"I don't trust those guys working on my ship when I'm not there to see what they're doing," Han said as they headed back down to the lower levels of the ship, "They can't even get those dumb droids right," something occurred to him and he immediately stopped, his boots squeaking as they dragged against the floor. The sudden halt caused Charon to bump into him square between the shoulder blades. He turned towards her and asked, "Earlier I saw some humanoid droids with synthetic hair, exactly what're those for?"
"Trust me," Charon grimly shook her head, "You don't want to know."
"What?"
"It's a new concept they've come up with," she said, "and apparently it's a booming industry."
"What's that?"
"Artificial mates," Charon answered.
The look on Han's face matched his voice perfectly as he exclaimed, "Oh that's disgusting. What the hell's wrong with people?"
"I don't ask questions, I just haul the freight," Charon told him.
From somewhere nearby they heard what sounded like one of the droids exploding and Han snorted, "Sounds like another bang-up job."
Charon let out a small laugh at his comment, then they heard another sound, this one sounded like a blaster shot, and the blood freezing sound of a wookiee's distressed scream.
"Chewie!"
The two took off running through the corridor and came back to the room where the droids were in the process of being repaired, and both their eyes widened at the unsettling sight of Chewbacca standing in the middle of the room, his mouth wide open and teeth flaring in a silent howl, and he wasn't moving.
"What happened?" Charon demanded to know.
One of the scientists explained, "One of the droids malfunctioned, we've been working on an improved R2 model that could serve as a concealed weapon, nobody expects blaster shots from a droid."
"What?!" Han was about to hit the ceiling.
"It blasted him?" Charon couldn't believe what she was hearing.
The young scientist stood his ground and forced himself to be calm and clear as he explained, "We got lucky, the control was only set for 'stun', I'm terribly sorry, this shouldn't have happened."
"You're damn right it shouldn't have!" Han got in the man's face and was about to rip his arms out of their sockets himself, "What the hell were you thinking?!"
Charon stood in front of Chewbacca and held her arm up high and waved it in front of his face. Every feature was perfectly frozen, nothing moved, nothing reacted.
"Oh boy that's stunned alright," Charon said as she put her arm down, "how long is he going to be like this?"
"I...don't know," the scientist answered, "we've never used it on a wookiee before."
"I'm gonna-"
Whatever Han was 'gonna', he didn't get the chance to explain. Alarms started beeping and blaring and he looked around trying to figure out what it was. Charon ran to the cockpit to see what was going on and realized they had company coming. She left the controls on 'auto-pilot' and ran back to the center of all the commotion.
"I hate to interrupt one disaster with another," she said, "but we've got company coming."
"Who?" Han asked.
"Jabba's cruiser," Charon answered.
"WHAT!?" Han yelled at the top of his lungs in disbelief, his eyes as big as possible.
Very calmly Charon told him, "Don't panic."
"WHO'S PANICKED!?" Han screamed at her, the expression on his face making it clear he was completely unaware that he was doing it.
Chewie stunned by some warfare droid and Jabba on the way, one of these or the other he could deal with, but both at the same time? His mind was in a scramble and couldn't even tell which way was up now.
Charon remained stoic as she told the smuggler, "Get down below to the hold and stay with the ship, I'll handle him."
"Are you nuts?" Han asked, "That's going to be the first place he looks."
"Just get down there and leave Jabba to me," Charon said as she took one of the experimental blasters out of her tunic, "I'm going to fix him once and for all."
"Hey hold it!" Han grabbed her by the arm, "you can't do that, if it works, you're gonna be dealing with someone worse than Jabba once he's dead, and if it doesn't kill him, by the time he's finished with you you'll wish it had."
"Trust me," the woman told him, maintaining a nonchalant expression but close to gritting her teeth. "Get down to the storage hold and stay there, I'll handle Jabba."
"But Chewie-"
"GO!" Charon screamed at him.
Han knew there was no arguing with her, and even though every nerve in his brain was yelling at him to stand his ground instead of leaving her to face Jabba alone, he did what she said and hightailed it down to the bottom level of the ferry.
The door closed behind him almost immediately as he entered the room. He glanced around and saw the place was empty, except for one person.
"Hey," he walked over and saw it was Kroob, the kid who'd been helping navigate the ship earlier.
The young man had been bent over working on something, at the sound of the smuggler's voice he straightened his spine and turned around, "Oh, hey."
"Your captain suggested I stay down here for the time being, we got some unwanted company approaching who'd like nothing more than to disembowel me," Han said.
Either his reputation preceded him or this wasn't the first time Charon had any such passenger, the kid merely remarked, "Okay," as if it was completely normal.
Charon's voice rang out in the room and Han looked around frantically, he knew Jabba would search the hold, "They're coming down!"
Kroob shook his head and pointed, "No, that's on the monitor, we can hear what's going on up there but they can't hear us."
"What?" Han looked and saw a comm screen on the wall showing the events taking place upstairs. "Oh," he let out a heavy sigh of relief.
He watched the screen and saw Charon turn the corner with somebody walking beside her. It was one of Jabba's bounty hunters, but he didn't see Jabba anywhere in sight.
On the monitor Charon asked the hunter in a very cynical tone, "What's Jabba got his fat in a bunch about now?"
Han snorted. Charon was definitely from a whole other galaxy, and she'd always had a very different way with words. Add to that she had picked up the dialects from several other galaxies from the passengers she hauled back and forth, when she decided to speak her mind, it was an experience unlike any he'd ever known.
The remark was lost on the bounty hunter who simply answered, "He suggested you reconsider his offer to bring in Han Solo, the reward for his capture is substantial."
"Jabba is going to have to take a number if I find Solo before he does," Charon told him. "He and I go a lot further back and we've got more history-"
Han turned to Kroob and nodded towards the monitor, "You ever seen her do this?"
"Do what?" Kroob asked.
"Watch and learn," Han said, an amused smirk on his face.
Knowing Charon as well as he did, he knew the one thing she could be counted on above all else, was to prove confusing as all hell when she went off on a tangent, which she could do at will when it served the situation. Her theory had always been why blast somebody when you could just make them sorry they ever came? And that was something she was exceptionally good at.
The two men watched the monitor as Charon was off and running with it, complaining to the bounty hunter, "My mother always told me never get involved with a Corellian, especially a smuggler Corellian, pirates and gypsies, that's all they ever were, she said, no good the whole lot of them, she said, but did I listen to her? No! That was my mistake. Of course my mother loved him, because I convinced her he was a human/droid hybrid, she was thrilled because that meant no breeding..."
If Han had to guess, he'd wager Kroob didn't even have any idea what she was talking about, it didn't matter, her tirade was reducing her substitute navigator to laughing so hard he could hardly even breathe, and he wasn't far behind the kid. Han knew the levels of the ship were soundproofed from one another save for the comm system, and he was glad for that, otherwise they would've been found out very easily.
Charon hardly even seemed to take a breath as she told the bounty hunter, "That son of a space pirate owes me alimony and I'll sooner take it out of his own hide before I take money from Jabba, and you can tell him I said so."
Han and the kid fell against each other laughing. He almost felt sorry for the poor bastard Jabba sent aboard, he'd seen her in action like this plenty of times.
Han then realized that Jabba hadn't just sent one of his men aboard Hades, the picture changed as they heard another one yelling, "Solo's aboard the ship, we found the wookiee!"
Charon marched over to where Chewie stood still frozen and addressed the rest of Jabba's goons, "Jabba's got some real geniuses working for him...are you all this stupid naturally or is it part of your training?"
"Would you care to explain this?" the bounty hunted gestured towards Chewbacca.
"I have a better idea," Charon said, "Has it occurred to any of you that if this were a live wookiee, he would have already ripped all your arms out of your sockets and beaten you to death with them?"
Clearly it had not, and they started quietly murmuring to one another.
"What is it you're saying?" the bounty hunter asked.
"He's stuffed!" Charon told them. "Haven't you ever seen a taxidermy wookiee before?"
They all started looking Chewie up and down as this newfound thought intruded in their brains.
"You don't mean to say..." the bounty hunter sounded a bit nauseated, "you did this yourself?"
"Yes I do, that's my hobby," Charon answered without missing a beat, "At home I got a couple wookiee cubs I skinned and made into a pair of matching slippers."
Han and Kroob both about fell to the floor, each hitting the other in the sides and laughing harder than either could remember, they could hardly breathe, after a while they couldn't even make any noise. On the monitor it was slowly becoming obvious Jabba's men were very hesitantly starting to believe this.
"You tell Jabba he better hope he finds Solo before I do," Charon told them, "because when I get my hands on him, he's going to be the next thing I skin and stuff. Now get the hell off of this ferry."
They left the ship in an orderly fashion, not quickly but truth be told, all probably eager to leave before she decided to try doing the same thing with any of them.
Down in the storage hold, Han and the kid had composed themselves, Kroob collected his tools and started back to work.
"Interesting captain you got," Han said.
"So I'm learning," the kid replied, then thought to ask, "What's 'taxidermy'?"
"I don't know," Han shrugged, "Something she picked up from the locals in another galaxy. Sometimes I think she doesn't even know half the stuff she says herself."
A few minutes later the door to the hold opened and Charon entered. Han slowly applauded and told her, "I'm sure Jabba'll be scratching his head for some time over that one."
"Somehow I don't think he'll be approaching me for help again anytime soon," she replied.
"What about Chewie?"
"Still stunned," Charon shook her head, "I'm not sure if it's lucky or not that he didn't come to while they were aboard and start killing the whole lot of them."
"Probably better for us he didn't," Han said as he followed Charon out of there, "between him and Jabba, I don't want to put money on who'd win. Oh hey, Charon."
"Yeah?"
"What's 'alimony'?"
She shrugged, "Beats me."
Han laughed.
Chewbacca snapped out of his stunned condition as the second half of of his howl from earlier resumed as if nothing had happened, and was ready to destroy the droid that had attacked him.
Han was beaming from ear to ear as he saw his friend back to normal and went over to him, "Good to have you back, Chewie, how do you feel?"
The wookiee let out another whining-not-whining sound in answer.
Charon had heard the commotion and came up to the giant fur ball and hugged him, "Hey Chewie, sorry about the rough treatment, you okay?"
He snorted in answer and patted her on the back with one of his huge hands.
"You really missed the excitement, Chewie," Charon told him, "Jabba's guys paid us a visit."
The wookiee snarled defensively. Han's eyes widened in response as he told his friend, "Oh you were right in the middle of it, Chewie," he started laughing and said, "you left quite an impression on them."
Charon started laughing as well at the memory of it all.