Gary was living on borrowed time. Borrowed from whom, he wasn't sure, but he was quickly running out. Redd still wanted revenge and so did Tom's friends. Gary realized they had probably rallied for a proper bounty on his head, and they likely received it.

He could warn the police, he had figured, but then his assassins would just wait. Gary couldn't stand the waiting, much less the knowledge that he was scheduled to die. He would rather it end in one night than let it drag on, his fate dangling over his head like a sword.

He stripped his room bare except for a chair propped up beneath the doorknob. A 12x12 inch frying pan was laid at his left side and a three foot-long iron pipe at his right; though he knew which animals would be coming after him, it was the best he could do. All the items he had removed had been tossed into the narrow hallway. Gary sat with his weapons and waited in the middle of the room. If there was one thing he could remember from his initial training, it was how to wait; waiting for opportunities had led to his situation, and now would at least end it, if not necessarily get him out alive.

Gary was glad that he had woken up in the afternoon. Now, at least, he has less time to spend waiting.

"She travels quickly," Rowan observed of Samus Aran from his hiding place in a dark thicket of pines. The ragged shadows cast by the light filtering through the leaves complimented his striped coat, leaving him well-camouflaged. The Hunter had stopped for a break beside the narrow road, across from her rival assassins. The sky had cast off its earlier shade of melancholy gray and changed into a serene, sunny blue, and the afternoon sunlight turned Samus into a glowing beacon of fire in her damp, verdant surroundings.

"It's a big bloody island," said Boba Fett. "She probably started off closer to the center and went northeast from there. We had to go west first to talk to your boss."

"It's not my fault you came back still soaked with shame and failure," Rowan said, "or that Redd felt like giving you an earful for it. Now, if we had hired her instead..."

"Shut up!" said Boba. "I could blast her shiny armored arse from here to Tatooine in a fair fight, and what happened back on your damned planet, in your damned universe was not what I consider fair."

"She's moving again," Rowan said. He started to resume his stalking, and then stopped. "I have an idea," he rumbled. "Instead of whining to me about your hilarious failure the other night, why not wipe off your thick coat of shame in a 'fair fight' with Aran?"

Boba had stormed out of the trees before Rowan had even finished speaking. The tiger slipped soundlessly through the trees, advancing ever closer to his target.

"Boba!" Samus said, seeing the other bounty hunter marching up the street at her. Her helmet dematerialized to reveal an impish, pearly grin. "I thought I recognized the sound of those cute little spurs."

"Enough talk," Boba snapped. "We're dueling: right here, right now. The old-fashioned way."

The grin disappeared once again behind a green visor. "Alright. Let's see just how quick of a shot you are. Does ten paces sound acceptable?"

Boba nodded. He stood back to back with Samus (trying to ignore the woman's advantage in height) and the two of them marched away from each other. One, two, three, four, five...

Payback's a bitch, Aran, he chuckled inwardly. Now we'll see who the real hunter is.

(...six, seven, eight...)

I bet she wouldn't last inside a Sarlacc digestive tract. I'm a survivor, that's what I am. I bet she's never been eaten before.

(...nine...)

Boba gripped the EE-3 carbine rifle at his hip eagerly.

(...ten.)

What? BITCH!

The Ice Beam hit him before he had time to lift his weapon. Samus walked behind the ice-encased Boba and tapped his jet pack.

"A spare one, huh? Looks the same as the one you had last time." Samus' Arm Cannon lights flashed from blue to purple, the Wave Beam color. "Better luck next time, right?"

She placed the Cannon under the jet pack, despite Boba's muffled protests, and fired. He flew into the air like a wayward firework, zipping around without direction, until he plunged toward the coast to the north.

After brushing off some ash, Samus resumed her advance toward her target.

Any minute, Gary thought. It's pitch black outside. Most carnivores are nocturnal, right? He stood up and shook the numbness out of his legs.

"Come on!" he shouted at the air, "where are you? I know you're out there, you four-legged bastards! I'm ready!"

The sound of the front door being pushed off of its hinges and falling to the ground echoed through the small house. Silence followed, but Gary knew it was the silence in which something was trying to move without being heard. It was the silence of a predator moving slowly on leathery-padded paws with the knowledge of victory clear in its mind. Gary knew that the junk he had left in the hallway was doing nothing to slow its approach, and only the locked door was left between him and his assassin-to-be.

The door groaned and bulged, splintering and leaning off of its hinges. Gary gripped his pan and pipe with white knuckles and braced himself for the impact which would surely come from the other side of the door.
"Come on!"

The great bulk of the tiger flew through the door and over the spot where Gary had been standing a moment ago. Rowan's face connected with the pipe which Gary had swung with twice the urgency of any baseball professional. The tiger fell to the ground, picked himself up, and spun at Gary with raised claws all in one fluid motion.

One paw the size of a dinner plate slammed Gary's back into the wall as another raked 4-inch claws over his face and torso. Gary swung the pan against the side of Rowan's head and used the temporary release of his grip to swing himself onto the tiger's back. He wrapped his arms around the thick, furry neck and tried to squeeze. Rowan rose onto his hind legs and reached over his shoulder with one forepaw to pull Gary off.

Gary felt the claws dig deep into his back and shred through his flesh and the fabric of his T-shirt as he was thrown onto the ground. His weapons went flying from his hands when he hit the ground. Gary's entire body ached, and he realized that he was losing blood quickly. He slid out from beneath the huge cat and snatched up the pipe before scrabbling out of the room.

Gary swung the pipe again at Rowan's head as the tiger came bounding into the kitchen, and the impact bent it. Rowan went sliding into the counter, and, with his hind legs, propelled himself from the counter to the other side of the kitchen. 490 lbs. of Bengal tiger swept Gary's legs out from under him, and as he crashed to the floor he realized he lacked the strength to get back up.

Rowan backed into the hallway before running forward and then pouncing onto Gary. The exhausted human noticed—with a grim sense of triumph and satisfaction, despite his own mind-numbing pain—that the right side of the tiger's head was bleeding. With one massive paw pressing down on his chest and another pinning his numb left arm to the ground, Gary seized the end of the pipe with his right arm and drove it into the wounded side of Rowan's head.

The tiger's agonized roar was so loud that Gary wondered how his already throbbing, increasingly-light head hadn't split in half from the ear-splitting volume. Rowan released Gary's left arm in order to bludgeon his head with his paw. Gary's vision dimmed further, and the tiger he was hitting over and over again with the pipe seemed farther away, and all the pain he had been in seemed to belong to someone else. In the distance he saw teeth falling toward him, and someone else's bloody hand shoved itself in their way. From afar, something heavy and rough collapsed onto him, and the world faded away.

It took Gary what seemed like an eternity to realize that he was not only outside of his house, but also in a stretcher behind an ambulance. The flashing red lights were enough to blind him halfway, and even blinking brought him a dull pain. Most of his body was bandaged, and he had some trouble moving his limbs. It wasn't till he tried moving his fingers that he noticed his left hand was missing.

Someone crouched next to him. Gary assumed it was a police officer; it disheartened him somewhat that Redd would probably manage to get off without punishment, but at least he hadn't died.

"What you did back there," said Samus' voice, "was unbelievably stupid. It was also incredibly brave, and I can respect that. I'm going to talk to Nook and Redd about your bounty. Just let me know if there's any more trouble."

Gary would've thanked her, except his face was also mostly covered by bandages.

"And thanks," she said. "I've always wanted a tiger skin rug."