(A/N: Aside from Boba Fett and Din Djarin (aka the Mandalorian), Bossk has to be my favorite bounty hunter in "Star Wars". I'm not entirely sure why exactly, I think it has something to do with the infamous "bounty hunter" scene in "Empire Strikes Back". Or maybe it has to do with him being underrated and I have a weakness for underrated characters.
This is (somewhat) inspired by the first couple of episodes of "The Mandalorian". Specifically, the first three or four episodes. At least, the first few chapters will be, then I'll just go from there.
I'm not sure how this will turn out since this is my first "Star Wars" story, but hopefully it'll turn out good. If I get something wrong or anything else like that, I'm sorry and remember that this is a fanfiction and that it doesn't have to be exact.)
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Many people go into the bounty hunting business for the money, others for the adrenaline rush that for some only happens once in a lifetime, but not Bossk. Bossk is in this business because it's in his blood.
His father, Cradossk, was a fierce bounty hunter known for hunting Wookies - their home planet just happens to be in the same system as theirs. He doesn't consider his father's reputation to be all that great as the people who talk about it think it to be.
His people, the Trandoshans, and Wookies have been at odds for as long as his home planet has been an arboreal world. He considers his father to be overrated and anyone who asks about him must have a death wish if they are trying to purposely annoy him.
He had come a long way from learning to steal and operate speeders in his younger days. He wasn't even twenty standard years yet and he was already a veteran bounty hunter and he was one of the best and fiercest in the industry.
His bastard father may be the one who jump-started his career when he was child, but he was the one who made a name for himself. A lot of people in this line of work have a hard time making a name for themselves and he figured that he should be grateful for his father for that, but he was his own person and this was something he earned for himself and no one else.
Bossk returned to the Bounty Hunters' Guild on Tatooine in his ship, the Hound's Tooth, after completing his last job. It had been a tough one, first he had to manhandle a hungry Zabrak on a killing spree, then he had to deal with a wild mudhorn. He heals quickly anyway, he just walked off the war injuries like nothing happened.
After everything he just went through, he could use a drink or two. It was practically a godsend from the Scorekeeper herself that the Guild was out of a cantina.
He immediately went to the bar counter and called out to the droid bartender, "Bantha-blood fizz." The droid made some beeping sounds and made his drink.
It slid a glass filled to the brim with the carbonated cocktail down the counter, which he caught easily. He drank it down in a single swallow and set it down on the counter upside down.
He was about to order another one before a voice called out to him, "Bossk!"
He growled and cursed under his breath and went over to a table where a young dark-skinned male sat at. He was Greef Karga, an agent for the Guild. He was just a little older than him, but not nearly as experienced in the bounty hunting industry as he was.
Just like Bossk, his father was the one who got him into the industry. Unlike Bossk, he hadn't been doing this his whole life, this was his first year on the job.
"Heard you handled that job like an acklay rustler," he grinned with a friendly laugh, but it only seemed to irritate him more.
"Cut the crap," he snapped. "Let's see the money."
He frowned, "Well, that's what I wanted to talk to you about. You're not getting the full reward."
He glared, "What? The reward for that psycho Zabrak's capture is ten thousand credits."
"If captured alive," he said. "Dead is only twenty-five hundred."
"Twenty-five hundred?" he repeated angrily. "That doesn't pay for fuel and do you know how far that backwater world was? Or what I went through to get there?"
He shrugged, "I'm sorry, Bossk, it wasn't until just after you left that I was informed of this."
"Don't give me that crap, Karga!" he growled. "Give me the money and another puck while you're at it. I'm going to need another bounty and maybe another drink to take my mind off this."
He said nothing and set a stack of five small silver rectangles neatly placed on top of each other and nine bounty pucks in front of him. He took the credits and put them into a pocket on his suit.
"Which one has the most pay?" he asked.
"Rathtar smugglers, all of the others are bail jumpers and runaways," he replied.
"How much?" he questioned.
"Twenty thousand," he answered with a slight shrug.
His expression went sour and his voice reflected that, "That's not enough for me. How are rathtar smugglers not worth more?"
He shrugged again, "Don't know. Don't want to find out. You?"
"Pass," he replied with a slight scoff. He then asked, "Don't you have anything better you can offer me?"
He was silent for a second before he said something, "Well, there is one. One hundred thousand credits, all in gold cubes."
"Let's see the puck," his interest now growing.
"That's just the thing, there is no puck," he said.
"What are you talking about?" he inquired. "Is this for a client?"
He nodded, "An anonymous client is offering big money for anyone who can locate an escaped slave."
He furrowed his scaly, non-existent eyebrows, "Big money for a slave?"
"I hear she's worth quite a bit and she's quite desirable," he said.
"She?" he repeated. "Our little escape artist is a woman?"
He nodded again, "I hear she's quite the special little girl."
"Special my ass," he retorted, "what else can you give me about the bitch?"
"All I can give you is the planet and her race," he responded.
He looked at a device on his wrist as the information was forwarded to him, "Rion, got it." He then furrowed his eyebrows again when he read her race, "Wait, she's a hybrid?"
"I guess so," he said. "Doesn't say exactly what she is, but if I had to guess, I'd say she's probably pretty unique for someone to be offering so much for her capture."
'Unique my scaly ass,' he mentally scoffed.
He got up to go back to the bar for another drink to take his mind off his anger. However, just as he was about to order one, Karga added something else.
"One more thing, the client wants her alive," he said. "They don't care if she's not in pristine condition, but they want her alive and with all of her body parts."
'Seriously?' he thought. 'They make it a point of saying that she needs all of her body parts?'
It was almost as if this client was stalking him somehow. After all, he's not exactly known for bringing his hunt back in one piece. He's also not known to leave them alive for very long either.
He went back to the bar, but instead of ordering a drink, he ordered an entire bottle of liquor. The bartender droid was a little reluctant, but the barrel of a blaster up against its dome took care of that.
He took the bottle and left the cantina and went back to his ship. He saw a few Jawas and even some Tusken Raiders around the Hound's Tooth, but his blaster solved that problem too.
He walked into his ship and stored his bottle in a safe place where it won't break. He went to the cockpit and prepared for take off.
He did a diagnostic check to make sure there nothing was wrong with the Hound. Once he was satisfied that everything was where it should be and working properly, he set a course for Rion.
Once he left Tatooine, he put it on autopilot and decided to get some unfinished work done. It would take a little while to get there anyway.
He went into the skinning room where he had a week-old corpse of a Wookie on the table. The smell was quite putrid, but he was used to it, it wouldn't be much of a problem anymore for much longer anyhow.
He took out some skinning tools and got to work on the corpse. He separated the fur from the flesh with surgical precision with the use of a blade that worked like a scalpel but looked like a straight razor.
Occasionally, he would accidentally cut the body and blood and other rancid bodily fluids would pour out like a river. This was definitely not a task for someone with a fear of blood or corpses, or can't handle the repulsive sights or smells. To him, this was second nature with a father who did the same thing and having done this countless times since he was young.
It wasn't long after he started this task that he finished. He cleaned the blade and scrubbed off all the blood and fluids from his hands and arms in the sink. He set the freshly finished pelt on a hook to dry with other drying pelts.
Now, all he needed to do was dispose of the body. Normally, he would remove the organs from it and start to butcher it for meat, Wookie meat is quite desirable, but it was far past its expiration date for anyone to want any cut of meat from it.
With that in mind, he wrapped a noose around the neck and dragged it to the airlock. He threw it into a small space like a ragdoll and shut the door. He pressed a button and it was sucked into the vacuum of space in an instant.
'Good riddance to bad rubbish,' he thought as he dusted off his hands and went back to the cockpit.
He sat down in the pilot seat and saw that he would be nearing the Kessel sector. It was where Rion, his designated planet, was located.
He figured that the planet itself wouldn't be too hard to find. It's a planet covered by forests - very much like his homeworld, Trandosha - and multiple moons in its orbit.
It didn't take very much longer for him to find a green planet with multiple moons in its orbit. His ship's navigator - and his gut instinct - told him that he had found his final destination: Rion.
He did another diagnostic check just to make sure that everything was still working properly and that there was no damage to anything that could have been caused by his ship accidentally picking up something that will eat at the wiring or metal. He found nothing wrong and pressed some buttons and flipped a couple of switches to prepare the Hound for landing.
He descended into the exosphere and braced himself for a bumpy descension through the multiple layers of atmosphere. Once he was out of space and into the sky, he searched for a place to land. He saw a cliff overlooking a beach - one of many on this planet - and decided to land there.
He landed on the slightly sloped platform and stood up. He grabbed together some equipment, including his favorite blaster, a Relby-v10 mortar gun, a flamethrower, and a basic blaster. He filled a canteen with water and grabbed some emergency rations. Now, he was ready to get hunting.
"Well, now or never, it's time to hunt," he uttered to himself.
He opened the hatch with the press of a button and walked out. Under normal circumstances he would take his speeder with him, but it was badly damaged a little while ago and he was yet to have it fixed. He walked off the platform of the hatch and stepped onto the ground, it closed as soon as he stepped off.
The touch receptors on the bottom of his feet were greeted by wet grass and rock. The ground was slightly cold and caused a shiver to go up his spine that seemed to carry throughout his whole body. He shook it off and got back to the matter at hand.
He went towards the edge of the cliff and took out an elongated, metallic object. It was sort of like a telescope, the only difference being that it can analyze any lifeforms that come into range and identify them. As long as they are the lifeform database of known sentient and non-sentient life in the galaxy.
He got down onto his stomach and held the telescope to his eye. It was a position much akin to that of a sniper in their nest. He could feel the cool wetness soaking into his yellow jumpsuit.
Hopefully when he gets down there to start his hunt the forest humidity will warm him up. It's not easy being cold-blooded sometimes.
He observed an area where the beach and the forest meet and saw some of the local fauna. His telescope identified them as salamanis, strong creatures that look like a cross between a lizard and a canine.
They have predominantly dark, coarse fur covering their backs and sides and slightly softer tan fur on the underbelly. They are very tall - easily towering over him - and have disproportionate limbs that are insanely powerful. However, their real strength lies in their jaws that are capable of crushing anything with a force of more than three thousand pounds. That kind of force along with two to three rows of razor sharp teeth makes them a force to be reckoned with. And probably the only animals that Bossk would definitely want to avoid on a planet he's not too familiar with.
If these creatures are probably the most dangerous animals on land on this world, does that mean that the escaped slave could have been killed by them? There was a good chance, but he's not about to go search their feces in order to find some proof of her demise. His instincts told him that she was alive and he wanted to find her and get that reward.
He continued to observe the salamanis and watched as three of them interacted with one another. One of them appeared to be biting at another and the last one simply watched. He thought that it was likely two males fighting over a female to determine who will be her mate.
He thought it was quite amusing to watch because his species was a similar way when it was time to have children. A female will watch as her suitors fight one another and the last one standing will mate with her until she conceives his children. That is unless he doesn't live up to her standards, it's not uncommon for her to have a list of traits she wants in her mate and if the last male standing doesn't live up to what she wants, she will reject him - sometimes by killing him - and another band of males will battle until she finds the one she wants.
He shook his head and thought, 'Women are so complicated.'
He mused that picky females must be on good terms with the Scorekeeper when they eventually pass on. He wondered how much carnage his own mother committed before she conceived him.
While he was absorbed in his thoughts, he was unaware of a group of salamanis scaling the rocky wall of the cliff. Size doesn't seem to matter in terms of speed in this case, they were just a couple meters away from him.
He looked away from the trio on the beach and decided to look down at the vegetation below and that's when he saw the salamanis closing in on him. They looked hungry and very angry that he was in their territory.
He grabbed his Relby-v10 mortar gun and started to shoot down on them. He was able to shoot off most of them, but the ones he didn't hit started to climb faster than before. He continued to fire down on them, but it was fruitless due their speed and the angle at which he was firing from.
He was able to shoot one more, but there were still two more that didn't seem to know when to drop. These were a pair of stubborn bastards.
No matter how many times he fired at them, they continued to climb towards him. Until, they finally made it to the top and as karma would have it, his mortar gun wasn't working. He only had weapons he wasn't as comfortable with to use now.
They overpowered him and he fell to the ground, his weapon flew out of his hands and settled some distance away from him. He tried to grab his other blaster, but it was difficult for him to do so and defend himself when they were biting and scratching him.
He clenched his fist and fired his flamethrower at them, but it seemed to do little since they are cold-blooded just like him. There was nothing else he could do now.
'Shit!' he mentally cursed.
How about that? A fierce bounty hunter like him taken down by a couple of animals that may as well be his ancestral cousins. If he gets out of this alive, this will be something he takes with him to the grave.
For a split moment, they got off of him in order to find a more lethal angle to attack him at. It was all the time he needed to grab the blaster on his waistband. It was only a stun blaster, but it was better than nothing. He shot one of them in the jugular and the other right in between the eyes.
He stood up wobbly and went to go get his mortar gun to finish these two once and for all. Walking was increasingly difficult for him at that point because of all the weight and pressure put on his legs when he was pinned down, but he will recover in no time.
He bent down with a grunt and picked up his weapon. They were beginning to recover from the blaster shot, he needed to take this chance while they were still incapacitated and dazed.
He put them in his sight on the scope of the mortar gun and put his clawed forefinger on the trigger. But he never shot them.
He fell to his knees and dropped his weapon on the ground. He hung his head and started hyperventilating, his vision was beginning to fade and a strong fatigue was taking over.
To make matters worse, the salamanis had recovered from their stunned state and were looking for vengeance. In his current weakened condition, he's completely vulnerable. The only bright side to this was that he wouldn't be in pain for very long.
They began to charge him at full power, he closed his eyes and braced himself for the final attack. The attack never came. They were less than a meter away from him when they suddenly dropped to the ground.
He struggled to lift his head, but somehow managed and saw two figures on the backs of what he thought were salamanis. One was tall, the other short, but that was all he could tell.
He thought he heard a voice ask him, "Are you alright?"
He was unable to give a response to this and fell to the ground in exhaustion. The last thing he knew, he was being lifted up from the cliff floor and securely strapped down to something.
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(A/N: This was a tough first chapter, believe you me. There are a couple of sections of this that are a little shitty and I apologize, but I hope you liked this nevertheless.
The salamanis are inspired by the eel hounds in "Avatar: the Last Airbender". Everything else about them are just things I came up with based on my knowledge of reptiles.)