Leia and Luke snuck out into the city on their seventeenth birthday as they had a year before, tricking the guards and going to Oop's Shiny Dump, perhaps in hopes of seeing their lost acquaintances.

The pair saw instead a wizened robed man sitting in a corner booth who gestured to them both. "What is it that you wish?" he asked them.

"For my brother to get to fly a ship," Leia answered, crossing her arms.

"And you? You do not wish for jewels or the like?" the old man asked.

"I want my brother to get to fly a ship," she stated flatly. She narrowed her eyes.

"I have a ship that I can take you to and let your brother fly...For a price, of course."

"Of course," Luke and Leia echoed.


They went with the old man, young fools as they were, and with the pricks of swift needles they lost consciousness. The old man was Palpatine, and he had Leia frozen in carbonite and placed upon his throne room wall and an unconscious Luke placed aboard a snubfighter programmed to crash into the mountainside of Luke's home planet. Unfortunately for Luke, he awoke just in time to see the ground rushing up towards him, and then he was knocked into unconsciousness, and the first person who came across him could not get him to wake up.

When the king and queen learned of Luke's fate, they rushed to the hospital where he was being taken care of with the knowledge that Leia had also met her terrible fate. They cried out their son's name, but he was in a coma from which he could not be awakened.

After King Anakin realized he could not help his son but that he was lucky to have him nearby, he went to every on-planet smuggler and bounty hunter haven he could find, offering a great reward to any who could bring his daughter to him. But few wanted to personally face Palpatine even for great monetary compensation, and the king was growing desperate. He would go fetch his daughter himself, but Palpatine would know he was coming from lightyears away.

At last, the king caught a man smuggling contraband, and when he discovered the man's identity he was enthralled, for he had heard a lot about him. 'Han Solo' was a name known to many a law authority.

"I hear you are an honorable man, for a smuggler, and I can sense any deceit. Please, go get my daughter, and I shall release you and your first mate Chewbacca and pay you both great wealth." Trembling, Anakin held up a hologram of his daughter. He had to have her back...

Han Solo bit his lip in thought for a moment before he agreed. King Anakin looked at him in surprise, reaching out with the Force, but the smuggler was sincere. Mystified, the king readied him for his departure, insisting that he take with him two lucky droids to aid him.