.

"Yeah… It's a little difficult to explain, but…"

"Let's just say we just came from a serious shitstom involving Imperials," the Bothan said. "And it was either leave those kids behind, or take 'em with us."

The Chiss looked at him like he had grown a second head, but her co-pilot just made a 'shush' gesture and mouthed the words 'Trust me...' as Wedge's voice spoke up again.

"We'll need you to tell us more at the base. Just stay inside the ship until the ground team arrives," he said, and the Chiss responded.

"Understood…" she said, and the transmission ended before she turned a glare at her partner. "What the FUCK was that!?"

"Had to come up with something," he said. "Remember, these guy's don't realize that this is a VRMMORPG to us, and they certainly won't understand if we know things about the Star Wars universe before they happen. I had to come up with some sort of cover story for us!"

The Chiss only blinked as she processed her First Mate's words, before she sighed in exasperation.

"What the hell…" she said, "…well, while we're waiting for our friends to pick us up, let's go check on the others."

The Bothan nodded as they both stood up and headed toward the back of the ship to check on their precious cargo.

Minutes later - outside the crash site

Approaching the crash site from the ground was Han and Chewbacca, along with a dozen or so Rebel Troopers, all arriving on Tauntauns and a single old Republic LAAT/i Transport, with the fighters of Rogue Squadron covering them from above. "Alright, let's do this before a storm blows in!" Han shouted. "Let's get those people out of there!"

The Smuggler/Rebel Officer then dismounted his Tauntaun mount with his faithful partner following his lead. The other Rebels also dismounted, and followed the duo toward the downed freighter.

"Oh man, what a mess," Han said, taking in the damage that the Freighter took. Chewie then made a series of low growls.

"I don't know buddy. This tub of bolts will take some time to fix," he said, and smirked. "Of course, that never stopped us when it came to the Falcon."

The Wookiee gave out a chuckle as they moved to the top of the freighter - since it belly-landed they had to access it through the top boarding hatch. As they stepped on top of it, Han tapped the top of it with a Hydrospanner. "Open up! Rescue's here." He shouted out.

They waited for a few seconds, until the hatch begin to open but stopped halfway. Han fought the urge to slap himself. However, he could hear the person on the other side of the hatch.

"Aw, son of a… come on!" shouted a female voice, causing the Smuggler and Wookiee to blink in confusion as they heard the sound of metal on metal. "Open up, you piece of shit!" A few moments passed before the door snapped open, and a female Chiss woman's head poked out, "Sorry 'bout that… bit of advice though: NEVER buy a ship from a Dug Merchant - they WILL Rip you off."

Han was speechless for a moment, but nodded his head. "Duly noted," he said as he reached his hand to the Chiss, who gratefully grabbed it. "Welcome to Hoth, a place where it's cold all the time, and the weather sucks."

"So I've noticed," the Chiss said as she stepped out. "Name's Sev'oro'Kleotar, though everyone calls me Sevo for short."

"Same with all Chiss, I suppose," Han said and then looked back at the hatch, and his eyes blinked when the next ones to come out were a few kids, and a Bothan.

Sevo saw his attention on the kids, who were being helped by the Troopers to stay warm, except for those whose species had fur or were used to the cold. "It's a long story," she said, answering the unasked question, "involving a lot of Imperials we pissed off at Corellia."

Han had a feeling that wasn't the whole truth, but decided to ask questions later, seeing that the kids who were human were going to freeze to death if they don't get back to base. He nodded, and then activated his comm.

"Okay, bring the Larty down. We got eight kids that need to get into the base to stay warm," he said.

"Roger that, bringing her down," the pilot said, as the Larty descended down, lowering down to the ground so they could board the craft. Many of the children watched it landing with wide eyes.

"Whoa,"

"So cool!"

"It's an LAAT from the Clone Wars! Awesome!"

Han couldn't help but chuckle at the kids' enthusiasm. Of course, he slightly envied them for their childhood innocence. "Alright kids, enough ogling, let's get you out of here," he said as he helped the kids up onto the LAAT, as they all eagerly climbed onboard.

Star Wars Online Administration/Development Team offices, San Francisco, California

"If we find that son of a bitch, I call dibs on killing him."

The speaker's fellow administrators and developers agreed with the man currently modifying his NervGear to make sure that it wouldn't kill him if he tried to log out or was killed in-game. He tried having these modifications made to all NGs prior to the game's release, but the bastard responsible for creating them vetoed that idea, saying it wasn't necessary.

"You know, Ron, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you had it in for Akihito." One of the Developers said.

The black-blonde haired Ronald Pinkerton, leader of the weapons physics and basic space combat dev team, scoffed. "I saw that he had a big fucking dose of megalomania, but nothing like THIS," he said. "I'll make contact with a few players in-game: the sheer amount of firepower I'll be bringing into the fight will make things easier."

"You can't bring that Scimitar of yours over from the test server," another developer exclaimed. "You know that."

"Not without all of us agreeing on it, I know," Ron said rolling his eyes. "The dev ships are God ships."

"It's more than that," the third Developer said. "The Scimitar is a vessel from Star Trek, and you will be going into a Star Wars VRMMORPG. Do you know how many hardcore Star Wars fans have probably logged in? They'll CRUCIFY you if they see you with a Trekkie ship before you could even try to help them!"

"We've done enough research into Star Wars that I know what I'm dealing with," Ron said, "Besides, I'm using the downgraded version for main-game use."

"It's still got the Scimitar skin," the third developer warned.

"Does it look like I give a fuck?" he shot back. "The end result - saving the players - is all you should be caring about, not the ship I use to do the job."

"It's not just that," the first Developer said. "Kayaba has practically hijacked all control of the servers from the GM's, and he has almost complete control of the game - we're just lucky enough we found that its still possible for people to login so you could try this… but we have no idea what he'll do if he discovers you in the servers."

"We still have access to the source code," Ron said. "I'll be able to upgrade my 'team's' equipment to five levels higher and he won't be able to kill me without physically entering this room. The second that he tries, use my M870 on the fucker." That was a pointed reference to the Remington M870 shotgun Ron owned and had stored in the next room over.

"I still think this is a bad idea," she fourth developer said.

"Shove it. It's the only chance we've got to redeem ourselves for this and to save two million lives," Ron said as he placed the NG on his head. "Wish me luck."

Coruscant - With Ryu

Ryu chuckled as he stepped out of the Guild Register's office, both player controlled and AI controlled Heads turning as he passed, his new armor did stand out quite a bit…

"Now…" he murmured as he stepped up to the Player General Forum board that was located on every planet for general announcements and Player-to-Player trading. "Should I do a general recruitment? Or personal recruitment… ah, how about this…"

A holographic keyboard appeared before him as he began typing.

'Black Market Guild Recruiting,' he put in. "All Applicants must bring High-Level intel or High Priced items to start the trading with."

With a smirk he posted the message and moved away, heading for his ship. As he moved, however, he could feel the presence of somebody following him, chuckling ever so slightly be ducked into an alleyway and used a grappling hook to pull himself up several stories and cloaked himself before looking down to see who was following him.

"Dammit, when the hell did that asshole go?" A member of a trio of players questioned as he entered into the alleyway.

"I don't know, but that armor of his looks to be of an Artifact-level," the second murmured. "So it probably has special qualities, be careful."

Ryu smirked as he pulled out a trio of frag grenades and triggered them before simply dropping them into the midst of the trio.

Hearing a clatter, the three looked at each other, before noticing the grenades and paling. "FUCK!" one of them shouted shortly before the grenades exploded, throwing the three back, very nearly killing them.

Ryu dropped down and decloaked himself before approaching the three. "Next time, raise your sneaking skill if you want to follow someone," he told them. "Don't let me catch you again or I'm dropping thermal detonators on you."

His piece said, he left the Alleyway and continued on his way to the hanger. 'Now… to find a stronghold…' he thought to himself. "Well, should be interesting…"

Corellia - Corellia City spaceport

Most of the players were ignoring him, as they thought he was just another NPC. He didn't look amazing or different, but that was the point. Ronald Pinkerton did not like standing out on the ground without a damn good reason. His personal short-range transport was the infamous Lambda-Class shuttle from Episodes 5 and 6, and while it wasn't powerful, it didn't need to be. All it needed to do was get him into orbit.

Ron planted his ass in the chair, closing the hatch. "Great. Alright, time to find a few players that might get me closer to the end." He said. The Imperial shuttle entered high Corellia orbit, and suddenly disappeared off the scopes. In reality, it had entered a cloaking field belonging to his personal dreadnought. Big, angular, intimidating and generally shaped like a bird whose wings were in the downward part of the wingbeat, it was a near-perfect copy of the famed Star Trek vessel Scimitar. The only difference was the amount of power she had.

If this copy and the real Scimitar clashed, the original would destroy it as it was more powerful, had superior shields and was just generally better. Still, the IRW Khepesh was more than a match for the Empire's Executor-Class SSDs and would stand a fair chance against the ships from the Vong and One Sith eras. "Ok, time to find a few players that actually give a fuck about leaving this godforsaken game."

117Jorn: And as we promised, one more chapter! And as you can see, one of our best friends has now joined the fray!

Titanic X: Yep! And things are only about to get even crazier from here on out!

Ron the True Fan: (Screaming bloody murder while strafing a planet with his Scimitar)

Takeshi Yamato: Lucky. Well, it's definitely heating up.

Patriot-112: So until next time…

Everyone: JA NE!