A/N: Okay, thanks for all the reviews! I'll probably be updating once a week from now on, since I also have a lot of things to do in real life (I'm moving, plus it's my hectic last year at home). Inspiration was high this Saturday, though…
When Mara Jade found her sister in law lying unconscious on the floor of her bedroom, her first instinct was to check to see whether she was all right. When she realized that she had merely been knocked out, and from the looks of it, Luke had done it. She immediately ripped the covers off her husband.
"Luke!" She screeched. "Feeling a bit insensitive today?" The Jedi master opened his eyes, blinking rapidly as he shook the sleep from his head. "Huh?"
"You just hit your sister and you didn't even feel a thing?"
"Um…not really." Luke replied sheepishly. He got up and quickly force-lifted his sister onto his bed. "Do you want me to keep an eye on her?"
"Yes. She'll probably be having a blinder of a headache when she gets up. You might want to put this on her forehead to suppress it." She handed him a washcloth, probably filled with some sort of medicinal herb. Luke wrinkled his nose.
"Trust me. She'll be up in less than thirty minutes. Just keep an eye one her, okay?" She turned to leave. At the same moment, something crashed in the next room. "Oops," a small voice said. It was Ben. Again.
"Keep an eye on her," Mara repeated, and rushed out of the room.
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The twins had been trying almost all night to track their father. With computers at the stage they were in now, it had been pretty easy. All the twins had to do was to search through thousands of databases to see whether their father had landed in any of the spaceports scattered around the galaxy.
New Alderaan…to Corellia…to beyond…
Jacen was slumped over the keyboard already. Fighting the sleep from her eyes, Jaina continued to search. It appeared as though her dad hadn't turned up in any of the major planets. Nobody had seen him, not even the bounty hunters who were usually tracking him…
Suppose there was a tracker on the Millennium Falcon? Could she manipulate it from such a distance? Jaina remembered that after Chewy had died, she had bugged the ship with a tiny droid to assure herself that when he flew, her father wasn't going crazy with guilt (and to make sure he wasn't being distracted by his wife's presence as the new co-pilot, either). Was it still accessible?
She logged into her control panel and typed in:
Name: Jainaminusjacen
Password: LoveEwanMcGregor
It still worked! But why hadn't she changed her password after all this time, anyway? No matter now. She checked the status of her little bug, which was amazingly, still working.
"Jacen!" she hissed, pulling her brother from his slumber. "I'm in!"
"In what?" came the groggy answer.
"Okay, remember that tracking bug I put on dad's ship? I'm going to try and use it to find out where he is."
"Cool!" All signs of sleepiness disappeared from Jacen's eyes, and he joined his sister at the keyboard. "Ask it to locate the Falcon."
Jaina tried, she really did. All she got was a small pop-up and a red beeping signal.
'Too far from any information ports to compute location.'
"He wouldn't usually go that far. He must be in the outer rim-wait, now it's getting into range. He's going towards…Tatooine?"
"And why the Sith would he want to go there?"
Throughout all their excitement, Jaina and Jacen did not feel the shadow of a ship landing in the hangar bay. They did not hear the ring of the elevator, or the opening of the sliding doors until the last moment. At which time, of course, it was too late.
"What are you doing?" Leia asked. Exactly thirty minutes after Luke had placed the compress on her forehead, she woke up with her headache gone. A quick discussion with her brother had sent her back home immediately, to find the twins. Crossing the room, she tried to peer over their shoulders. Automatically, the twins pressed their backs against the screen, trying to cover up what they had discovered. However, Leia had already seen the hacked databases queuing up on the screen. "What's that?" She asked suspiciously. "Nothing," they replied at the same time.
Their mother remained unconvinced. "Also, where's Han? Your uncle said that he sent you two back to help him." Neither of the twins responded.
The look on Leia's face was far from thrilled. "Well," she sighed, "Since you have no reason to come home, and your uncle needs lots of help, maybe you should go back. I'll find Han."
"Hold on, we can help!" Jacen cried. "I mean, finding our brother is way more important than helping Uncle Luke."
Finding our brother? Leia froze. "Say that again?"
"You mean you didn't know that Anakin was missing?" Jacen asked in confusion. Leia shook her head, dropping her files on the floor. The situation was worse than she had thought.
"Okay, you two. Thanks for your help, but now I can probably handle this. I know your father better than you think."
"No really, mom! I mean, look at all this stuff we found out." Jaina gestured towards their findings. Jacen, suddenly realizing the trouble he had brought onto his mother, tried to hide them.
"That's very nice, kids, and I appreciate it. Now might be a good time to-hey, where did you get all that Spaceport information?"
Bummer. How could they answer this question? Their mom was already getting suspicious.
"That's it." She finally said. "From now on I'll take over this case. You two…well, since you're obviously biased towards your uncle's list of Chores, you can stay with the neighbors.
"That old man? Sheesh, he hasn't even had kids himself!" Jacen's mother glared at him. "I meant the other neighbor. She's nice."
"Oh, come now, she's even worse! Have you ever smelled her perfume? She uses it on every single thing in the house. It's like a mixture of dad when he's been getting high and Uncle Luke when he forgets to wash up-"
"Just go!" Leia ordered. "I didn't let you stay back here just to put up with your attitudes! I'll call her; I'm sure she'll understand. Now get ready." The twins sulkily obeyed.
After scanning her children's findings, Leia pulled her chair up and contacted her brother. "Luke?" She asked through the Holovid screen. "Other than the fact that Han is in the outer rim, what else did you hide from me?"
For a full thirty seconds, all she got in reply was the crackle of bad reception and her brother's corny, embarrassed grin.
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Han took the Blaster Guns out of the back of the ship, tossing one to Lando. "So, with the time we have, how many do you think we'll have to catch every day?
Lando counted on his fingers. "Hmm…we have about ten days to catch all those Womp rats, so our average quarry count per day would have to be…400.
Han gritted his teeth. All those furry little mammals, due by the last light of the twin suns. Had he been drugged, or drunk, or something when he had accepted the deal? He didn't think he had been, but just in case, he made a vow never to buy too many beers again. Slipping his gun into its holster, he nodded to Lando, and the two men set off.
After a while, Han spotted a Womp rat not more than a hundred yards away. Beckoning for Lando to come, he quickly ducked behind a jagged rock. The furry mammal jerked its head up to look around, but as nothing was to be seen or heard, it went back to foraging around in the dust.
Han squeezed one eye shut and cocked his gun. The Womp rat heard it. The blaster was fired.
After the cloud of smoke emerging from the ground cleared, Lando ran over to check whether the shot had been true. There was nothing there. To the east, a Womp rat was nimbly hopping away, its fur barely grazed.
"What the-"Han stuttered, "I mean, didn't I get it? But-"
Lando put a hand on his shoulder in an annoyingly soothing way. "But maybe those little creatures are faster than anyone expected. We might still be able to finish today's job if we work hard."
"Wasn't this supposed to be a get-rich-quick scheme?"
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"This is…nice." Anakin was adjusting his tunic in Mansa Musa's "flusher". It held a similar likeness to the dung pits he had often read about but never experienced. Until now, of course.
He attempted to walk around, but fell into a pile of mud for his trouble. The flippers that he had been loaned felt as artificial and as clunky as they looked. Mansa Musa entered, bringing with him a U-shaped band and a strange cone attached to a string. Upon seeing Anakin and his mud-covered clothing, he let out a loud howl of laughter.
"Oh, would you quit it?" Anakin said in an irritated voice, attempting to scrape the mud off his clothes. "Ehh, never mind da mess," the Gungan replied cheerily. "Itsa washes off when yousa go swimming. Now for da finishing touch," and with that, he slipped the horseshoe onto Anakin's head and strapped the cone on his face.
"Yousa now a hundred and one percent Gungan," he said, handing the teenager a mirror. Summing up his bravery-he would not allow himself to shout-Anakin looked into the mirror.
What followed was a loud banging noise, followed by several strangling gurgles and what sounded like the expulsion of mud from the mouth. Anakin was sitting on top of Mansa Musa, one hand next to his jugular and the other one scrabbling underneath his shirt. The eyes on the headband were crooked, as was the irregular, plastic snout. It wasn't as if he were about to kill the creature, though. Just give him a scare to pay him back for his trickery.
"Okay, okay. I won't do dat anymore. You hafta disguise yousen, though. I was just tryin' to help."
Anakin was still wary of the Gungan. He didn't like being made a fool of, and from what he had already seen of Mansa Musa, he was considerably immature. This time, he decided to let him go-for now.
"I'll be keeping an eye on you," he cautioned. "Now tell me, how would I be able to get out of here?"
"Da palace keeps a lot of Bongos in da reserves. Yousa have credits? If so, I borrow it for yousa."
"Actually, no, I'm a bit short on cash right now. Why do you think I have to get up immediately?" Anakin held his breath and waved his hand in the Gungan's face. "If you want, we could sign an agreement. You show me your…bongo now, and I'll come back with your money after a certain amount of time."
The poor creature completely submitted to the mind trick. "Sure, sure. Yousa make it up and all. Moi-moi is not a lit-turr-rated person."
After some grumbling on the Gungan's part about not knowing how to read tiny handwriting, Anakin managed to create a simple agreement that Mansa Musa could at least understand. "Okay," he said impatiently, "So now can you bring me over to your palace? It's getting boring here."
"Sure. Just remember to bring yousa items. Hurry, put on yousa disguise. And whateva you do, act like me!" Mansa Musa didn't even wait for a reply before he burst out and away.
It took a lot of struggling, but Anakin managed to get everything on straight and the contents of his bag organized before his guide disappeared from view completely. His lightsaber was hanging from his belt, wrapped in a water proof cloth to keep it nearby and safe at the same time.
"Hold on…sa, wait up!"
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Nobody likes to be shouted at. Since he was ten years old and rather a nuisance, Ben Skywalker had experienced this feeling many times. Today, he had felt it rather keenly, seeing as he had mostly been pushed around by the other students. Anger was something to be kept in check, he reasoned, but that didn't mean you couldn't expulse it every now and then.
After he had broken the lamp and was scolded yet again, he had moped around until he realized that Aunt Leia was talking with his father. Mostly about Uncle Han-probably he had gotten himself drunk or lost again.
Creeping after his aunt, he followed her down to the hangar bay, where her ship was docked. He was still in a bad way after his mother's lecture, and decided to give her a little scare. He was going to be with family, anyway…
Following his aunt into the ship, he silently tucked himself under a side table and kept himself hidden from view. Soon after, he felt the ship rock and start off. It took all his willing not to sprawl out over the floor.
Quite a while later, he woke up again. Everything was still. Was he there already? Cautiously, he stole out of the ship. Yes, this was where his aunt lived-but there were several apartments in front of him. Which one could it be?
'I'll try the first one,' he thought, and walking towards it, he pressed the button that would open the doors. When they opened, he stepped inside, immediately covering his nose from the funny smell of the floor.
The doors closed, and Ben was enclosed in the darkness. 'Please enter your desired floor number and password,' a screen read. They lived in number 283…so it would be floor 2. Password…uh oh.
Numbers started to count down on the screen. He had two minutes. If time ran out, what would happen? He activated his training lightsaber and ran it through the closure in the doors. Too bad its power was limited.
Maybe his mom was right and he really was useless. Ben kicked the doors, his only result being the increased rapidity of the countdown. He tried to think straight. What would his father have done?
It was only too bad that he wasn't at all like his father.
A/N: Just so you know, I do not like Ewan Mcgregor.