Hello, all!

SailorLeia: Thanks! I always thought that the EU neglected that side of the family relationship, so I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Mutley: Welcome! And I agree, any story that deals with H/L is better than the others. Thanks for reviewing!

LVB: Ha! Only one week! Welcome, and thanks for reviewing!

Sweetdeath04: Thinking always wastes time. (At least in Han's case . . .) Thanks, Sweetdeath04!

Starrunner: Thanks! And I waste too much time thinking – that was my wishful self injected into Han!

GreatOne: Ah, well I'd like to post it on Princess/Scoundrel, eventually. I'm taking baby steps! (I wonder if you'll still be reading after that awful challenge I gave you . . .) He he! Thanks, oh mighty Great One!

dm1: Our boys? Getting hurt trying to save Leia? Never! Thanks, dm1!

PrincessDaisy2: I'm trying incredibly hard to keep everyone in character, and I'm glad you've commented on it! And keep on laughing maniacally, as long as you let Leia seriously injure Prince Fabio eventually! Thanks for reviewing!

Thanks for all your wonderful comments and suggestions about the JC boards! They really did help me. Oh, and I found this very amusing: I took the word 'Angst' off of the summary of this story in chapter 7, and many, many more people reviewed. Fascinating, eh? Apparently people don't like angst very much . . . LOL. Thanks, everyone!

Now, off to our heroes as they . . . well, you know.

Han glanced around the bustling spaceport, baffled beyond words. This is a besieged planet. Where do they think they're going? He moved his eyes around the crowds, some sitting talking quietly, but most up and ambling toward an already large group poised in the middle of the terminal. Sharing a brief glimpse with Luke to let him know his intentions, Han reassured himself by brushing his forearm hold-out blaster with his other hand and sauntered toward the mob, acting nonchalant.

The group seemed to be congregated around a dirty, old, and worthless monitor displaying a woman in strange garb giving the local news. A second window showed a speeder chased by several authorities, and the crowd around the monitor was ooh-ing and ah-ing the chase. Han off-handedly complemented the driver's skills to himself, then decided that the mob was relatively harmless. Assuring himself that no authorities were watching him, he began walking through terminal to the eastern platform, where Luke hurriedly caught up, and the two began looking for a starting point for their search.

Leia was ready to jump the one guard she expected to encounter in the hallway to her cell, was prepared to face the three or four she anticipated in the back room of her impoundment, and could handle the two sitting in the speeder she fully intended to hotwire to escape.

That was certainly not what she encountered.

Okay, so this wasn't my brightest moment.

Leia had been significantly hampered by her barriers to the Force, fully feeling the affects of those stupid monsters in her cell. She'd not been allowed any sharp objects during her one-day imprisonment, had in fact been eating ration bars that necessitated no cutlery, and she couldn't exactly overpower the large men that traded off guard duty.

But they were idiotic and suicidal to underestimate her.

Using an old pipe she'd broken off from a corner of her cell, she attacked the guard that come in to take her to Hovett for some sort of conference, and had run until she had run into his partner waiting impatiently at the end of the prison quarter. Armed only with her bent and slightly deformed pipe, and still unable to properly fight without the Force, she had fought with only her bare strength. And in the end, it hadn't really worked.

I'm an idiot.

She's been wrestled against the wall with her back to the guard and harassed as only some simpleton minion could, when she'd conveniently found his blaster with her foot and flipped it out of its holster. Leia side-kicked the guard in the stomach, raced to the fallen blaster, and shot him in the shoulder.

Continuing through the escape plan, which seemed only to be presenting itself to her at a spur-of-the-moment notification, she had run until she found the back door she had anticipated.

With six guards grouped in front of it.

She's pushed into the door at a flying pace, almost ready to beat their barricade by pure force of speed, when one had grabbed her hair and stopped her in her tracks. He was easily overtaken with one shot of the blaster, as were the next two. The other three had, by that time, gathered their senses and trained their blasters at her. One she fell by a snap kick to the stomach, winding him enough to focus her energy on the last two. She had instinctually fallen to the ground, and bringing her leg beneath both of them forced them to their backs. She kicked one in the face, and used her momentum to somersault backwards and into a crouch position, firing off a slightly misaimed shot at the last guard. He fell, his face a disturbing mass of brain and tissue, and Leia had time enough to throw herself out the door.

The speeder bike she'd hoped would present itself seemed to be missing. She searched for one through the nearby alleyway, and only succeeded when she had run straight into the main speederlane of whatever city she was in. She had jumped into a small, one-person public speeder and forced the driver from his seat. Muttering curses of which she was sure Han would take pride, she'd called up the nav computer and found herself eighteen kilometers from the nearest spaceport. And then she pushed the speeder as fast as she could.

Somewhere in there the Force had returned.

And somewhere in there she had picked up three speeders in pursuit.

And between the stress of piloting a maniac course through the congested lanes of traffic and hiding her face from the news recorders that seemed to infest her general location, she felt a light turn on in the back of her mind. She resolutely ignored it and concentrated on her next mode of attack and escape.

"So, where to?" Han's voice carried over the bustle of the speeder traffic. They were stuck without a clear plan of attack. In full actuality, they had no idea where they were going and what they would do when they got there. Han did a mental inventory: him and Luke, who was a Jedi, with Han's hold-out blaster (he was deprived of the DL-44 at primary security) and Luke's lightsaber. Those aren't good odds.

He frowned.

Since when did I care about the odds?

Han glared at his companion, and froze. Luke had a faraway look on his face and his eyes were wide.

"Hey. What's wrong?"

Luke turned his startled eyes on Han and whispered, "I can feel her."

Leia was frustrated with the entire turn of events. She had picked up another two speeders in pursuit, and she was nearing the eastern platform without the slightest hint of a plan.

I'm stuck. She glanced back at the five speeders keeping her tail and noticed two of the Force-creatures in the open-air cockpit of one speeder. Blast! When will something go right?

Leia reconsidered after a brief period of high-speed contemplation. The pursuit had not opened fire on her yet, which she considered a small miracle. Although, as she further dissected this fact, she realized it probably had more to do with the civilians flying past.

Knowing she could at least lessen her pursuers if she took the first couple of shots, Leia turned a brief glance behind her and pulled the blaster's trigger. It was a lofty shot, missing by a fair margin, and Leia narrowed her eyes and concentrated. Using the Force, she split her consciousness in half, one piloting the speeder, the other forcing her blasts onto two of the following speeders.

Her shots were successful on both accounts. In the rear lenses on the dashboard, Leia saw one speeder crash into the side of a building and the other one plow down into a throng of people waiting on the side of the speederlane.

Two down, three to go.

Han had seen it coming a split second before the speeders flew past. The chased speeder raced by, swerving and ducking to miss the obstacles in its way, and the pursuit followed.

Except two.

One disintegrated into a side of a building. And the other dropped down onto a small crowd of fascinated bystanders notten metersaway from where Luke and he stood. He had winced at the collision and had a vague sense of flying debris, before Luke gasped and turned toward the crash.

Han couldn't see what Luke found interesting at the small encaged pet that landed a few feet away from the crashed speeder, but it was suddenly becoming imperatively clear to Han that they run. An official speeder crashes near us? We need to leave this party. Now.

Han grasped Luke's shoulder and to pull the kid back into an alley to hide when Luke turned to him. "I can't feel her anymore."

"You what?"

"I can't – "

A voice behind Han made him jump. "Master Skywalker, General Solo. How exquisite that you are here."

Ah, yes. Push the "Submit Review" button, you will. I have foreseen it . . .