Out of the Unknown

by axellon2008

Naruto discovers a crashed starship outside his village and his life is forever changed. Under the unorthodox tutelage of a Sith Lord's spirit, he will learn the technology and history of a larger galaxy that he, and no one else from his planet, ever knew existed.

25. Chapter 25

AN: I don't own Naruto, or Star Wars

x-x

36.3 BBY – Current Year

Chapter XXV: Escape the Palace

x-x

A shrill cry of pain could be heard throughout the mountainous area as Suigetsu waited for something to take his bait. If there was one thing Suigetsu knew, it was fishing. Fish were simple predators, if they could even be called that, but they still followed the same instincts as much larger and more dangerous animals.

It was also easier to prey on the weaker or injured as food. Less energy was expended to find and obtain the meal and some animals ate such a prey when they weren't even hungry. This was the reason why he had severely injured and then immobilized the large rat he had come across. It was now his bait for a larger predator and he was casting his line out in the hopes that the blood and sounds would attract suitable larger prey.

'I only hope something fearsome actually eats these huge disgusting rats.' thought Suigetsu as he tried to pierce the darkness with his eyes and look for motion of any kind in rocky terrain. Taking out his binoculars, he activated the night vision, which he found incredible useful, and scanned the area from higher ground.

He was in on a very wide ledge of a canyon surrounded by larger mountains. It was quite cold but the low temperature was much preferred to the heat of the day. Listening and waiting, his patience was rewarded when he heard a sound echo off the canyon walls. It was not a roar but sounded more reptilian. Suigetsu noted how the rat became still at the cry and attempted to flee.

'Very promising.' he thought, putting the electrobinoculars away and readying his sword as he tried to determine which direction the predator would come from.

x-x

'Looks like we need a fast escape.' thought Kabuto as he bit his finger, drawing blood and then making several hand seals. Slamming his palm into the ground, a large portion of the cave entrance was filled with smoke.

Two medium sized snakes dwarfed the other animals in the cave and pushed their way out. Numerous shouts and weapon's fire came from the startled Sand People as the snakes carried the three out of the cave and into the dark sands. Karin was nearly to them and Kabuto wanted to keep moving so as to put more distance between themselves and the cave, but the snakes had other ideas.

Their survival instincts told them of the incoming sandstorm and they weren't about to put themselves at risk for Kabuto. Coming to a stop, Kabuto and the demon brothers nearly lost their balance as the Star Map slid off the back of one of the snakes and landed with resounding thud in the sands below. Turning around, the snakes each struck and grabbed a fleeing animal in their mouths before disappearing in a large expanding plume of smoke. The three ninja riding the beasts were left to fall to the ground. Because of the smoke, they couldn't see the sands and all landed in a heap near the Star Map.

Cursing profusely, the Demon Brothers recovered before Kabuto and began moving to attack the Sand People who were regrouping after the disappearance of the snakes. Kabuto began frantically looked around and found the Star Map sticking out of the sand nearby. Its weight and the fall made it sink almost halfway into the sand. Quickly looking it over for damage and finding none, he then scanned the terrain and found that Karin was already slowing down the skiff to stop. Signaling her on where to stop, he instructed her as she moved the skiff over the device.

Ignoring the fighting nearby, he jumped onto the bed of the skiff and Karin moved aside as he began operating the controls and activating the magnetic grapple, Moving it and the ship into position, he secured the Star Map beneath the ship and began moving away from the cave at a slow pace.

Meizu and Gozu were both fighting hand-to-hand with the Sand People while numerous projectiles went right through their bodies. They had each picked up some of the typical weapons wielded by the tribe and were using them to great effect against the nomads. Hearing Kabuto's and Karin's shouts, they stopped attacking and fled to the slowly moving skiff while taking fire from the cave. The remaining Sand People outside the cave did not give chase and instead fled back to the cave to escape the storm.

The Demon Brothers jumped to the skiff and as soon as they were aboard, it picked up speed and moved away from the cave and just ahead of the incoming storm. Increasing the ship's speed, Kabuto began plotting a random that would take them in any direction that was away from the storm until he could determine where they needed to go. Finding the signal from their ship, he found that the ship was no longer near Anchorhead and had moved hundreds of miles to the Northeast.

Frowning as no one had bothered to mention that to him, 'Not even Naruto,' he mentally commented and slowed the ship slightly as he wasn't completely sure what terrain they would be in for on the journey. It was dark enough that he couldn't see large obstacles until they were very close and the most direct path to the Vulture would lead them around a very large plateau. The ship's instruments were also telling him that the repulsor lifts were running at greatly reduced efficiency, 'Probably because of the large metal object that's attached to the bottom of the ship.' he believed and knew they couldn't get much altitude from the ship and would be forced follow the most level and smoothest routes.

"It looks like we'll probably be to the ship by dawn" he announced to the others based upon his estimates from the ship's instrumentation. The only thing he received were a few groans and complaints but at least they had what they came for. He kept the skiff's course as he moved just faster than the storm and had the Demon Brother's keep lookout for rocks and other obstacles.

x-x

'Fifteen signatures still in the room. Five of which are closing in on my position and the rest likely have their weapons trained directly on my position. Another thirty closing in from upper and lower levels and a mass of living people escaping up the stairs. The Hutt must have a secret escape route or lift. He's already outside my range.' Naruto thought as he stared blankly at the stone wall ahead of him and slumped against the last stone pillar in the line he had run down. His plan on getting to the staircase had horribly failed but it wasn't a very solid plan from the start.

'Is Juugo alright? Where is HK?' he wondered in his jumbled mind as he tried to think of what to do next. 'If I try to make a run for it, I won't get far and I can't even move out from this spot without getting hit by blaster fire.' he thought and tried to calm his mind down. It wasn't until he could feel his heart beat lowering that he could finally think clearly.

Looking down at the weapons he kept carrying with him, he frowned at the fact that, besides his sword, he favored those blasters over everything he had grown up with and trained with. 'These blasters aren't going to save me right now. They're useful but only up to a given point. They don't require handseals to first activate and are accurate enough at distances however I can't keep trying to rely only on them. My chakra control isn't where I want it to be because of the seal I put on, but I need to stop holding back. Otherwise I really will be killed.' he thought and his musings caused him to laugh as he realized something.

'I'm thinking like an idiot. Like some spacer from the galaxy. That's not what I am. I'm a shinobi. This kind of predicament should be nothing to me.' he realized with a wry smile. It had been years since he had smiled at all and he found it hard to stop, despite there being nothing amusing about his dire situation.

As the mercenaries neared his position he put his blasters away in their holsters. The situation seemed far less dire than it had a few moments previously. 'I'm surrounded by rock. Just normal rock and not metal.' he realized while continuing to smirk.

Getting to the edge of the columns a Nikto quickly moved around one of the other columns, ready to fire at the person they had forced into a corner...only to find no one there. Taking his eye off the gun sight, he lowered it slightly as he moved a little closer and examined the area to figure out where the brat had gone. The others were just as curious and a few moved closer to see while others demanded to know what was going on and if they had killed the one called 'Rasen.'

Confused, the closest three turned back to respond that he was gone but stopped when they heard something sizzling. Looking back they found several pieces of parchment stuck to the wall which seemed to be sparking. Unsure of what to do, they weren't prepared for the explosion that sent a good part of the gathered group hurtling backward.

The column Naruto had been hiding behind was destroyed in the blast and debris from it spread across the room. During the brief confusion, a lone figure emerged from the stone floor, moving out of it like through the surface of water. Naruto was quick to act and take advantage of the opening.

Throwing two smoke bombs into the fray, Naruto charged one of his attackers and decapitated the silhouette of the man before anyone knew he was there. Many shouts filled the room as he kept attacking and as more of Jabba's men came up and down the stairs from floors above and below.

Unsealing one of this disc blades, he tossed it toward the lower level staircase while controlling it with the Force while simultaneously moving to his next target. The spinning blade curved toward the staircase and cut down the first Gammorean guard while it continued to the stairwell and ricocheting off the stairway walls and cut through other guards as Naruto gave up controlling it.

After slicing apart several other combatants and throwing a volley of kunai that hit their unseen targets. Naruto was forced to block a blaster bolt with his sword just before it hit him. He barely managed to deflect the bolt in the smoke and was pushed back by several more rather accurately fired blaster bolts. Other blasters were being fired in the room, but none as accurate as his foes began firing wildly.

'This one must have infrared or some other vision that can see me.' Naruto thought as he tried to defend himself but his own smoke screen was hindering him and he was finding it harder to try and dodge or block the bolts. After several grazes, he found the blaster fire began to intensify as his opponent had evidently pulled out another blaster. Completely overwhelmed in the dissipating smoke, he knew he was in trouble but the blaster fire was cutoff by opposing fire from a differnent side of the room.

Blaster fire from the second source cut down on the individuals left in the room as well as the ones coming down the stairs. Taking advantage, Naruto retreated to the back end of the room as HK-47 emerged from the dispersing smoke. The droid was walking backwards and heading to him while keeping concentrated fire upon their foes and those that were just entering the throne room from the stairs.

Naruto could hear the droid saying something involving the word 'Meatbags' and a variety of other words and he watched as the droid slowly reached his position in the room directly opposite the upper-level staircase. Peering around the wall he had his back against, Naruto surveyed the damage and sensed who was still alive in the room.

The opposing blaster fire had died down significantly and only a hand full of lifesigns remained in the room but on the fringes of his senses, he could feel an entirely new group just reaching the bottom opening to the throne room. He only had a few seconds to warn the droid as the moment the newcomers reached the bottom step, the blaster fire coming at them increased tenfold and both were forced to take cover behind the stone archway of the opening of the room they were in.

Taking a moment to assess the situation, Naruto found that they were in some kind of trophy room with many different shelves full of items that the Hutt had evidently collected over the course of many decades. On first glance, he saw nothing of value in the room and no other way out.

The firefight being exchanged across the length of the room was very one-sided as Naruto and HK were completely pinned down. Feeling the cold stone behind him begin to heat his back up, Naruto realized that the blaster fire would soon eat through the rock and he quickly weighed his options. He however wasn't able to come up with much as the safety of their shelter was further diminished when a small explosion rocked the backside of their room.

His eyes had caught the briefest of movements before the explosion and he had seen a projectile travel through the arched entryway of the room. His thoughts were confirmed by the droid hiding on the other side of the arch.

"Observation: Micro-grenades."

Having never encountered that type of weapon before, and Naruto was not thrilled with the thoughts going through his head, 'A weapon that shoots small explosives faster than I can dodge and deflecting them will only cause an explosion.' The wall HK-47 stood against was the next to explode and Naruto covered his head from small pieces of rock debris. The devastation was readily apparent as Naruto moved his hands away from his head and glanced over to find the wall at half the thickness it had been.

Another projectile impacted the back wall of the room and trinkets were sent flying to the floor off the shelves. Closing his eyes, Naruto sensed out the person that was shooting and found him, as well as the others moving closer to them. Evidently confident enough that HK and himself were no longer much of a threat.

Standing, he took out a single kunai and kept his eyes shut. He blocked out the sounds of the next small explosion and the small pieces of rock that impacted him as he focused on the shooter. He knew where they were and their height as well as the distance between them. Covering the kunai in wind chakra to increase it's cutting and penetration ability, he turned and tossed the kunai at the wall he had been hiding behind.

The wind covered kunai pierced through the crumbling wall and kept going, undeterred by the rock. It quickly covered half of the distance to the far staircase before eviscerating the Transdoshan holding the micro-grenade rifle. The kunai however did not stop and cut through another person's leg before imbedding deeply in the the wall at the opposite side of the room, only a foot or more off the floor.

HK-47 was not as awestruck as the others in the room and took full advantage of the distraction. Unleashing his blaster-arm as well as a another blaster he had picked up from earlier, he fired at the Meatbags standing in the open room. At least four were hit by his blaster fire before they began returning fire and dispersing. The droid ensured that no one went for the Trandoshan's rifle and forced tehm away from it.

As the two were once again bogged down by blaster fire from various sources, Naruto concentrated on the room again and began making handseals. 'As long as I don't leave anyone alive, I can use whatever I want and now have enough time to concentrate.' he thought as he finished slowly making handseals and put both of his hands into the ground.

HK-47 was confused at the motions as he had never seen the boy make such motions before and was even more surprised when a second after Naruto put his hands to the ground, his auditory sensors picked up screams from the room. The blaster fire stopped seconds later.

Naruto opened his eyes, satisfied that he had taken care of the problem. Taking a step forward and about to head out of the trophy room, his foot kicked something on the floor and he looked down to find a familiar object that he would never have expected to be there. Immediately picking up the object, he sealed it into his arm before remembering that he needed to get to Juugo and moved out into the throne room before locating the lower staircase. He scanned the throne room before going to lowever floors and found only a single lifesign that was slowly diminishing. 'He should be dead soon.' Naruto decided and ran down the narrow staircase past the bodies of the Gamorreans that he had killed with his discblade earlier.

HK-47 entered the throne room along with Naruto but didn't follow him down the stairs. He instead wanted to look and see what had happened. He had counted at least ten remaining Meatbags still in the room and from his perspective, Naruto had done nothing to eliminate these remaining targets.

Cautiously walking into the room, he looked over the area and found it was far different from what it had been earlier. Long, thin rock spikes covered a good portion of the room. They jutted out from the columns and floor, impaling the remaining Meatbags that had been hiding in the room. Thicker and longer spikes had come out form the walls of the upper spiral staircase and were preventing anyone else from coming down.

Searching his memory for anything similar that he had ever seen during his years of operation, the droid was unable to match the scene to anything he knew that Jedi or Sith were capable of performing. 'Inner Thought: The small Meatbag is becoming more interesting as time goes by.'

Disappointed that no Meatbags were still moving and needed finishing off, the droid promptly realized that more Meatbags were likely below and hurried to follow after Naruto, but not before grabbing the micro-grenade rifle.

x-x

Minutes earlier

x-x

Sliding down a short rock chute, Juugo flew out and fell a short distance before landing on the floor. He was instantly to his feet and on guard, ready for whatever was in the pit. He had no idea what he had gotten himself into and had acted without thinking. For all he knew, the chute led to a quick death that he could not have prevented from suffering or saved the dancers from.

Taking in his surroundings, Juugo found the cave empty save for the two twi'lek girls that had fallen in before him. He could tell they were very afraid and it likely had to do with the large metal door that was in front of them.

A moment later, the grinding of gears and grate of metal on metal announced the opening of the door. The crowd cheered from above and Juugo payed them no mind as he slowly awaited whatever was on the opposite side of the door. With the door only a few feet off the ground, long clawed digits moved under the edge of the door and gripped the bottom, trying to lift the door and get it moving faster.

What emerged from under the open door was something Juugo had never seen before. He was transfixed in position as the creature moved towards him. The creature stood over eight meters tall with long arms and sharp claws. It had greyish brown skin, a blunted face and exposed fang-like teeth.

He had seen summoning creatures before and much larger ones but not something as fearsome. It was the epitome of a monster. The shouting and yelling above him as well as the screaming of the two slaves near him were not something that he heard. What he did hear was the voice of the creature. It was despondent and angry.

He could hear bits of pieces of what it was furious over but good portion of what it said was incoherent. It had apparently been taken from its home and family, then forced into a cage. It was also accusing him of being like the ones that had enslaved him. Juugo attempted to use his ability to try and speak with it and convince it that he was not like them but it just wouldn't listen.

Juugo looked on in pity at the creature. He really didn't want to fight it. He could see burns and other injuries as it got closer and it seemed the creature had been tormented during transport or when getting it into the cage.

An explosion above dislodged rocks and dust that fell to the ground of the cage. Juugo could hear screams and blaster fire above and realized that Naruto was fighting everyone in Jabba's throne room. Turning back to the beast that was standing right in front of him, he said out loud, "I'm sorry." and his skin began getting darker as his bloodline began to activate.

Dodging a swipe, he jumped and rolled underneath of it and moved to its right side. He quickly delivered a heavy blow to the back of the creatures knee, which caused that knee to collapse. It swung back at him but Juugo was already moving up its back. He wanted to lead the creature away from the two hiding Twi'leks and needed to get the creature to completely focus on him. As it struggled to reach behind and grab him, the creature kept turning around and around. Moving up to the back of it's neck, Juugo transformed both of his arms and slammed then down on it's neck. He had hoped to knock the creature out but realized that he either hadn't hit it hard enough or its physiology was different and it couldn't be knocked out that way.

Angered by the attack, the beast renewed it's efforts to grab him and then resorted to selecting one of the flatter walls and charging at it, only to twist around at the last moment in the hopes of squashing him. Juugo lept off it's back at the last second when he realized what it was up to. The entire room shook from the impact and Juugo didn't have to wait long for the Rancor to stand up and move at him.

It raised both hands above it's head and slammed them down where Juugo was standing. The mutated ninja was faster and lunged forward between it's forearms. He lept upwards with some help from the chakra boosters that formed on his legs, delivering an uppercut to the creatures jaw.

The creature stumbled backwards and hit the wall again while Juugo rotated himself to land on the ceiling with the leftover momentum from his boosters. Moving around, he dodged and batted away the creatures attempts to grab at him on the ceiling as he tried to convince it that he could free it and asked where the weakest walls were. Somehow Jabba had managed to get the creature inside the cage, 'So there must be some kind of access way or area where the rock was removed and then replaced.' Juugo reasoned while keeping the creature busy. They were already in trouble and having a rampaging creature in the facility could give them a much needed distraction to get away.

On that thought, Juugo began looking for areas of the rock that stood out as he dodged the creature trying to grab at him. Even in the dim cage, his eyes found one area was a slightly different color than the rest of the rock. 'I'll need to make a hole big enough for it to get out.' he thought and had an idea, though he was less than thrilled with what it would required.

Jumping to the ground and ducking the creature, Juugo sprinted at the wall and further transformed. His arms mutated and grew while the boosters on his legs and back propelled him at the wall. He landed two heavy blows that did little to damage the faux rock, but the follow up of the new pistons that had formed at his elbows, smashed into the wall through his arms. The pistoning action put numerous cracks in the false rock face and he smirked as it would be enough for what he had in mind. His success was pushed aside as he noticed a moment too late that the creature was already upon him.

He knew he couldn't evade the swipe, but he could get away from the claws and ended up being hit full force by a smack from the palm. Juugo bounced off a wall and landed on the thin layer of sand that was the cage floor. His vision was swimming but soon settled as he stood and looked to the creature as it looked back at him.

The wall he had damaged was now directly behind the creature and it was angrier than ever at him. Juugo frowned as his anger increased while he struggled to maintain control. He knew the monster in front of him was intelligent but it didn't want to help and was getting ready to charge him.

Allowing his bloodline to further mutate his body, the transformation nearly completed as he bent down and more powerful chakra jets formed on his back and legs. The rancor roared and charged forward at him in the same moment that he roared and rocketed headfirst with both fists outstretched.

x-x

The fight hadn't been going well for Jango Fett as he tried to shoot at the cloaked young man who had disappeared for a brief moment, only to reappear and start cutting down everyone in the room. He could see through the smoke with his helmet's infrared but was having difficulty getting a clear shot with everyone else that was moving blindly through the smoke and getting in his way.

A moment later he found his opening and opened fire on the brat with one of his blasters. He was surprised to find that in the smoke, the boy was able to deflect his shots with the sword. It reminded him of a Jedi and he hated Jedi. With every shot being deflected, he quickly pulled out his other blaster form his thigh holster and began firing with both, trying to overwhelm his foe with the rapid-fire weapons.

He had never seen a sword that could deflect blaster fire so well and he made a mental note to take the blade after his target was killed. No sooner than he had the thought, then blaster fire came from his left. He was struck twice, a glancing blow to the helmet and once in the upper chest by the new attacker and forced to retreat to cover while trying to return fire.

Getting behind a column near Jabba's vacated platform, he waited for the firing to lessen on his location before coming out and exchanging fire with the two hiding in Jabba's trophy room. He quickly reloaded his weapons but stopped as newcomers came in. One of them was holding a micro-grenade rifle, 'definitely overkill.' he idly thought and wondered if they would have anything left of the cloaked young man to present to Jabba for a reward.

The Transdoshan began firing indiscriminately at the trophy room and Jango decided to step back from the fighting. It was one thing to damage Jabba's throne room a little while trying to take out someone that had nearly killed the Hutt, but it was something else entirely to destroy the Hutt's prized trophies in order to succeed.

He wanted whatever bounty Jabba would put on the boy, but taking part in such an action would earn all those involved a brutal death by the enraged Hutt. It didn't matter how much the bounty was worth to Jabba, if they destroyed his trophies he would probably make trophies out of them. It was a shame that he wouldn't be able to take down the prey himself but he knew when to restrain himself from making foolish mistakes.

As the droid and human's cover was whittled away, he was taken by surprise when an object pierced through the wall, and then through the Transdoshan. It continued through someone else's leg and then imbedded deeply into the adjacent wall. He instinctively moved for cover as blaster fire cut down a few of the newly reinforced group. As he waited for it to die down and give him a chance to return fire, he was even more surprised when spikes appeared out of the floor and walls.

Jango looked down at the spike that had pinned him to the wall and couldn't make heads or tails of what had just happened to him. The spike had erupted out from the column he had just moved behind and had forcibly pinned him to the wall. The transfigured rock was no match for his armor, but that did not mean that he was safe. It had pinned him with such force that it compressed his chest and actually forced his body off the floor. His feet were a few inches off the ground and he was no longer able to get enough air into his lungs as the spike prevented him from properly inhaling.

Trying to get a clear view of the others, he wasn't able to determine if any of the group he was with were actually left alive. He could hear movement and his helmet picked up two new heat signatures move into the room as the other heat signatures no longer moved. One was warmer and smaller than the other and he knew them to be the two they had been facing. As he struggled to breathe and get free from the spike he realized that both his blasters had been knocked out of his hands.

He had far more weapons on him than just the blasters but those would make noise and at the moment he did not want to attract attention to himself while trying to get free. He was in no position to fight off such attackers so he stayed as still as possible. The boy could find him and finish him off while he was in such a state and he waited unmoving as time slowly ticked by while he suffocated.

The boy looked directly at him, despite not having a direct line of sight to determine where he was as if somehow knowing that he was either still alive or not as dead as everyone else in the room. They looked at each other for a few moments before the boy moved on and the assassin droid followed a few seconds afterward. Jango began seeing stars the moment the two went down lower staircase.

Waiting as long as he dared, he hurriedly used his wrist-mounted vibroblade on the rock spike and began cutting away away at it. He cursed that the blade was not very long and the tip of the spike had broken on his armor, leaving a much thicker broken tip pinning his chest. He kept hacking away at it as the outer edges of his vision began getting dark and panicking at the thought of dying in such a state, he used the wrist-mounted blaster on his other arm to blast off the last few inches.

Freed from the spike, Jango unceremoniously dropped to the floor and took his first full breath in over a minute. He removed his own helmet and breathed deeply while still on the floor. After taking several deep breaths and when the stars had left his vision, he frantically searched for his blasters and began scanning the room from his cover. Had his blaster fire been heard and were they coming back?

Truthfully he had never seen so much blood before as his uncovered eyes scanned the room. Most weapons cauterized wounds so people didn't bleed out and certainly it wasn't normal for people to be skewered by rock spikes that formed out of the floors and walls. Jabba's throne room was now a war-zone and he had trouble believing that one young adult and one assassin droid could do so much against the men that Jabba kept in his service. They certainly weren't highly trained soldiers but most were experienced fighters and more deadly than any common thugs.

From what he had seen of his prey and how he moved, Jango could tell that the boy had training, most likely from Jedi. It was obvious to him that the boy was not someone's padawan or on any mission from the Jedi. He was almost positive that the young man must have been a failed Jedi and left the Order to strike out on his own. This explained the use of the sword and why he had no lightsaber.

What he had nearly been killed by must have been a Force technique then. 'Though I've never seen something that can shape rock and use it as a weapon. There are even thicker spikes at the staircase to prevent more reinforcements from above. And that knife, it went right through rock and people.' he thought as he remembered the scene as it played out in his head. Getting up off the ground, he moved to were the weapon had stuck into the wall.

Finding a metal ring and part of a handle sticking out of the wall, he grasped the ring and began pulling with all his might. The knife unwillingly came free and he fell backwards from the force he had been pulling with. Grumbling under his breath, he got back up and then looked over the weapon.

It was ordinary, which confused him even more. He expected it to be a vibroblade or perhaps some other technology but he could tell that it wasn't. He was holding just a simple metal knife. 'What metal is this? Plain steel?' he wondered and put the knife away in one of his pouches to look at later.

Hearing a roar from below, he remembered why he was there in the first place and ran to fetch his helmet before heading down the lower staircase in search of his targets.

x-x

Jumping from the rock face, Suigetsu flipped in the air and evaded the slashes of the Krayt dragon that was chasing him. Smiling, Suigetsu played with the creature as he waited for the right moment to strike. He was confident his sword would easily pass through the creatures thick hide but wanted to prolong the fight as much as he could.

He used his blade defensively as the creatures claws raked across it's surface but he was sure that they left no scratches or scrapes. Jumping back to escape a swipe by the creatures tail, Suigetsu landed on the wall of the canyon. As he prepared to dodge the next strike, the rocks beneath his feet began to give way.

Losing his balance and concentration on the loosening rocks, Suigetsu was grabbed by the creature's mouth as it charged and teeth sunk deeply into his body. Shaking it's head back and forth to tear into it's prey, the Krayt dragon released it's hold and Suigetsu's mangled body was tossed down to the canyon floor. Playing coy, Suigetu's body slowly reformed while he remaining completely still, waiting for the moment when the creature was nearly on top of him.

As the creature slowly lumbered forward, confident in it's victory and meal. Suigetsu remained motionless and as the creature moved to take another bite of him, he rolled, got to his feet, and swung at one of it's front legs. The leg was easily dismembered by his sword. Keeping the momentum of the swing, he spun and changed his footing, jumping to strike again at the other front leg, severing it as well.

He expected a torrent of blood to spray from the grievous injuries he had dealt the creature and waited to subsequently be covered in the liquid, however he wasn't. His cloak was dry and in the dark he couldn't determine if any blood had even gotten on him.

As the creature struggled in pain with the loss of it's front legs, Suigetsu looked over his body and the ground in the hopes of finding out what had happened. Finding no blood, he examined his sword and ran his hand over the blade. Expecting it to be slick with blood, he instead found a covering of warm dark sludge came off onto his fingertips and palm. He could smell the usual metallic odor associated with blood but not a single drop could be seen and what was on his hands wasn't blood.

'Weird.' he thought and his investigation was soon interrupted by the cries of the wounded creatures.

"Fine, I'll finish you off." he said. With a powerful swing, he severed most of the neck and followed up with second swing which severed the exposed spinal cord; killing it.

Looking over the newest wound, he again found an absence of blood, however upon pulling his sword out of the wound, blood freely began flowing from the neck. 'Well that's better at least. I was beginning to think this thing didn't have any blood.'

Stabbing his sword into the ground, he began looking over his kill and going over all that needed to be done. The creature was about sixty or more feet long and below average going by the size of one hundred feet that Naruto gave as typical for adult dragons. Suigetsu wasn't about to let it just sit there and was set on using as much of the creature as possible. He just needed to start carving it up and putting the meat into the scrolls to cook later. If he had the means to make a fire, he would have started cooking up some of it as he did feel a little hungry. 'Maybe when we finally stop somewhere for an extended visit we can have a nice cookout.' he thought with a smile.

Looking around the canyon, he searched for the scrolls that he had brought with him. He dropped them when the creature came into sight and the battle began. Running up the canyon wall, he looked for the dead rat creature and soon found the scrolls he was after near the creatures partially eaten body.

Brushing off the strange sludge he had on his hands onto his clothing, Suigetsu encountered something slick. Looking down, he found that there were several areas of his jumpsuit that had some kind of liquid on it. Touching his hand to one of the areas, he brought it up to his nose and quickly recoiled.

It certainly wasn't blood and had a pungent odor to it. 'Venom?' he guessed as there were areas of it where the teeth had entered his body. Ignoring the finding, he went back to the creature and unrolled the scrolls in order to seal up the soon to be carved meat. Going to his sword, he stopped as he saw something. The creatures dark blood was moving to his stationary sword. That however wasn't the strange part, as the blood was moving uphill to touch the blade.

x-x

Panicked from the recent events and the fighting below, Jabba quickly slithered out of his personal turbolift and into his large and decadent living quarters. His form was followed by the pale Bib Fortuna who seemed equally panicked and completely lost as to what he should do. They had no medical personnel at the palace and not even so much as a med-kit.

Jabba, unlike Bib, had not escaped the blast from the thermal detonators. He was missing an arm and had burns on the side of his body. The resilience of the Hutt species had saved him from further injury and diminished what could have been major or life threatening injuries. That however did not mean that he wasn't in a severe amount of pain and that pain as well as his thoughts concerning his attacker turned to anger.

Immediately the Hutt began circling his living quarters thinking up horrible fates for his attacker and shouting orders to his Majordomo. Bib went to the only computer terminal in the room and began looking up the information that the Hutt had demanded, which was the surveillance feed from his throne room.

The Twi'lek found the live feed and they both watched the displays on the large screen. Bodies littered the floor as fighting continued. Both spectators had thought that the human and droid would already be dead or captured but that did not seem to be the case. The room they were viewing suddenly began to fill with smoke and they lost sight of all the combatants as the only things they could make out was the blaster fire.

Someone was out to assassinate him and had gotten closer than any other assassin in the nearly six centuries that he had been alive. As the smoke in the room cleared, some fighting continued and there were many bodies on the floor as blaster fire was exchanged between the trophy room and the rest of the throne room. The Hutt soon laughed as he noticed from one camera that reinforcements had just arrived.

The laughter however died as the Hutt saw what the Transdoshan was using and where he was firing. He yelled and raged at the destruction of his trophy collection and was almost happy when the reptilian humanoid was killed. The two continued to watch as the battle soon went out of their favor but they were not prepared for what happened next.

In a split second, the remaining fighters in the room were all killed by spikes that seemed to come right out of the walls, floor, and columns. Bib was so shocked by what he saw that he backed up from the screen and nearly stepped on the Hutts tail.

A few moments passed until the human and droid came out of the trophy room and looked over the area before moving off screen. They didn't have monitors covering every inch of his throne room and from the angle the Hutt was viewing, he couldn't tell where the short human had gone. Whether it was to the lower staircase or to the hidden turbolift that they had just taken. Worried that the controls on the lift could be overridden, Jabba decided to vacate the palace and take to his sail barge to get him back to Mos Espa and to his compound where he could get medical treatment.

Before he went, he left final orders with Bib Fortuna and then proceeded with haste through the rooms door and on the route to the hangar. He would monitor the situation through the barges communication systems and up-link with the palace while his remaining guards at the palace and the reinforcements that he would send for would take care of the human and droid inside.

Bib continued working at a furious pace as he searched through the security footage for a picture to use and made up a bounty poster and message to transmit to the entire planet and other notable bounty hunters that Jabba used which may in nearby systems or sectors. Finishing up, he just had to add the number that Jabba had wanted. 'five hundred thousand credits should be more than enough to put the entire planet and sector after the human. Normally I would consider getting my blaster and joining up with a few guards to try and split the reward but there is no way that I'm facing that butcher.' he concluded as he transmitted the message and then left the room out the same door as Jabba.

Hurrying down many hallways and one turbolift, the Twi'lek arrived at the hangar right as the Khetanna was being readied to leave. An alarm going off and subsequent message over the loud speakers in the hangar let everyone know that a sandstorm was approaching and they would either have to leave in the next twenty minutes or stay.

Pulling the cloak on his hood down and covering his face as best as he could, Bib got to the boarding ramp for the sail barge and pushed his way past everyone else. Being the Majordomo, he was tasked with taking care of Jabba's affairs and the palace when the Hutt left but he wasn't about to stay with such a trained killer running loose inside the palace.

x-x

Grabbing his discblade at the bottom of the steps, Naruto continued on to get to the cage which Juugo was still in. He was too distracted with his enemies to properly sense Juugo and found out how the orange-haired teen was doing but now that he had a moment Juugo was just outside of range. He could only sense the two Twi'lek dancers and feel how scared they were. Blocking his path were numerous Gamorreans that were slow to respond to the call for help from the throne room and just making it to the upper staircase.

He cut them down with both disc and ninjato as he continued moving down the wide arched hallway. There was an intersection up ahead that the Force told him would lead to where he wanted to go. The Gamorreans however just kept coming and he was getting tired of them. He was about to do something when the closest one to him exploded.

Glancing behind him while the Gamorreans stopped in their tracks, Naruto saw HK holding the micro-grenade rifle. Crouching, Naruto jumped to the ceiling, stuck to it, and continued running towards what he believed to be Juugo's location. He heard many more explosions behind him and the squealing of the Gamorreans but he paid them no mind.

As he ran, he heard a roar and the walls and floor shook as if there was an explosion. He nearly lost his footing on the ceiling but soon increased his speed to get to Juugo. Moving down a passageway, Naruto knew that what he wanted was just ahead. He heard another roar echoing past him as he turned the last corner and found the hallway empty of combatants. There was however a huge hole in a nearby wall and he jumped down, cautiously moving to the hole to figure out what could have caused it and what beast had been Jabba's pet. He knew it was at least the size of the giant Tulrus that they had killed.

Walking into the cage, Naruto peered through the darkness and saw Juugo, alive and helping the two twi'lek dancers who were hiding in some alcoves at one end of the cage. Confused, he extended his range as far as he could and just caught a large lifesign leaving the extent of his reach.

Juugo noticed someone was there and turned to see who it was. "You came to save me?" he questioned of his companion and Naruto stared at him for a second before quickly replying.

"No." Naruto lied and Juugo tried to hold back a smile as he knew Naruto was lying. He did think for a few moments that Naruto would be furious at him but that did not seem the case. "Then why did you come running down here so fast?" Juugo questioned and Naruto was quick to explain, "The upper staircase was blocked so we came down here." he explained and then asked a question of his of his own, "What exactly was down here? I know I felt something large but what happened to it?"

"I don't really know how to describe it. It was just an enslaved creature that wanted to get free. Unfortunately he wouldn't listen to me when I tried to help him so I had to hurt him a little." explained Juugo seriously and Naruto just stared for a moment before saying rhetorically, "You make it sound as though you could speak to it and it could speak and understand you." Moving back to the large hole in the wall, Naruto looked both ways down the hallway to see if anyone else was coming and to confirm that the creature had indeed left. 'Well I guess it's a good thing it didn't run in the direction I was coming from.' he thought but was brought of his musings by Juugo's reply, "I can speak to and understand all animals, even the ones that don't have chakra."

Turning around and looking back at Juugo, Naruto was slightly confused as he could not detect any hint of falsehood in what Juugo just said, "You mean to tell me that you can talk with animals and they can understand you? Why am I just hearing of this now?" he demanded and Juugo just shrugged.

"Regardless, we need to leave now before they find us. HK is almost caught up to us."

"What about them?" asked Juugo and Naruto looked to where he had indicated and found the two dancers. Frowning he debated about what to do. If he left them, they would either get recaptured or perhaps be killed, either by Jabba's men or perhaps the creature still roaming the lower levels.

"It will be hard enough for ourselves to get away, Juugo. If you haven't noticed, the entire palace is after us and you just released Jabba's pet into the lower levels." elaborated Naruto while gesturing to the damage they had already created, but Juugo was resolute in helping the two girls.

"Fine, but you're responsible for them. If they know where the hangar bay is, then I'll meet you there. I need to destroy any evidence of our being here." and Naruto watched the trio leave and head in the direction that HK was.

Making a earth clone, Naruto left the cage and proceeded in the same direction that the creature had traveled. The slaves wouldn't have known where the security and surveillance systems were. What he needed was a living person to question and find out where he needed to go.

As Naruto left, the earth clone proceeded to slowly make a set of handseals for a single jutsu. Slamming its hand into the cage floor, the rock directly above it began to crack and loosen as the entire ceiling came down on top of it.

x-x

It was night by the time Kabuto got the skiff back to the new location of their ship. It was outside the city of Mos Espa and Kabuto had made sure to stay a good distance away from the outskirts of the city so as to remain unseen. Parking the skiff next to the ship, Karin jumped off to go and activate the loading elevator for the Demon Brothers so they could put the Star Map on it.

Looking out over the sand and to the nearby city, Kabuto saw the incoming sand storm. It seemed to slowly approach the city but that belied just how fast the storm was moving and the distance they were from it. As the storm began to envelop Mos Espa, Kabuto moved to the ship to get aboard the ramp.

Boarding the ship and shutting the ramp to keep the approaching storm out, Kabuto passed Karin in the hallway and asked about Naruto.

"He's not back yet." she explained as she couldn't feel his signature on the ship or nearby. 'Perhaps he got caught in the storm. If so I probably won't be able to reach him by commlink.' reasoned Kabuto. As he continued down the hallway, he passed Tayuya sleeping on the meeting table and though he thought it strange, he decided not to try and wake her up. He passed the medical bay door and tried to get it but found it locked.

'Master Plagueis must be working on something.' he thought and knew he would have to summon his snake later to find out what the man had really been up to while on Tatooine. Heading to the storage area, he found the Demon Brothers struggling to move the Star Map onto the elevator and as soon as they were finished, he hit the switch to bring the loading elevator back into the ship.

It was a shame that they couldn't keep the skiff as it proved to be quite useful but it was simply too large to fit in the ship.

Once the elevator was inside the ship, the Demon Brothers decided to leave the Star Map where it was and move it in the morning or at least after getting some rest. Kabuto thoroughly agreed as they had been nearly killed several times that day and he just wanted to get some sleep.

x-x

Cutting out the stomachs as they weren't something that he was going to eat, Suigetsu struggled to get the large collection of organs out of the creatures abdomen without piercing them and possibly contaminating the meat. With great effort, he managed to get the organs out and drag them away from the rest of the creature.

Curiously, the contents of one area of the stomachs made a strange sound and he looked at the organ for a few seconds before taking out a kunai and deciding to see what the Krayt dragon had eaten which would make such a sound.

Carefully slicing into one of the the stomachs so the contents did not spill out onto him, he first came across part of the newly dead rat-like creature that he had used as bait. Cringing slightly, he moved the portion of the creature with his foot out of the way so he wouldn't have to look at it and continued his search. Cutting into the next stomach, he came across a partially digested body of one of the locals, Suigetsu wrinkled his nose and thought about stopping his dissection but an oddly shaped weapon caught his eye. It was a type of club that had evidently been wielded by the corpse before being eaten whole.

Setting it aside and wiping his slimy hands on his pants, he continued and in the last organ finally came across what must have made the noise.

It was a collection of rocks. Curious why such a creature would eat rocks, he thought there must have been some kind of purpose or perhaps it was just accidental. He was about to toss the organ aside and continue inspecting the body to see if anything else could be found on the corpse when something in the pile or rocks reflected what little light was in the canyon.

Using his kunai, he pushed the smaller rocks aside found two rocks that didn't match the others. Picking them both up and wiping them off, he moved to a better area in order to catch more moonlight on them.

Both rocks were perfectly smooth and one reflected green while the other blue in the moonlight. Both were a darker color closer to the surface with a very light and brighter shade at the center. The green was larger than his hand while the blue fit just perfectly.

'They look gems or pearls, not rocks.' thought Suigetsu and looking towards the severed head of the creature, Suigetsu asked, "Man, what did you eat? Somebodies treasure?"

Putting the pearls in their own storage seal on the scroll, Suigetsu got back to cutting up the Krayt Dragon meat.

x-x

Dropping the unconscious monk, Naruto reviewed the information that he had just drained from the man and figured out where he needed to go. He needed to get to the power plant for the palace, which wasn't very far away and then he would have to travel a roundabout path to get to the communications dome that also contained the surveillance equipment for the palace. Both of these were in the Alkhara tower, which was the tallest tower of the palace buildings.

He could go outside and up an exposed staircase that was carved into the canyon side but decided against it. The staircase would leave him vulnerable to snipers and any patrols that Jabba had around the facility. He could also travel throughout the lower levels of the facility and through a myriad of passages to get to the lower level of the Alkhara tower but he knew from the monks memories that he would be traveling through areas that Jabba had numerous guards, locked doors, and that had either suffered from cave-ins or been deliberately blocked.

Naruto therefore determined from the monks knowledge of the complex that the best way to go was to the power plant. The monks shared the large complex with Jabba and though Jabba called it his palace. The monks lived, operated, and maintained the majority of the complex. Jabba had his areas and the monk's had their areas, with marginal crossover through the facility.

The power plant was beneath one of the other large spires of the complex. He would travel through the power plant and then up the Wandering Meditative Staircase used by the disembodied monks in the spider-like droids. They constantly traveled up and down the staircase and based upon his previous encountered, would not be concerned with his presence there. From there he would reenter the main palace and go to the other spire.

Reaching one of the entrances to the power plant, he quickly henged into a standard looking monk. Walking past several monks that seemed to be monitoring the power plant, he glanced at the huge generator and wondered exactly how it operated or what it used as fuel but pushed those thoughts aside as he looked for the hallway that would lead to the wandering stair.

As there were none of Jabba's guards present and the monks were busy, he moved with impunity towards the passageway. He thought about damaging the controls for the power plant or even causing an overload but realized that such actions would hinder him as he still needed the building to have power so he could access the systems.

Finding the stair, he ended the henge and began running up the circular staircase. It was about eight stories tall but since only the disembodied monks used it, they wouldn't even notice his presence.

x-x

Stepping over the Gamorrean corpses and reaching the bottom of the staircase, Jango Fett stumbled as the ground shook from what he thought may have been an explosion. 'He must be trying to get to his companion in the Rancor pit.' Fett guessed and wondered where the explosives had been procured from. His communicator suddenly went off and he stopped briefly as he accessed the message through his visor.

It was a simple holographic message that had been apparently sent out to anyone within range of whatever transmitter was being used. It contained a picture of the boy he was after and an amount of money listed for the capture or killing of the person shown. 'That's...a lot of zeros.' commented the former Mandalorian to himself. With that amount of money he could finally replace his aged ship with something better.

Passing more corpses, Fett came to an intersection and relying on his heat vision, caught the heat signature of someone moving just around the corner down one of the passages. Running after them, he wondered if they knew where they were going. He hadn't been working for Jabba long enough to know his way around the lower levels of the palace and he didn't have a good schematic of the palace.

Coming to the end of the hallway, he moved around the bodies of more guards and came around the corner but found it empty so he continued his pursuit. Glancing around, he determined that he was in the prison area of the palace given what he thought were many sets of prison cells along the wide and long hallways. Noting that his quarry seemed to be keeping the same pace that he was or perhaps even out-striping him, Jango activated his rocket pack and kept a controlled upright flight down the next hallway in order to catch up.

x-x

Breaking the prison guards neck and tossing its corpse aside, HK-47 processed the information he had just gotten from the brief interrogation while his three companions cringed slightly at his deeds. Creating a rudimentary map from the directions he had extracted from the Meatbag, the droid led the others to the turbolift that was in a nearby hallway down the hall. Using the lift they would be able to get back to the main floor and make their way to the palace's only hangar bay where they might find a transport.

Moving to the controls, the droid tried the door but found the controls were locked and without some form of access key card or perhaps passcode it would be difficult to get in. Ripping the panel cover from the wall, the droid exposed sets of wires and components.

"I can get the door." offered one of the Twi'lek dancers and HK looked at her critically for a second before stepping back from the panel and letting the Meatbag dancer work. It wasn't that he couldn't get the door himself, and probably faster than the dancer, but he would then have to leave himself open and let the three Meatbags guard him while he worked.

Standing guard with micro-grenade launcher in hand, HK-47 contemplated his current companions while simultaneously watching for more Meatbags to kill. The male Meatbag was apparently ruled by emotions that he could not understand or perhaps it was something to do with hormones and the two dancers. The two Twi'lek Meatbags were more understandable but he found it interesting that they appeared to be able to slice through locked doors. So far they were proving more useful than the male Meatbag.

Glancing to the hallway that they had just come from, the droid would have smiled if he had the facial structure to do so. It seemed he wouldn't be bored while waiting for the door to be opened.

x-x

Trying to look over the dancers shoulder to see what she was doing, Juugo was immensely curious on how it was that she would manage to unlock the door for them. He had never witnessed 'slicing' or electrical lock picking and had no idea how it was done or could really comprehend the mess of wires and other electrical components that the Twi'lek girl was sifting through and rewiring.

So distracted was he, that he never noticed the former Mandalorian stealthily moving down the hallway to their position at the turbolift alcove.

"Freeze." came a voice from behind the three in the alcove. They did as they were told and froze in place, waiting to either be killed or given some further instruction.

"Drop the blaster, kid." demanded the voice and Juugo dropped the blaster to the sandy floor. He had only unsealed it from hiding a few minutes prior and didn't even have the chance to fire it. Thinking over the situation and trying to determine what the best coarse of action was, Juugo as well as the Twi'leks turned to look at their captor and found a man mostly covered in armor with two blaster pistols pointed at them.

Juugo noticed the marks on the armor but didn't know if the man was injured or not. He didn't think he could disarm the person or escape injury if he tried something.

"Where's the brat with the sword?" asked the figure and Juugo decided to be as responsive as he could, "He left by himself to go somewhere else in the palace."

Jango mulled over the answer for a few minutes while he thought of what to do next. He had been ready to unleash his weapons and for a fight, but he had apparently only found the three from the Rancor pit.

'How the hell did they get out of there alive?' he suddenly wondered as the orange haired teen in front of him seemed amateurish at best and very different from the highly trained swordsman in the throne room. Before he could ask, he was struck with another thought, 'Where's the droid?'

He was however instantly aware of the answer and his instincts told him that the droid was right behind him and had set a trap. A clicking sound that did not cause his immediate death was the only thing that told him that he was still alive for a little longer.

x-x

Watching from the depression of a small ventilation unit in the ceiling, HK-47 viewed a Mandalorian move towards the three at the turbo-lift. He waited until the armored Meatbag was distracted and moved from his position; soundlessly dropping from the ceiling to the ground below.

The sound dampners in his feet worked how they should and the Mandalorian was still unaware of his position. Taking the micro-grenade rifle from his back, the droid aimed carefully. The Meatbag may have been wearing heavy armor, but the back of the neck was still slightly exposed to him and a single micro-grenade to that location, just under the lip of the back of the helmet, would instantly kill the Meatbag that followed them.

Squeezing the trigger, the droid's eyes glowed slightly brighter in surprise as the telltale 'click' sound of an empty weapon echoed through the quiet hallway.

Jango instantly turned with both blasters ready to take the droid the down but HK had already thrown the empty rifle at the Mandalorian. The heavy weapon struck Jango in the helmet and stunned him for just a moment, which was not enough time for HK to reach him but the kick behind him from Juugo to the side of his head gave the droid more time.

Regaining his balance before he fell, Jango recovered to find himself being tackled against the wall by the droid. Several shots were fired as the two struggled against each other. Jango found himself overpowered by the droid's strength and he ended up being forced to drop both of his blasters.

'That helmet really hurt.' thought Juugo as he kept off his foot for a few moments and turned to the two Twi'leks, wordlessly telling them to continue. He then grabbed his blaster from the ground but found HK was already dealing with the situation and he didn't have a clear shot

The droid grabbed Jango's throat with one hand, lifting him off the ground, and stopped the bounty hunter from using his left arm effectively, which had his wrist-mounted blaster on. A shot from it which had been intended for HK struck the ceiling instead and Jango switched tactics. Using his right arm, Jango extended his vibroblade and tried to stab the droid's head or arm but HK moved or deflected the blows with his elbow or knee joint.

"Statement: It has been quite some time since I have killed a Mandalorian Meatbag. This should bring back many fond memories." and HK began to squeeze much harder with the intent of breaking Jango's neck.

Knowing his wrist-mounted flamethrower would do nothing to the droid and neither would activating his rocket pack, Jango used his last option and the only trick he had left. Reaching under the droids arm with his right hand, he activated a button on his left-hand gauntlet. The missile on his rocket pack ignited and launched upwards at the curved ceiling. It didn't travel very far before striking the rock and exploding right above the droid.

With such a close impact, the concussive force pushed the droid off him and sent both to the ground. Stunned from the blast, it took a few moments for either combatants to come to their senses or perform a quick diagnostic. HK was back on his feet first but Jango acted first and touched a button on his right gauntlet, activating his whipcord launcher. The fibercord whip wound around HK's legs and torso, pinning his arms to his side and preventing him from walking.

Sitting up to a crouch, Jango held the struggling droid steady with one arm and took aim with the blaster mounted on his left gauntlet. Still disoriented from the blast, his first shot missed the struggling droid's head and he re-aimed for a second shot.

A boisterous statement of "I got the door." fell on deaf ears for Jango and the droid as they were more concerned with killing each other. Jango however was taken by surprise when a blaster bolt that came from the turbolift alcove sliced his whipcord and freed the droid from being bound to his wrist. The fibercord however did not loosen much or free droids limbs.

Leaning out from the alcove, Juugo tried to shoot the armored guard and help HK but was forced back by blaster fire. HK took the opportunity of distraction to lunge for the open turbolift and Juugo helped drag the droid the rest of the way into the lift as the door closed and protected them from blaster fire.

Finally to his feet, Jango punched the rock wall in frustration after the lift door had closed. None of his shots had landed and the distraction from the teen had let the droid escape. That was probably the most dangerous droid he had ever encountered and he had to use almost every trick he had just to keep from getting killed. 'And it still got away.' he fumed. Looking to the ground, he went to get his blasters.

He could bring the lift back down and continue his pursuit in a few moments. Picking up his prized weapons, Jango stopped as he heard something. It sounded like heavy breathing. Looking to the end of the hallway, he came face to face with a Rancor that was crawling along the ground under the arched ceilings.

The creature looked at him with its small beady eyes and then roared. Cursing loudly in Mandoa, Jango holstering his blasters and began running down the hallway the way he had come from. His left hand moved to a button on his right gauntlet and activated his rocket pack to increase his speed and outrace the Rancor.

'They didn't survive the Rancor, they released it.' he realized. The chasing creature wasn't fully grown but had enough head room in the wide corridor hallways to move on all fours. Jango thought about using his blasters and believed that he if had an accurate enough shot, he could take it down but he remembered that it was Jabba's birthday present and killing it would be the same as destroying the Hutts trophy room; it would mean a painful death if Jabba ever found out.

x-x

Reaching the top of the spiral stair, Naruto pushed the button for the outside door. The large metal door instantly opened and he was hit by powerful winds. Putting his hands up to his forehead to keep the sand from getting into his eyes he peered out from the door. Looking across the bridge at the palace building, he checked for sentries and possible snipers but found none. It was night outside and he was finally able to see how much time had passed since they first arrived at Jabba's. The suns of Tatooine had long since set and it was probably early in the morning he guessed.

In the darkness he could see a few guards on the open areas of the main rotunda but he knew he would be protected from the gun emplacements due to the closeness of the tower to the main building and the overhangs of the main building being just above the bridge that connected the two buildings.

Running out the door and across the bridge, Naruto shielded himself from the sand. The wind tunnel effect of the two rounded buildings in close proximity to one another, in conjunction with the harsh sand that was picked up, were enough to dispel his henge. He however wasn't worried about that as it was so dark out and Jabba apparently didn't believe in any architectural lighting to show off the building at night. Increasing his speed, he was distracted for a moment when he spotted something in the distance to his right side. It took a few moments to figure out exactly what he was looking at before he realized that it was an incoming sand storm.

Nearly to the other side of the bridge, Naruto didn't find any guards at the door, nor could he feel any guards behind the door so he didn't hesitate to hit the control panel and quickly move through the opening. Coming out of the windy darkness, he found himself in a silent windless hallway and putting back his henge, he swiftly proceeded further into the main building.

The end of the hallway opened into a surprisingly large room that caused Naruto to stop as he looked around. It seemed the majority of the main rotunda was just comprised of the single room he was in. It had a large center column as a structural support with rows upon rows of detached brains sitting in little alcoves all around. The setup seemed reminiscent of a theater or arena but there was no show playing at the center and the audience of detached brains had no eyes with with to watch anything. Many colorful banners hung from the ceiling and a very large bladed fan spun at the top of the room around the column, providing a cool breeze.

Using persuasion on a few of the monks that still had attached brains, Naruto moved up one of the staircases, passing row upon row of brains. The monk's seemed to be attending to the brains and he could tell that each of the monks held the brains in high regard, though he knew not why. 'What a strange religion.' he remarked to himself and began focusing, pushing his sensing inward as he tried to keep from gleaning any information from the brains, lest he get lost in their incoherent thoughts.

Coming to the top of the staircase, Naruto proceeded down another hallway and finally let out a breath he had been holding as he relaxed his senses and extended them again.

Reaching the end of the hallway, he could feel people up ahead and thought that they were standing guard or at least patrolling. 'This must be where the monk's area ends and Jabba's begins again.' he thought and released his henge while unsealing both disc blades.

Calming himself, he activated the door mechanism by smacking it with one of the disc blades and found himself exposed to the harsh weather again. Shielding his eyes, he quickly tossed one of his blades as he identified his two targets. He was in the middle of both and they appeared to be each stationed at a laser cannon emplacement.

Both guards were alerted to his presence by the opening of the door and the first one was cut down before he could get to his blaster. Naruto called back the first disc blade and quickly threw the twin. The second target managed to get off a shot before the discblade reached him but the blaster fire missed.

Catching one disc blade and then the other, Naruto moved out from his position and to the short ledge. He was on the open hallway or concourse that circled the rotunda just above the first overhang. Glancing at the spire that he had just come from, he then looked to the Alkhara spire and pulled down his goggles to determine the distance and where he had to go.

'I can make that gap.' he concluded and was about to move close to the inner wall in order to get a running start when he heard something besides the wind. A moment later, four lifesigns entered his range and he watched as a skiff moved slowly into view as it circled the rotunda. He saw them and evidently they managed to identify him in the darkness as they opened fire from the skiff.

There was nothing to hide behind expect for the laser cannon emplacement and Naruto ran to the closest. Moving the corpse off the seat and targeting controls, he rotated the laser cannon and aimed for the skiff. The firing slowed as the men realized what he was doing and the pilot attempted to get away by accelerating out of the range of the turret but Naruto was faster.

Four laser blasts were fired at the skiff while three of the blasts struck the armored skiff in close proximity, piercing what armor it had and striking the skiff's power-source which caused an explosion. Knowing that the explosion would alert any other patrols as to his general whereabouts, Naruto created two shadow clones that manned the laser cannons while he moved to the inner wall.

Picking his trajectory, he sprinted across the short distance of the concourse, jumped over the small ledge, and began running down the sloping overhand. Using the Force to increase his speed as best as he could, he reached the end of the overhang and Force jumped into the gap between the spire and the rotunda.

A weightless sensation soon overtook him as he moved away from the rotunda and to the spire. He reached the apex of his jump and was confident that he would land exactly where he wanted, however the wind and storm had other plans.

Cursing at the powerful gust, his body was pushed off course and instead of landing on the side of the spire, his body moved past the structure and headed off the edge of the canyon. Acting quickly, Naruto deeply inhaled and formed a single seal, the dog seal, and then exhaled a powerful stream of wind that pushed him back to the spire and away from the canyon floor where he had been heading.

His own wind jutsu and the natural wind caused him to spiral out of control and he struck the backside of the spire. With his breath knocked out of him, Naruto fell but unsheathed his sword and stuck it into the rock to slow himself and get his feet situated on the side of the tower to stick to the surface.

Looking around from his perch, he noted the storm was nearly upon the palace and ignoring the pain in his back, he began running up the side of the spire to get to the top. He could hear and see laser fire from the opposite side of the spire and knew his clones must be distracting anyone else that had come to investigate the destroyed skiff.

'Damn they're persistent.' he noted and questioned why such thugs would be so loyal as to stay out during a sandstorm in order to capture or kill him. Memories of the clones soon filled his head as one was killed by blaster fire and he believed the other died as a result of the jutsu being dispelled by the sand in another powerful gust of wind.

Slowing down his pace as he neared the top, he searched the uppermost levels of the tower for lifesigns. It seemed that no one was guarding the top of the tower. Landing on a balcony just below the large communications dome at the top of the Alkhara tower, Naruto walked in through one of the many openings around the circumference. The entrances all led to a large open floor that was dominated by the conduits and relays that went to the communications dome above him.

'Perhaps I should try to contact the Vulture or at least turn off whatever is jamming normal communications.' he thought and proceeded down a staircase that would presumably take him to the communications equipment in lower levels. From what he had previously gleaned, all of the complexes security monitoring equipment was on the floor below the communications equipment. He would need to erase anything that could be used to identify them.

Reaching the bottom of a staircase to the floor below, Naruto stepped over cables that were haphazardly strewn on the floor and connecting various devices. Looking over the equipment, he tried to identify what was around him and find what he was after. Some of the equipment he couldn't identify but he guessed that he was looking at an illegal signal interceptor. The Hutt had numerous transceivers on the outside of the tower so he was able to receive the Holonet but it seemed that Jabba could also intercept other people's transmitted messages over the Holonet and monitor normal communications throughout the sector.

'He must be tapping into the local relay station.' he thought and was surprised by what expense it must have cost to implement such a system. 'Though he would be privy to most interstellar communications going to and coming from the planet and even those messages which are being relayed to other nearby sectors.' he realized and decided how he could use it to his advantage.

Taking his out his fuinjutsu supplies while a few newly created clones looked around the room, Naruto began putting seals on some of the equipment and the hyperspace transceivers which were mostly on the inside of the tower with just the antenna sticking out. Short on time due to the incoming storm, he settled for a few of the most expensive looking pieces and would have to acquire the remaining equipment in order to copy the setup when they eventually settled somewhere.

Leaving a clone to finish up, Naruto moved to where his clones had determined was the surveillance equipment, which was one level below. Exactly where the monk had thought it was.

Bypassing security measures, which were incredibly lax, Naruto sifted through all of the holorecordings and other surveillance that the palace had. Coming across recording from several devices that he had evidently missed or not been aware of during his time spent in Jabba's throne room, he systematically deleted every occurrence of himself, Juugo and HK-47. While working, he had a disturbing thought and looked to see if anyone else had accessed any of the files.

Going over access times, the look on his face soured as he found that someone had tried to cover their tracks and deleted one of logs which showed recent access. Restoring the information, he found that the recordings of the throne room had been accessed twice by two different terminals in the palace. Looking over a layout of the facility on the computer, he found that one terminal was in Jabba's personal quarters, which made sense, however the other was in another part of the palace. Looking over the security recordings from that area of the palace, he matched the time stamp and viewed one of the robed monks accessing the terminal.

While he found nothing strange about Jabba accessing security recordings from his within the confines of his quarters, one of the monks slicing into a terminal and apparently downloading the footage of him was something that he found very disconcerting. Trying to follow the monk through the facility and track the individual down, Naruto found that surveillance recordings were only in Jabba's areas of the palace and as soon as the indistinguishable monk left those areas, he could no longer track him.

Ignoring the storm outside, he sifted through the monk's entire journey to the terminal and away from it. 'At no point does he show his face from under the hood. He knows where the cameras are.' concluded Naruto and his frown deepened.

While staying glued to the screen, his right hand removed a kunai from his pouch and with a single motion, he tossed the weapon behind him. He watched in the reflection on the monitor as the kunai imbedded into the neck of a weequay who had been sneaking up on him from below. The body fell down the staircase and Naruto resumed his focus on the terminal.

'He doesn't work for Jabba but I also don't know who he does work for. Probably spying on Jabba for someone. I won't be able to find him in the palace, there's too many monks and if he's smart, he already left or has a good place to hide and wait.' he decided and continued with the complete wiping of all information on his activities.

"We have a problem!" came a shout from one of his clones in the room above him.

'Damnit.' the real Naruto thought and he got up from his seat at the terminal and walked to the stairs. Stopping to pick up the blaster rifle that his would-be assassin was carrying, he aimed at the surveillance equipment and fired several shots, destroying the terminal and memory cores.

'Despite what I said before, they are really useful.' he thought and decided to keep the weapon as he ascended the staircase back to where his clones were.

Coming to the top of the stairs, he looked to where the clones were all looking and found a holoprojection of a bounty listing, specifically his bounty. 'That's a lot of zeros. Maybe I should turn myself in' commented Naruto as he looked at the number listed and then examined the picture. It was very poor, for which he was thankful.

Apparently they didn't have a very detailed image of his face. His whisker marks were exaggerated or at least distorted enough that it looked like the entire side of his face was scarred and the opposite side was not shown. The hologram had no color besides a generic blue so there was no way to tell his hair, eye, or skin color. The height indicated in the bounty information was when he was in the older looking henge so it was many inches off from his actual height and the weight was proportionately off as well. Also, nothing was listed on the various jutsu that Jabba had seen him use, it only noted that he used a vibrosword, knives, and blasters. In addition to being extremely dangerous.

"Its not that bad, right?" Naruto commented to his clones and most nodded with a few shrugging and one noted that it could have been much worse.

"It was transmitted over many frequencies and channels across the planet and system." one of the clones informed him and Naruto's earlier relief was quickly squashed. Ignoring the fact that anyone with a blaster on the planet would be after him Naruto asked, "Can it be retracted?"

"Not from here. Communications are down because of the storm. If we stayed until it cleared then maybe we could but that won't prevent Jabba from putting out another bounty."

"Make a copy of this bounty and put it on my datapad." Naruto ordered as he tossed his personal device to one of his clones. "Alter whatever jamming system is being used to jam all frequencies and communications." he ordered of another clone and proceeded up to the next level while one of the clones tossed back his datapad after downloading the information.

x-x

Staying inside the room while the search party passed, HK was the first to the door and hit the controls with the back of his palm as he had blasters in both hands. The door immediately hissed open and the droid broke into a run as it chased down the search party. He was upon them before they had finished turning around to respond to the noise. The members at the back of the party were taken out easily and the others were so surprised at the situation that they were unable to respond to the threat and were killed as well.

Standing at the center of what was once a group of six living mercenaries, HK-47 made sure he had gotten all the Meatbags in the immediate area before scrounging for weapons and energy packs. He had put the Twi'lek dancers to use and had them carrying extra weapons and his spent micro-grenade launcher. He was now fond of the weapon and wasn't about to toss it away like he would with any ordinary blaster.

Peaking out from the doorway of the room, Juugo looked down the hallway at the carnage and was once again thankful that the droid was on their side. Though he had been trained to use those weapons, he had never used them in such a situation and decided to step aside and let the sadistic droid do what it did best.

That was the third patrol they had come across since facing the armored man but only the second patrol that they had attacked. HK had decided that one of the patrols had too many men and was too heavily armed for even a surprise attack, especially since they had no explosives. Continuing to the hangar, they moved down two more hallways before coming to a large metal door.

The door was not the main entrance to the hangar which was perfect for their needs. Coming in through the main door would attract a great deal of attention. Juugo and HK again acted as lookouts while the two dancers worked on the door. It was a tense a few minutes but they eventually managed to force the large door open enough that a person could squeeze through the opening.

Moving through the door, they found themselves in a cantina-like setting with many tables and a nearby bar area. There was a staircase off to one side and a balcony in front of them that presumably overlooked the hangar. Juugo cautiously moved to the balcony in order to get a better look at the hangar and found himself looking at an expansive cave that was at least three stories tall and probably forty to fifty meters wide.

The opposite side of the hangar had numerous arched alcoves that had various supplies, tools, and workshops as well as what appeared to be pens for animals. Moving closer to the railing of the balcony, Juugo looked down to the floor and ducked out of sight as soon as he recognized the threat.

Motioning for the others to crouch down low, so as not be seen, Juugo and the girls waited where they were while HK-47 moved closer to the balcony to see what had put Juugo on guard. The droid crawled forward and peered through the openings in the railing. He counted three armored skiffs and nineteen Meatbags.

It appeared that they had just arrived and the four could hear a loud sound at the end of the hangar that turned out to be the hangar door shutting closed.

Focusing on the faces of the Meatbags, HK zoomed in and began analyzing the movements of the lips in order to determine what they were saying. He was able to get bits of conversation from various Meatbags and pieced together that there was a storm outside and no more reinforcements would be coming until after the storm passed. They were apparently splitting up into groups in order to search the palace but broke out into various arguments. They disagreed over claiming a bounty and no one seemed to be in charge or giving orders because most of the group wanted to go after the bounty alone.

'Inner thought: It appears the blonde Meatbag has gotten a bounty on his head.' the droid realized from the conversation and he wondered if he also had a bounty.

Thinking over the situation, HK believed that they could wait where they were while the others left to check the palace. Once the hangar was empty or nearly empty, they could secure a skiff. However, if what the Meatbags said about the storm was true, then skiffs would not be of much use in the storm. Flying a skiff in a canyon during a sand storm was more of a risk than he was willing to take.

'Inner thought: It also means that if we wait until the storm passes, we'll have to evade or burn holes through all of the new Meatbags that could arrive.' he realized and wasn't sure how best to proceed. The thought of waiting out the storm and hunting down all the Meatbags in the palace was tempting.

x-x

Better adjusting for wind, Naruto ran and lept off the tower towards the rotunda roof. He couldn't see it clearly anymore in the sand storm but could approximate where it was to avoid serious injury.

The roof came up fast and he struck the surface hard and went into an uncontrolled slide. He slid right off the first level of roof and landed on the second level, picking up speed as he neared the edge. The sand blowing over the roof surface proved difficult for him to stick to with the amount of momentum he had from the jump. Before going right off the roof, he again used his sword to anchor himself.

Hanging halfway off the roof, Naruto looked below him to the next overhang. He could barely make it out through the storm but now knew that he could drop and land on it. Removing his sword from the roof, he let himself drop and landed on the sloping roof with his hands out to steady his impact and make sure he didn't lose his balance.

Glancing around out of habit, he realized that there was no one around who would see him. Turning away from the building, he noticed something in the distance. He could see several lights eminating from a single position close to the palace. Thinking back to when they first arrived at the palace, and determining where he was and where the lights were, he knew that there wasn't another building in that area.

'Maybe its a ship.' he thought and smirked as if it was a ship, then it meant that he could hijack it and get out of there. All he needed to do was get to the others, who should have made it to the hangar by now.

Grabbing the edge of the overhang, he let himself fall off and used the edge to guide himself towards the buildings outer wall so he could slow down his fall. Skidding down a portion of on the wall, he jumped to the sand below and hoped that he would never have to perform such feats in a sandstorm ever again.

Without taking a moment to recover from his impact with the roof, Naruto went through several handseals and began sinking into the sand in order to get to the hangar below him. The storm was only getting worse and unless they wanted to wait it out inside the palace, they would have to leave soon.

x-x

'Juugo, I'm right above you and am coming through the ceiling. Make sure the droid doesn't shoot me.' asked Naruto through telepathy. Juugo's head jerked to the ceiling and he quickly reiterated what Naruto had said to HK.

Emerging from the rock ceiling, Naruto dropped silently to the floor below. He was about to say something when a short shriek from behind him pierced the silence. Turning, he found one of the dancers had her hand over the others mouth and both were incredibly shocked at what they had just seen him do.

'They already saw Juugo partially transform. You've got to be..' but Naruto's thoughts were cut short when Juugo pushed him to the ground and blaster fire tore through the balcony railing and scorched the ceiling.

'They didn't even bother to see who was up here.' thought Naruto but a memory of his bounty surfaced and he remembered that it did say dead or alive for the listed price. They probably didn't care if it was him or their competition for the bounty.

Slowly making the handseals for one of Jiraiya's earth jutsu, Naruto slammed his hands in to the rock ground of the second floor and said Doton: Yami Numi. The completion of the jutsu was rewarded with shouts from below on the hangar floor. Though he couldn't see it, Naruto knew that most of the shooters were now sinking into the floor, which had turned into a large swamp.

The blaster fire stopped immediately and Naruto ignored the cries for help as he turned to the others, "I think there's a ship outside on the surface, we need to get to it."

The confused group of four could only nod and they proceeded back through the door that they had just sliced into. Naruto was in the process of determining the best way to get to the surface when he felt a few lifesigns heading straight for them. Taking out his sword and ready for combat, he tensed as the two lifesigns neared but was completely confused when they moved right by him.

They had only been a feet away from them and Naruto looked right at the path they had taken and found the wall of a hallway that presumably went the length of the hangar.

'They're in the walls?' he questioned and thought perhaps there was another hallway behind the wall but that didn't seem likely as there were no doors along the entire length of the hallway that he could see. He had the feeling that he should follow them, so he went through more handseals for another earth jutsu.

Placing his hand against the wall, the surface turned to mud and Naruto pushed himself through the wall. Part of his body emerged on the other side in an excavated tunnel that was shorter than average person's height but just enough for him to walk. The tunnel had no lights so it was completely dark but he decided it was better than searching for another exit.

Pushing his head back through the liquid wall, which was still retaining it's shape, Naruto surprised the others before his disembodied head told them to follow.

Reluctant at first, Juugo was the first to put his hand in the mud and found it rather cool to the touch and easy to move through. Pushing himself through, his hand emerged in an area that was slightly cooler than the wall and he kept pushing until his head and the rest of his body emerged. Surprisingly, the mud stayed on the wall and did not stick or collect on him.

The others soon followed and it was a strange experience for the Twi'leks and the droid. Once they were through, Naruto re-solidified the wall and from the outside, it appeared as it had before, with only a slight shift in texture from the surrounding wall.

HK proceeded first down the tunnel as he slightly crouched to fit. His photorecptors provided him with the best distance viewing and nightvision of the group. Naruto followed up the rear to make sure that the other three, who all had limited nightvision, would not fall behind.

He wasn't sure why the Twi'leks were still with them but it was probably better than leaving them behind considering how much they knew about him. The only other option was to kill them but he knew that Juugo would be against it.

Continuing on until they could hear the sound of the wind, the group finally emerged out of the tunnel and right into the storm. Naruto noted that the winds were much more powerful then they had been and he struggled to see any distance ahead of him. Sand pelted their exposed skin and began to sting as they tried to get their bearings. Naruto couldn't even make out the lights he had seen earlier.

"Observation: There is a large sand crawler fifty meters ahead of us and numerous Jawa loading it with junk." said HK as his voice just barely registered over the wind. The droid presumably began walking towards the sand crawler, as none of the others could see it due to the low visibility.

A hand outstretched to him and Naruto looked at it, and then to the Twi'lek and found that she, Juugo and the second Twi'lek were all holding hands to make sure that they didn't get lost in the storm. Taking the hand, Naruto focused on his sensing rather than using his his eyes to try and find the crawler in the dark sandy storm. While HK was not moving very fast, the droid had almost completely vanished in the sand-laden wind.

Naruto could feel the lifesigns of several Jawas as they hurried to secure the crawler and he guessed they were stealing from Jabba or taking the palace's garbage and getting as much as they could before the storm got too severe. A large grouping of lifesigns soon came into his range and he moved towards it, taking the lead of the group of four while he assumed HK was still near them or heading in the same direction.

Opening his eyes so he didn't run into the ship, he could barely make out HK just ahead of him and could see a dark shadowy area ahead which must have been the crawler. Moving along the side of the vehicle, HK apparently activated a control panel and a ramp lowered for them. The light coming from inside the vehicle told them where they needed to go and the five boarded the ship.

x-x

Coming to the end of the mountainous area and the beginning of the seemingly infinite sand, Suigetsu looked out over the dark dunes and smiled as he believed he had several hours until morning. This meant that he should have enough time to get back to the ship without worrying about the setting suns and the heat of the desert.

'Its actually gotten really cold.' he realized, shivering and pulling his cloak tighter around him. Making sure he knew the approximate direction of where he was going, Suigetsu jumped out into the sand from the rock outcropping he was on and continued at a good pace.

He had no idea that he was heading right into a sandstorm.

x-x

Looking over to the sleeping trio, Naruto shook his head slightly at the fact that they were able to sleep with bumpy ride of the crawler. Tricking the Jawas was easy enough and they settled in the main hold of the ship, surrounded by droids and large piles of scrap and junk from various other vehicles or equipment. He had used to Force to move items and better hide their small group from any Jawa coming into the hold, otherwise he would have to use mind tricks on nearly the entire crew of the crawler.

The Jawas were apparently able to navigate the sand storm, despite other vehicles being completely incapable of such a feat. Given the speed that they were traveling, they would make good time to wherever it was that they were going. Naruto could only tell that they were heading in a westerly direction.

Looking from the sleeping trio, Naruto locked eyes with the droid's photoreceptors and asked, "Do you need recharging? Did you sustain any damage?"

HK looked at him strangely for a second before his photoreceptors dimmed as he ran a self diagnostic. "Summation: I do not require recharging and have only sustained minor damage to my armor plating and abrasions from close-quarter blaster fire." indicated the droid as he glanced to the wound on his side and then the discolorations of his metal from some of the fire fights he was in.

'Looks like someone tried to stab him with vibroblade.' thought Naruto and he looked around the hold for a similar metal to put a quick patch on the hole.

x-x

Running the same scan for the third time, Plagueis was given the same results. 'The boy has over twenty thousand midi-chlorians per cell.' he repeated in his head as it still seemed hard to believe and even harder to accept.

That thought inevitably changed as realization hit him, 'The experiment worked. The boy was conceived by the Force through my midi-chlorian manipulation on his mother.'

Standing over the scanner and looking blankly at the display, he tried to think of what he should do next. He began getting ready to leave but stopped as he realized something. While he may be able to kidnap the boy and perhaps even make the boy his new host, he would have to explain to everyone about his experiment. No one was to know about it until he was sure that the information was not going to get out. Going back to his machines to double-check the results, he stopped again as he remembered that he had already done that, twice.

He'd never been so befuddled and confused before in his life or during his afterlife. 'What do I do next?' he confessed to himself and decided to sit on the operating table and think it over as he felt foolish standing dumbfounded in the room, despite the fact that no one could see him.

He had just made one of the greatest achievements in the study of midi-chlorians and he had no idea what he should do. Obviously he couldn't tell anyone, though a part of him wanted to make it known to receive some kind of praise for the success or at least share it with someone so more people could know of the miraculous thing that he had accomplished.

'I don't even know how it actually happened.' he realized and stood back up to look over the information he had. Was it just an accident caused by his experiment? A side-effect of his manipulations, or had his experiment taken much longer to produce results than he originally thought?

'I don't have enough information to answer those questions and I don't really know how to get that information.' he realized as his experiment had already been in progress for years by that point in time. He hadn't been around to document or determine how it had worked. 'So much information lost that can never be recovered or determined.' he lamented and remembered back to the beginnings of his research.

The original design and theory behind the experiment was to see how such a being would interact with the Force and other beings. A being conceived by the Force and with such Force potential would be something worth studying. He hadn't set out to create a weapon, but just to study the subject and see capable they would be. He remembered decades ago when he boasting to his own Master Tenebrus, that his future research would one day let him create the being of the prophecy. It was an arrogant statement but he of course had never believed in such a prophecy. Seeing the future was difficult enough to navigate when you saw just a glimpse into the near future, days or even weeks in advance. But seeing thousands of years ahead and making a prophecy of a chosen being. How accurate could it be?

Taking all of these thoughts in, he unavoidably had to consider the situation from a different perspective because as scientist he couldn't be biased. Despite not believing in prophecy, his creation of the boy could be something detrimental to himself. Now that the being was created, the prophecy stated that he would bring balance to the Force. But what did 'bring balance to the Force,' even mean? Most Jedi took it to mean that the being would destroy the Sith.

The Sith were still around, unbenounced to the rest of the galaxy. They were also likely getting close to taking over the galaxy. Sidious might even be poised to take over the Republic in the next few years, he really didn't know. Had he created a weapon that would inevitably destroy his Apprentice and himself and possibly even Naruto? 'I'd never considered that train of thought before.' Plagueis admitted to himself.

Those dark thoughts were however countered by what he had seen of the boy. Anakin Skywalker was currently the slave of a junk dealer. What would the boy ever be able to accomplish? Would he sit in obscurity his whole life? However, for a being that was the embodiment of the Force, that made no sense whatsoever. Someone would come along and find him eventually.

On that very thought, he wondered if that someone was himself. Was his insistence on their group coming to the planet supposed to cause something or was he supposed to take the boy with him? Should he kill the boy? Take him for study? Train him? Make the boy his new host body? He truthfully had no idea what he was supposed to do in such a situation.

Would the outcome of his own meddling turn out something similar to his Apprentice? Would his actions be what led to the complete downfall of the Sith. "How do I proceed?" he asked out-loud as if someone would answer. The Force was not giving him any guidance on the matter, but that may have been to his own lack of clarity and calmness over the situation.

After meditating on the dilemma for an unknown amount of time, Plagueis decided to take his own thoughts and emotions out of the decision. He would look at the problem from a purely logical standpoint.

'My project has succeeded but there is no evidence of what will happen next. My meddling could conceivably create my own downfall but at the same time, my inactivity could also inevitably create problems. The best thing that I can therefore do is to monitor him as much as I can from afar. If something should happen, then I will respond to it as best as possible. I should also try and keep the Jedi and Sidious away from him.' he concluded but didn't like the decision. It was almost the same as doing nothing but he realized that it was no different than what had been happening up until that point. No one had discovered the boy yet.

To implement this plan, he would need some way to monitor the boy at all times or at least as much as possible. His mind moved to tracking devices and other such monitoring equipment that he didn't currently have access to. One idea did have promise, however he would need to go back to the small domicile and then find some droid parts.

Looking to his arm, he realized that he needed to document his finding and his holocron was sealed into the arm of his host. A seal that he was unable to retrieve it from.

Coming out of the med-bay, he walked down the ship's long hallway and passed the meeting area to get to the landing ramp. Just after passing those rooms, he stopped and backed up several steps. Looking into their meeting room, he stared at the lone occupant of a seat at their round table. The redheaded Tayuya was asleep at the table with her head on her folded arms. There were several datapads strewn about the table and the droid Deefour was charging in the corner, which was not where it was normally charged.

The scene had instantly struck him as odd, which was why he had stopped and gone back. 'She's never slept on the table before, nor does she seem the type to do such a thing.' he thought and moved into the meeting room to see what was going on.

Walking over to the girl, he moved to touch her on the shoulder and wake her up rather than sending a nudge into her mind. As his hand reached her shoulder, he recoiled as he felt that something was wrong. Using the Force, he moved her hair away from her neck and shoulder. Instantly he was aware of what the Force had telling him. 'I'll have to mention that to Kabuto.' he mentally noted and shook the girls shoulder to wake her up.

A bleary eyed Tayuya looked up and it wasn't until her eyes focused and she realized who she was looking at that she remembered what she had been meaning to tell Plagueis.

"Naruto messaged for help." she said in an even tone as she knew that the message was rather old and she looked to him to see what his response would be.

'When?' demanded a slightly surprised Plagueis.

Receiving the telepathic message, she looked at her watch, she said, "A few hours ago."

'Hours!' repeated Plagueis indignantly as he summoned up the dark-side of the Force and something akin to killing intent filled the meeting room.

"Don't give me that attitude, asshole! I tried to say something but you shut yourself off in that room with your metal play-toy droid. You even blocked off the comm system so I don't wanna hear it! I can't fly this fucking ship and you know that. I don't even know where the guy's palace was and neither did Naruto." said a brash Tayuya with no fear of any reprisal from the Sith Lord.

Begrudgingly, Plagueis calmed himself as the girl had won the argument with logic. He certainly didn't approve of being talked to in that manner but he would let it go. Forgoing his earlier plans completely, he analyzed the situation. He had never known Naruto to ask for help. Something must have definitely gone wrong during negotiations with Jabba.

"What about the others? Have they arrived back?" he questioned as he wanted to know if he could take off without worrying about Kabuto's group still being out.

"They got back about an hour ago, right ahead of the big sandstorm." Tayuya informed him and he was slightly surprised that he hadn't even noticed their arrival or the sandstorm. Despite being in med-bay of the ship, he should have still been able to hear something of the raging winds and sand on the hull. Stopping to listen, he could easily hear the winds raging outside.

'And there hasn't been any further word from Naruto.' he asked while moving quickly out of the meeting room and down the hall to the cockpit.

Tayuya followed behind him and replied, "No, there hasn't."

Getting to the cockpit, he looked at the dark sandstorm outside the windows.

Did he think Naruto was dead?

No.

Did he think that Naruto had created a problem for them and that many other people were dead?

It was a definitive yes, with questionable intensity as to whether it was just a small incident or whether they would get on the radar of some powerful adversaries.

Given that the storm had not let up yet, he leaned back in the chair and said, 'Once the storm passes, we'll look for Juugo and Naruto.'

Glancing at the instruments, he noted that a message had arrived. It wasn't a transmission from Naruto, but something that was sent out to anyone that could receive it. Examining the message, he found that it was a simple holorecording but there was no audio portion.

Leaving the cockpit, Plagueis went to the meeting room and activated the holoprojector on the table, displaying the sent message. The display activated and showed a single picture surrounded by text in various languages. It was a bounty poster of Naruto with a hefty price on his head for taking him dead or alive.

'This was sent to every holopad and device in the sector.' Plagueis realized with disdain and knew that anyone with a weapon would be after Naruto for such a sum of money.

x-x

Tracking the path of the droid and company he was after, Jango followed the corpses left behind and was led to the sail barge hangar. With both blasters drawn, he found the sliced door and entered into the upper cantina of the bay. Noting the destruction, he gave the area a once-over before cautiously approaching the balcony.

Given the number of blaster strikes, he expected to find numerous bodies strewn about the bay floor but instead found three empty skiffs and not a single body. The only thing he could see was a single blaster dropped carelessly on the floor a short distance away from the skiffs.

Taking the staircase down to the main level, he examined the area. Both the door to the hangar bay and the outside door were shut. A single noise put him back on guard and he stealthily moved towards an area of cargo and supply containers.

Strafing around the corner of one of the large containers, Jango found a green skinned Ryodian cowering on top of the one the smaller metal crates. The man was sobbing and he lowered his weapons as the Ryodian was unarmed.

"Get off the floor!" the man screamed and Jango looked at him strangely.

"What happened here?" Jango demanded, thinking that the individuals he was after had been attacked and run either outside or to another part of the palace. If others were giving chase then he needed to hurry up.

"They're all dead." the Ryodian said and he wouldn't elaborate further.

Getting angry at the lack of valuable information and thinking that perhaps the four he was after had been killed and bodies taken off somewhere else, Jango grabbed the mans shirt and pushed him against the larger metal crate demanding, "Where are they?!"

"In the floor." responded the man and he began talking incoherently in his native language, begging for his life and praying to various gods. Dropping the man, Jango went back to skiffs as he thought about what the Ryodian had said. Something had scared the man enough to put him in such a state and he couldn't understand what it was.

Looking to the lone blaster on the ground, he bent down on one knee to pick it up and checked the energy cell. 'He never fired a single shot.' he realized and it was at that point, from his crouched position, that he noted the discoloration on the ground. A large oddly shaped area beneath the repulsorlift vehicles was a darker color than the sand around it and looked to be solid rock instead of the sand that was everywhere else.

Looking to that area of the floor, his visor began to pick up heat. Viewing with just infrared, Jango found multiple heat signatures. He found eighteen individual sources of heat. The temperature for each were the same and just below normal body temperature, 'And dropping.' he noted as realized what the heat sources were.

'They're really in the floor.' he thought to himself in disbelief but it confirmed exactly what the hysterical Ryodian had said to him. Going back to the man, Jango decided to ask something else, "Did the ones they were shooting at come this way?"

While not responding with words, the Ryodian did shake his head in the negative and Jango looked back up the balcony. With all other doors shut, and if the scared Ryodian was to believed, 'Then they went back into the palace or left the palace entirely.' he concluded and ran back up the staircase.

Squeezing through the sliced door, he looked down the long hallway that was the only other way that someone could have gone, 'unless they completely doubled-back.' Moving swiftly down the hallway, he knew that it ran along the length of the hangar bay and in addition with leading to other areas of the hangar, eventually exited outside.

He didn't pick up any heat signatures and didn't stop until reaching the outside door. Noting that the door was not sliced into, Jango nonetheless opened the door as he knew the security code. The door instantly opened and howling winds pushed sand into the hallway.

Given the severity of the storm, there was no way for him to get to his ship, Jaster's Legacy, and he knew it would not be able to take off in the storm. It was too old and the engines were not sealed to prevent large amounts of sand getting in.

Closing the door, he walked back down the hallway and considered whether or not the group had doubled-back and if he should continue searching the palace. 'Were they foolish enough to try and make it in the storm?' he wondered but couldn't answer that until he had a look at the surveillance system that Jabba had installed throughout the rotunda. Then perhaps he would be able to figure out where they went.

x-x

Hours later...

x-x

A hand reached out of the sand and used chakra to harden the sand and make a stable area for him to grab onto and pull himself out. The pale face and hair of Suigetsu emerged from the sand and gasped for air.

"I thought I was a goner..." he wailed as he struggled to get the rest of his body out and his sword. He had been overtaken by the storm and while he tried to continue on, eventually he had to hide behind his sword and use it as a windbreak, shielding himself with his cloak from the abrasive sandy wind. When the winds became too much for him and began affecting his hydration technique, he burrowed into the sand for shelter.

Looking at the cloak, Suigetsu frowned at the fact that it was in tatters. The strong sand-laden wind had destroyed the cloak and it was barely usable. Looking up to the morning sun...suns, he corrected himself and his frown only deepened as he viewed the twin suns nearly finished coming up over the horizon. 'This sucks.'

When he started out, he knew exactly where to go but now, 'I just see sand in every direction.' he realized and kept turning around and around until he eventually got dizzy and stopped. There were no landmarks to be seen. The mountains should have still been on the horizon but he could no longer see them. 'Shit, I must have gotten lost in the sand storm and traveled in the wrong direction.' he concluded and dropped to his knees as he stared at his dark shadow in the sand.

A familiar sound quickly caused him to search the sky as he recognized the sound of a ship. Not a second later, a fast-moving starfighter zoomed overhead. Taking the stick that he found in the dragon's stomach, Suigetsu began waving it overhead in order to catch the ships attention. Though it did circle once more around him, the ship soon continued on in another direction.

Thinking that no help would come from the starship, Suigetsu assumed that it was heading back somewhere populated and followed the ship's heading as he moved up and down the dunes. He guessed that the direction was northeast but couldn't be sure as he didn't know if the planet rotated the same way around it's suns as his own planet did and whether the suns rose in the east or not.

x-x

Looking over the four Meatbags as they slept, HK-47 reviewed the previous days events. He was quite pleased with the situation he had caused and with the new information that he had seen. Though he knew not how, the orange haired Meatbag had managed to handle what the Twi'leks claimed was a rancor with seemingly nothing more than his puny flesh hands.

'Inner thought: Its unfortunate that I was not able to be there to see it.' lamented the droid at the loss of valuable information. He was however able to see more of what the short blond Meatbag could do and was rather impressed with the abilities.

He had seen the boy change his height or even age. Use Force Lightning to stab through thin but strong metal. Create rock spikes from the ground to impale opponents. Create an area of quicksand-like material, and turn a rock wall into permeable mud. These were not things that he could ever recall seeing a Jedi or Sith perform or even be capable of performing.

'Inner thought: Perhaps he has more of the special techniques.' HK theorized and wondered when he would get to see them. While not overtly destructive, they were effective at eliminating or evading pursuing Meatbags.

It was at that point that Naruto's eyes opened and after focusing and remembering his surroundings, he looked around and locked eyes with HK. The two looked at each for a few moments before Naruto pulled out his datapad and communicator. He was about to start trying to reach the Vulture when he stopped.

"Statement: It seems you've realized that they will be monitoring all signals in the area." said the droid and Naruto frowned as that was exactly what he had realized. If the Hutt still had a bounty on him, and he was confident that there still was, then anyone with the ability would be monitoring all communications and investigating anything out of the ordinary. He could try to use a coded transmission or speak in Ibonihese but that would still be risky given that he was likely in an area where no other transmissions were being made. It could be traced.

'If we can get to Mos Espa, or any town for that matter, then there will be so many other transmissions and chatter that they won't be able to distinguish mine from anyone everyone else and even if they did, they'd have to search a whole city.' he reasoned and got up from his position, cracking and stretching his back from sleeping against the hard metal wall and on the hard metal floor.

Looking over to the others, he found Juugo laying with the two dancers underneath his cloak which was being used as a blanket. The two Twi'leks were laying on either side of Juugo and the orange haired teen was drooling slightly. He smirked slightly at the sight and then looked to the droid and said, "I'm going up top to see where we are."

HK watched the Meatbag leave and then glanced down to the left side of his torso. Looking over the welding job that the boy had done to repair him with some scrap metal, he was at least satisfied with the work. Though it was a blemish in his new body, memories surfaced of many other instances when he had been damaged and hastily repaired by the only human he had ever truly considered his Master.

x-x

A pair of Mustafarian eyes opened as Plageuis was roused from his meditation by the ending of the sand storm. Prepping the ship, he began actively looking over the scanners and found that at least four other ships were also in the process of taking off from Mos Espa. Watching the other ships on the scanner, Plagueis waited for them to clear the city and determined the path that they were headed.

'It seems I won't have to search for Jabba's Palace. These other ships will lead the way.' he reasoned and piloted the ship in the same direction.

He kept pursuit with the other ships but increased the ships altitude so that he was moving through the clouds instead of just over the surface. Turning to the other person in the cockpit, who had woken up from the takeoff, Plagueis ordered, 'Go and wake Karin, we'll need her sensing ability. And have the Demon Brothers take positions in the laser turrets.'

It only took a few minutes to traverse the distance from Mos Espa to Jabba's Palace. During that short time, Plagueis counted at least seven skiffs that they had passed and which also seemed to be en-route to Jabba's Palace. Oddly, they had passed by a single ship that seemed to be heading in the opposite direction of everyone else but Plagueis payed it no mind as he could only detect a single lifeform aboard.

The location of the palace wasn't actually that hard to find as a trail of smoke was coming off one of the towers. 'Is that a Rancor?' questioned Plagueis but he couldn't be sure as he was a few thousand feet in the air and circling over the buildings below.

Karin entered the cockpit and strapped into one of the chairs. Without looking back, Plagueis commanded, 'Extend your senses out and search for Naruto and Juugo.' Karin quickly complied and extended her range in every direction. Encountering numerous entities, she sifted through them and looked for any hint of chakra. Though she could feel a lingering of Naruto's and Juugo's chakra beneath the surface, she could not find them.

Plagueis didn't need her to tell him that they were not within her range as he could feel through her emotions that Naruto and Juugo were not down there.

'These ships wouldn't have made the trip unless they had not been captured yet, which means that they are still out there somewhere.' Plagueis deduced but wasn't sure where to look. The most logical course for Naruto to take was to head back to Mos Espa or another populated area but through what means he had no idea.

No one was stupid enough to try and brave through such a sandstorm.

'Taking a skiff would be out of the question. They either found something before the storm hit or commandeered a ship after the storm.' he thought and headed back to Mos Espa. There was no point in drawing attention to their activities so he took a meandering course back and continuously scanned the area to try and find any trace of the missing crew.

Checking all the ships recently received transmissions, Naruto had yet to try and make contact. No doubt the storm had wreaked havoc on most communication devices but he did wonder why there had been no contact, 'Although he may just be keeping radio silence in order to not be tracked.'

Plagueis contemplated trying to contact Naruto but decided to trust that his student could take care of himself.

"So what are we going to do?" questioned Karin and Plagueis responded after a brief pause, 'We will head back and wait for Naruto to make contact. I don't know how he managed to get away from the Palace but it seems he has evaded everyone that is after him, for the moment at least.' answered Plagueis.

x-x

Moving through the sandcrawler was easier said than done. Naruto ran into many Jawas and had to use mindtricks on all of them in order to remain undiscovered. The Jawas had likely also received a copy of his bounty and he wasn't about to underestimate them.

Opening the top hatch on the crawler, Naruto climbed up the ladder and used chakra to stick to the surface of the roof as he neared the edge of the flat topped vehicle. Pulling down his goggles, he examined the horizon and looked for any recognizable features. They were moving very close to a wide but shallow canyon area that was just beyond the last of the dunes. Looking to where the vehicle was heading, he found that it's course appeared to be towards an area of mountains that were a good distance away to the west. 'I doubt they are heading to a city in that direction.' he concluded and knew that they would likely have to leave the crawler and make their own way to civilization.

Pulling out his datapad, Naruto brought up many of the maps and scans of Tatooine that he had downloaded from the ship before setting out. Closing his eyes, he tried to retrace all of their movements from when they had left Mos Espa. Looking over the maps, he estimated what path they had taken. 'I only know that the crawler went west and I don't know exactly where Jabba's Palace was.' he thought and frowned but one of the maps that he had contained some elevation data and he looked it over as he determined what plausible paths the crawler was capable of taking.

'We either went right by Mos Espa or we went around it to the South.' he concluded but that still didn't tell him where they currently were in relation to a city. Bracing himself as the crawler went up a particularly tall dune, Naruto again looked to the surrounding features and tried to pinpoint where they might be. Trying to correlate what he was seeing in three dimensions, with the two dimensional maps was difficult but he guessed that the canyon area nearby was the Xelric Draw and that they should move North and hopefully be able to see Mos Espa or another town in a few hours.

Moving back to the hatch, Naruto proceeded to the lower decks of the crawler to wake and inform the others.

x-x

After a quick check of the palace and getting some needed sleep, Jango had set out shortly after the storm passed. He waited an hour or so to make sure that it had passed over Mos Espa, before heading out. The Jaster's Legacy was an old amphibious interstellar assault vehicle and had belonged to his mentor for decades before eventually coming into his possession. He wasn't even sure if it had any owners before that. It was beat up and considered 'ancient' by everyone that saw it but he had come to rely on it for some time and kept it as maintained as he could. Jango knew he should get a new vessel and hoped his bounty hunting would provide enough

'If I manage to get this bounty, I could afford a new ship.' thought Fett as he looked at the newly updated bounty that had been sent out to a select few that morning. The price had been increased and he knew what game Jabba was playing. With the lack of success, Jabba still wanted the bounty fulfilled and was willing to pay more to a certain few to get the job done. However, on the chance that someone else got lucky, someone that wasn't that useful or couldn't be useful to him, he could pay the original bounty amount to them and save the rest of the money. Providing multiple bounties was something that he had encountered before in his short bounty hunting career.

Passing numerous ships on his way to Mos Espa, Jango smirked as he knew something that they did not. Well...he knew several things that they did not. The first was that a rancor was loose in the palace or had finally broken out and his competition probably wouldn't find that out until it was eating them. The second was that the target was no longer in the palace and had managed to find some way to leave before the storm or during the storm.

Whether or not the target was still alive, he didn't know. There was always the possibility that the small group had been killed by any number of occurrences that could have befallen them in the deserts of Tatooine. Despite this, he still felt that the blonde was still alive. The third piece of information that he had and which the others apparently did not, was that the blonde was likely an assassin or at least after revenge against Jabba.

The boy certainly wasn't the first person to try and kill the Hutt. There had likely been countless attempts but he doubted they had been so close or done so much damage to the criminals operations or gang. It was really the only explanation that made any sense concerning the blonde teen, the droid, and the orange haired teen. Revenge against Jabba more sense than the group being assassins but he still couldn't seem to dismiss the hired-assassin angle. While amateurish, the blonde teen was deadly, well trained in combat, and had strange powers. A person simply didn't develop such abilities without specialized training that wasn't very easy to come by. He also didn't get a, 'I'm out for revenge,' feel when he had seen the blonde teen in the throne room of the palace.

With all of that in mind, if the blonde teen was an assassin, then the place to find him was not Jabba's Palace. Combing the desert for any signs of him was also foolish and a waste of time. If the contract was not fulfilled and if the teen wasn't backing out, then the place to find him was wherever Jabba was. Jango was confident that the teen would try again and so he aimed to find a good place near Mos Espa to land his ship and would proceed on foot to Jabba's Townhouse which was roughly in the middle of the city.

x-x

Getting off the crawler was easy as they just needed to open the loading ramp door and jump from the moving vehicle. Juugo was currently having polite conversation with the two dancers while Naruto and HK remained silent but were listening. The two dancers were sisters. Tann and Ann Gella were their names and they had only recently been sold into slavery.

At the lead of the mostly single-file line, Naruto noted that the dunes were beginning to even out and flatten as they neared the Xelric Draw. Looking through his goggles and on the lookout for any patrols, he relaxed slightly as he realized that Jabba's men and other bounty hunters would be looking for him in the area between Mos Espa and the palace. They were currently on the opposite side of the city from the palace.

The feeling was short-lived however as he heard the familiar nose of a starship. There wasn't time to find cover and there was also no cover to find as the ship moved overhead. Evidently they were of interest to the pilot as the small starfighter began circling their position. Naruto cursed as the pilot might recognize their group, even from that altitude. The only thing they had going for them was that they only knew his face and not their group, however HK and the two Twi'leks did stand out.

The ship broke the circle and accelerated away from them which caused everyone to relax. The group was thankful until the starship began making a very wide arc as it circled back. Now heading right at them for a strafing run, Naruto yelled, "SCATTER!"

x-x

After traversing a few dunes in the direction of the starship, Suigetsu was immensely thankful that he could now see the mountains he had come from which were behind him once again. The storm had apparently reshaped the dunes and the area he pulled himself out of seemed to be a depression with taller dunes around it, prevented him from seeing anything.

Back on track, he hurried up and down the large dunes as he rushed to get back to the ship. He had no idea when they were scheduled to leave and he had planned to be back on the ship by now. Reaching the crest of one of the taller dunes, Suigetsu saw a vehicle moving across the dunes and stopped to look at it.

It was a large brownish vehicle on treads that moved slowly away from him and to the northwest. Seeing as it wasn't headed in the direction he wanted, Suigetsu continued on for a few minutes until he heard sounds coming from up ahead and saw the same starship as before. This time however, it seemed to be attacking and firing upon something that was on the ground. Over the dunes, he couldn't make out what it was firing at but decided to get closer and investigate.

x-x

Running as fast as he could and jumping along the dunes, Naruto dodged laser fire from the ship. The last few shots struck the sand near him and the impact sent him rolling down the last small dune that gave way to the flat canyon. Protecting himself from pieces of molten glass that rained down near him, Naruto extended his senses to search for the others but they had each gone a different direction and were outside of his range. Running along the very wide canyon floor, Naruto unsealed a discblade and kept his eye on the starfighter as it circled around to come back for another run at him.

Stopping on the flat sands, Naruto readied himself and the discblade for a throw. The small starfighter was likely rayshielded and protected from any energy weapons fire, not that they had any weapons that could actually damage it. It was very unlikely that it had particle shielding to protect it from physical objects, which meant that his discblade would pass right through the shields.

The starfighter descended as it moved past the edge of the canyon and into the wide basin and Naruto could hear the sound of the ship getting louder. Waiting until it came within range and could not dodge, Naruto fought the urge to move and stayed where he was. The ship began firing at his position, with the shots missing and impacting the sand not too far away from him.

Pulling back, he let loose the discblade and used the Force to guide it at his target. As more blastefire rained down on his position, Naruto focused on controlling discblade as he went through seals for a jutsu. "Shuriken Kage Bunshin no jutsu," he said as another pair of laser cannon shots struck right near him.

What had been one discblade, became ten and the pilot of the starfighter attempted to avoid the projectiles by banking hard to starboard. Despite having perfect control over two discblades, Naruto struggled with ten and was only able to focus on three of the discblades with two striking successfully into one of the crafts wings.

Spiraling out of the control, Naruto retrieved the real discblade from the thrown group while the ship crashed with a loud thud out in the dunes he had just run from. Naruto felt the impact and the second he caught his discblade, sprinted to the crash.

The others were just moving into his range when he reached the craft and began going through handseals for a water jutsu. The crashed ship was starting to smoke and he didn't want to draw unwanted attention. Rising smoke could attract the attention of any patrols or predators from miles away. Once he had finished dousing the craft, the cockpit opened and a Weequay brandishing a blaster took aim at him. Using the Force, Naruto yanked the man forward, removing him from the cockpit and toppling him over the fuselage. Landing hard on the sand and before the man could get back up, the blaster was pulled from his hand. When he looked up, all he saw was a swift moving boot before everything went black.

'I think its a Z-95 Headhunter.' Naruto idly thought while the others came to look at the crashed ship. Pulling himself up into the cockpit, he checked the status of the ship. It would certainly never fly again, what with missing an entire wing, but he wanted to see if the man had sent any messages. 'Not for at least five minutes.' he noted and was satisfied that he didn't have to worry about someone else coming to collect on him in the meantime.

Taking a moment to gather his thoughts, Naruto tried to determine what to do next.

"I need him alive for the moment." Naruto said out loud but with his eyes shut in contemplation. HK-47 removed his blaster rifle from the back of the Weequays head and Naruto ignored whatever the droid muttered in response.

The problem he was trying to deal with was what he should do about the bounty. It was something he had been thinking over before getting some sleep earlier in the morning and it had also been on his mind after getting up. He could only think of a few possible paths for him to choose. He could simply do nothing and leave Tatooine once getting back to the Vulture. That however was not the best scenario that he had come up with.

Going straight to Jabba, he could force the Hutt to rescind the bounty but his feelings on that were that Jabba would either refuse or agree and then put a higher bounty on him right after parting ways. Killing the Hutt was still one of the best options. The only other course of action was to fake his death, which would be incredibly complicated and require coercing someone to take his corpse or some other evidence to Jabba and collect.

Jabba had seen all of them.

"Observation: Someone is coming from the South." HK announced and Naruto opened his eyes. Leaning over the side of the cockpit, he looked out over the sand and saw someone making his way over to them. The person was waving some kind of weapon that looked similar to what the Sandpeople were known for carrying.

Pulling down his goggles to get a better look, as the man was outside his sensing range, Naruto was about to say something when another voice cut him off.

"Statement: Sandpeople. Such an annoyance, but amusing to kill." and without another word, the droid took aim through the rifles scope and fired once.

Zooming in on the figure, Naruto watched as the blaster bolt pierced the person's chest and the man dropped. Stunned slightly at the events, Naruto watched silently as the person that should have been dead, raised a clenched fist and extended a single finger in their direction.

With the derogatory gesture completed, the group could just make out words traveling over the sand. No doubt it was yelled out at them but over the distance it came as no more than a normal speaking voice, "You stupid mother fuckers!"

"Oh, it was Suigetsu." announced Juugo as he recognized the voice. The two Twi'lek turned to him and wondered why he was so blase about the person that had just gotten mortally injured. "He's gonna be pissed for a while over this." Juugo added and Naruto went back to his contemplation as he leaned back in the pilot's seat.

'Jabba hasn't seen Suigetsu.' Naruto idly thought and expanded on that statement. Looking to the ship's controls, he looked for the readout that would tell him about the ships current load. 'Still one in the tube, ready to fire. Its a good thing he didn't use that against me.' he noted and began planning a contingency in case his newest thought backfired.

Getting out of the cockpit, he moved forward on the fuselage and began moving the sand away from the side of the ship with his hands to get access to what he wanted. Taking his sword out, he began cutting a large, horizontal L-shape out of the side of the ship's hull. Using the Force, he peeled back the metal and exposed the internal structure and systems of the ship. While Naruto looked over the insides of the ship, Suigetsu walked up the group.

"You friggen shot me! I would have expected that from Karin and possibly Tayuya, but not from you." Suigetus said to HK while pointing his finger and the droid continued to look at him. Ann and Tann both stared at the teen before them in shock as they both thought he should be dead. The burn hole through part of his tattered cloak and purple jumpsuit underneath was clearly visible.

"Curious Statement: You're not dead."

"Whys the hell is that a 'Curious Statement?'" demanded Suigetsu.

"Response: I didn't miss. Are you about to die and currently in agony? I could end your suffering?" offered the droid and he pointed his weapon at Suigetsu again but was stopped by Juugo and both Ann and Tann.

"Naruto, I thought you said that droid couldn't kill us?" questioned Suigetsu and Naruto responded while trying to extricate something from the ship, "You were too far away for him to tell it was you and not a Tusken Raider. Next time don't wave around that weird looking weapon."

"So if tomorrow I started wearing different clothes and maybe a funny hat, he might take the opportunity to shoot me again?"

Naruto didn't dignify the remark with a response but instead said, "Somebody take this." as he held up an object over his shoulder. Suigetsu was actually the closest and moved forward and snatched what Naruto had been holding.

"Damn, this is one big ass firework." commented Suigetsu as he looked the missile over and held it without a care in the world. When he turned to the others, they all looked at the item with some fear and trepidation. Getting an idea to get back at them, Suigetsu turned to them and said, "Oops." as he purposefully let go of the object and then grabbed it before it touched the ground.

The four in front of him had all been completely shocked when he had dropped it and three had been on the verge of running away before he had grabbed it.

"Heheheheh, just kidding. What's the matter with you guys?" questioned Suigetsu at the looks of fear as they began taking a few steps back.

"The warhead tip on that 'big ass firework' has more than enough explosive yield destroy this starship and kill us as well, if it exploded." Naruto said as he removed a few more items from the ship, mostly circuitry, and nothing like the first item.

Staring at the concussion missile with a new and informative understanding of what it was, Suigetus instantly began moving to the others and offering it, "Someone else take it."

The others backed away as many steps as Suigetsu took forward and kept shaking their heads.

"Oh come on!" Suigetsu said as he looked towards HK, "You just shot me a minute ago. You owe me metal-man."

"Statement: You volunteered to hold it, Meatbag. Perhaps you should go play with it a few hundred meters to the South."

A small smirk formed on Naruto's face as he knew the concussion missile wasn't armed. It could still be set off with an explosion but it wasn't something that Suigetsu could accomplish unless he shot at it with a blaster. Getting the rest of the useful items from the ship, he turned to the others and told Juugo to head on out ahead of them with the dancers.

Taking the concussion missile from Suigetsu, which the white-haired teen was thankful for, Naruto sealed it into one of the few remaining storage seals that he had left. Looking to the body, Naruto bent down and began examining the man's head. He found where Jabba was staying in Mos Espa and got a better understanding of where they were and where they needed to travel in order to get back to the city.

'That's a big compound and a good amount of new guards have been hired since the incident at the palace.' Narutuo gleaned as he looked through the man's knowledge of Jabba's Townhouse and recent events. Though Jabba did not stay there very often, it was where the Hutt kept his large luxury space yacht, the Star Jewel. It was the only ship that he took off planet and was primarily used to take him back and forth from his Palace on Tatooine and his luxury tower on Nar Shadda.

Jabba had people combing the desert looking for him, but only a few starfighters had been sent out to look over the areas to the West and South of Mos Espa. The majority were to the East of their position and he hoped it would stay that way. In addition to the people currently after him, Jabba had more on their way to the planet. His forces on Tatooine were just a small contingent of his over criminal empire and that didn't even consider what would happen if the Hutt got his clan involved.

Taking his hand off the man's head, Naruto went to the arms and motioned for Suigetsu to take the legs. Getting the man back into the cockpit, HK was readying his blaster when Suigetsu snapped the man's neck as he couldn't use his sword in such a position. Turning to the droid, Suigetsu smiled at the droid, who only glared back at the teen for taking the kill from him.

Following in the footsteps of Juugo and the Twi'leks, the three were silent until Suigetsu began to start up a conversation. "So, who are the two blue girls?"

"I believe one is named Tann and the other is Ann, though I can't say for certain which one is which." answered Naruto.

"And...why are they following us?" Suigetsu got to the point of what he really wanted to know the answer to.

"Juugo." was Naruto's response and Suigetus laughed as he understood what Naruto was getting at with such a seemingly vague statement.

"They seem to really like Juugo. Guess it's because they haven't seen him transform yet."

"Actually I think they have seen him in that state, and seen more than that about us." admitted Naruto.

"What are we gonna do?" asked Suigetsu seriously and Naruto waited before replying, "...I don't know yet." There was a silence between them as Naruto contemplated his answer and HK chose not to join in the conversation but still to listen to them.

"Sisters?" Suigetsu asked, trying to break the silence.

"No they just happen to have the same facial features, skin color, and have rhyming names." was the sarcastic reply from Naruto.

"On edge a little?"

Handing Suigetsu his datapad, the white haired teen looked over the information that was displayed and found himself looking at Naruto's bounty.

"Shitty picture." Suigetsu blurted out.

"That's about the only good thing about it." Naruto admitted with a sigh as he took the datapad back.

"He's gonna electrify you when he finds out about this." thought Suigetsu out loud concerning Plagueis' reaction to the bounty.

"Not if I can fix the problem before I see him." answered Naruto.

"You got a plan?" questioned Suigetsu with renewed interest.

"How would you like to become a bounty hunter for the next few hours?"

x-x

Cycling through frequency channels and listening to everything that he could, Plagueis continued to wait for a message or response from his student. From what he had gathered listening to the various channels, no one had yet to claim the bounty so Naruto should still be trying to make his way back to Mos Espa or one of the other spaceports on the planet.

There were two ways that his student was likely to get in touch with him. Naruto could send a message over one or multiple channels and hope that he was listening. They could then converse on one channel and use a variety of codes or even a different language. The second method was to send a direct signal to the ship. Sending a coded message over one or multiple frequencies was likely the best choice as anyone could hear it and that meant it was more difficult to find the intended target of the message if the code could not be broken or figured out.

As the communications equipment switched from channel to channel, one voice caught Plagueis' attention. Stopping the cycling, he went back to the channel he had heard Naruto's voice on.

Naruto was repeating a single phrase over and over again. It was a short sentence that immediately caught his attention as it was in Sithese, "Student looking for Master." Naruto repeated and Plagueis was about to respond when he remembered that his current body could not speak in Basic, 'But it can speak in Mustafarian and the droid is with him.' he realized and responded.

There was a long pause on the channel, as no doubt Naruto was deferring to the droid for a translation to determine who had responded and what they were saying. A response soon came in Sithese, "Problems with negotiation. What is your location?"

"Outside your location." responded Plagueis as he guessed Naruto was currently in Mos Espa as he knew that was where Jabba was. "What about the bounty?" asked Plagueis and he awaited Naruto's response on the matter.

"Working on it." Naruto responded and Plagueis was unsatisfied with the answer, "You have a strategy for removing the bounty from your head?"

"I have Suigetsu." came the reply after a small pause for the translation from the droid.

Plagueis was rather surprised at the statement. He had no idea that Suigetsu was not on board and no one had mentioned to him that the teen had left. Turning to Tayuya, who had heard the mention of Suigetsu's name and was dreading a conversation with him, Plagueis asked, 'And when were you going to mention that Suigetsu was not on board?'

"I forgot." admitted the redhead and though he knew she was telling the truth, he wondered if she had remembered, whether or not she would have told him.

"Will you return to the ship when you are finished?" asked Plagueis as he figured out what Naruto was likely up to.

"I'll need a skiff if everything goes well." responded Naruto and Plagueis was quick to ask another question that was on the forefront of his thoughts, "And if everything does not go well?"

"I'll find my own transport." Naruto concluded and both knew the conversation was over.

Plagueis sat back in the pilot's seat for a few moments to absorb and review the new information. He soon got up and headed back to the medical bay. A few hours previously he was completely immersed in the success of his old experiment but he had dropped everything after speaking with Tayuya.

'We need to acquire more secure communications equipment.' decided Plagueis. The normal equipment that they had was proving to be woefully inadequate. What they really needed was secure, military-grade equipment. He had an idea where and who to get it from. The next planet on their journey should provide what they needed. He hadn't wanted to go there but it seemed like the best place after the current events.

'Perhaps I can also acquire some monitoring devices for here as well. I'll need to closely monitor the experiment if I am not able to involve myself in his life at this point.' he decided and tried to determine what he would need as he shut himself into the medical bay. He however decided against locking the door or disabling the intercom system.