"What about that waitress at the cantina on...what was the name...Tarfut, what about her?" Han asked Chewbacca the next day as they resumed their flight.

The Wookiee chattered as he cocked his head to the side.

"No not the one with 50 eyes, the one with the two mouths," Han answered, and added half nostalgically, "interesting girl."

Chewie grunted his answer with an accompanying shake of his head.

"Yeah," Han reluctantly conceded, "Can't really see her being mother material." He thought again, "what about that nurse at the sick bay on Flurm?"

Chewbacca howled his response, which didn't answer Han's question but instead posed another one.

"Yes that time I lost," Han nearly whispered the word, "that barfight. Nobody needs to know that part."

The response he got from his friend was also one he didn't want to hear, or relive.

He absently scratched a spot on the back of his head and came to the conclusion, "That's all of the women I can think of, so who else could we dump this kid on?"

The conversation was promptly broken up by alarms going off as the ship jerked from side to side, there had been no warnings, there was nothing showing in their path, Han was glancing from one radar to another, there was nothing out there, but it felt like something had definitely hit them.

Gwynplaine haphazardly stumbled into the cockpit and yelled over the noise, "What's going on?!"

"I don't know!" he answered in a rare moment of complete and panicked honesty, without even turning his head he told her, "get strapped in and I'll find out!"

He struggled to bring the ship back under control, all the while looking everywhere to see what had hit them, but all the screens and monitors turned up nothing. As far as he could tell, they were completely alone out there, but he wasn't going to risk traveling any longer than they absolutely had to in their present condition without knowing what happened, so he found a small planet nearby to land.

Chewy grunted something that even to anyone who didn't understand Wookiee, sounded ominous.

"Yeah," Han answered with some hesitation, "it is Pompeia."

"What's that mean?" Gwynplaine asked.

"It means we're not staying any longer than we have to," he answered as he lowered the boarding ramp. "Let's find out what's going on."


"What happened?" Gwynplaine repeated as Han and Chewbacca examined the damage to the ship.

"Something sideswiped us," Han answered as he felt along where some of the deflector shields had been ripped off, in the process, so had some of the ship's very exterior and a few circuits to boot.

"How? You said-"

"I know what I said," he snapped at her.

Chewbacca grunted.

"Yeah," Han replied defeatedly, "I guess it'd make sense someone else out there could jam their signals so we couldn't pick them up either." He grimaced at the damage and told his friend, "Go get the tools and we'll see if we can't do a patch job to get out of here. We'll give it a more thorough job later." He turned around and just about fell over Gwynplaine who stood right in front of him.

The redhead looked up at the smuggler and asked earnestly, "Can I help?"

Han Solo was very close to the end of his rope, and it showed by him answering with, "If you want to help, go find something poisonous to play with."

Gwynplaine didn't verbally respond but she put one balled up hand on her side and raised one eyebrow defiantly.

"Just stay out of the way," he told her in a slightly calmer tone.

Without a word, she walked around him and wandered away from the ship. He turned his head long enough to call after her, "Don't go far and don't get lost!" to himself he immediately asked, "Why did I say that?"

Chewbacca growled something at Han as he returned with the tools they'd need to do a rush job to get the ship fixed up enough to get out of there.

"I wouldn't worry, the odds of one of the volcanoes on this planet erupting while we're here are...well we'll be quick," Han said.

His big hairy friend grunted a snide comment as they got to work.

"What do you mean I should've let Lando keep the ship and I take the cigarette lighter?" Han demanded to know.


"Okay, Chewie," Han rapped his fist against the replacement shield they put on, "that ought to do it until we can actually stop somewhere, get the stuff put back and..." he turned around and looked around and didn't see Gwynplaine anywhere, "Now where the hell did that kid get to?"

Chewbacca made an uncertain sound.

Han pocketed his blaster and said, "I'll go look for her." Part of him was hoping he didn't find her.

Pompeia was known for many things, at times it could be a beautiful planet, parts of it were covered in tall green trees, other parts had lost them over the years, and some that remained were twisted and bent and scorched white. It could also be a dangerous planet...and Han found himself quickening his steps as he realized how much more dangerous it could be for a kid who'd never been there and didn't know about the hazard zones that were spread all over the land.

"Hey kid!" he called as he made his way through a heavily wooded area, looking every which way as he ran, "Kid!" He tried to listen for any response, but all he could hear was his heart pounding in his ears. Why hadn't he warned her about the-

A noise came out of nowhere, part of it sounded like somebody moaning, and the other part...Han couldn't identify it right away, but he knew it was something he'd heard before, but not often, he couldn't place it, but he knew it was bad, and he felt like the blood racing through his veins had turned into a million pins and spikes jabbing him.

"Kid!" he tried to follow the sound though it was already dying, he came into a clearing, and he stopped, his feet felt like they were welded into place, and the blood ran cold in his body at what he saw.

Gwynplaine was crouched down on the ground beside another body, a bloody body laying face down, and she stood over it gripping a knife in both hands, it was covered in blood up to the handle. She looked at Han but otherwise didn't do anything: move, make a sound, anything.

Finally Han felt his feet move, but slowly, dragging along the dirt ground, as if he had weights tied to them. He could see the man was dead, he could tell it was one of the planet's locals, human, or human-esque rather, similar to them, but not quite, the inhabitants all had a dark leathery type of skin and anytime they moved they scurried like animals which made them hard targets to hit with a blaster. And it looked like this one had been stabbed several times in the back, his blood pooled out of the holes and covered his body and the ground beneath him as well. Han looked at Gwynplaine, still crouched down, both hands on the knife, both hands covered in blood, and he felt like throwing up as he exclaimed in shock and disbelief, "You're a barbarian!"

The redheaded girl finally blinked, and with a partially stoic, largely unreadable expression on her face, said simply, "Thank you", as if she thought it was a compliment.

"What the hell did you do?" he demanded to know as he stepped over towards her, but didn't touch her.

Gwynplaine moved one foot to steady herself as she stood up, still clutching the knife, and answered, "He was going to shoot you...I was supposed to just let him?"

Han looked down again and saw a blaster laying beside the dead man. So, she was telling the truth, but still...it wasn't that Han was particularly moral about killing people who would kill him first, he'd done it a few times, but always quick, neat, with a blaster, it was a clean kill, this...he could hardly even stand to look at this, or at her.

"Where..." he couldn't even ask the question at first, he tried again, "Where did you get the knife?"

"It's mine," she answered nonchalantly, "gypsies are notoriously unwelcome people, I need something to defend myself."

So many different things were surging through Han Solo's body at that time he wasn't even sure which end was up. He lashed out and grabbed Gwynplaine by the back of her shirt with enough force she spun around in his grip, with his other hand he grabbed her by the back of her pants and forcefully walked her through the clearing as she yelled and screamed and struggled in protest. He still remembered his way around the planet fairly well, and when he saw what he was looking for, he tightened his two handed grip on the girl, picked Gwynplaine up so her feet left the ground, and threw her into a hot spring. She hit the water with a deafening splash and her whole body submerged for a few seconds before she floated to the top. There was no way she was setting foot back on his ship until the blood was washed away, he didn't want it touching any part of his ship, he didn't want it touching him. Gwynplaine choked and sputtered and rubbed the water out of her eyes, she looked at Han but said nothing, she was chest deep in the water and slowly walked over to the edge and pulled herself out.

"Why's the water so hot?" she asked. For no more than she'd been in there, her skin was bright pink.

"There's a lot of volcanic activity on this planet," Han told her, "that's one of the reasons why we're not sticking around."

There was a noise as someone else came through to the clearing and they both turned and saw Chewbacca heading their way, he howled when he saw Han.

"I found her, we can leave now," he said, "and not a minute too soon. This planet's more trouble than it's worth, between the volcanoes, the natives, and the-"

Before he could finish that sentence, a howling, deafening wind came up out of nowhere and blew with enough force that both humans struggled to stay on their feet. Chewbacca's howls were drowned out by the wind that was screaming like a banshee, the Wookiee managed to stay upright through the gusts, but not without his own difficulty. Han and Gwynplaine had been knocked to the ground and the wind continued to whip through their hair, their clothes, it felt like it would start ripping their skin open at any second. And then, after a few minutes, just as suddenly and inexplicably as it had started, it was over.

"-wind storms," Han finally finished his sentence as he got to his feet.

Gwynplaine also stood up, and very cynically commented, "I'm dry now, can we go?"