Boba Fett sped back to the cheap rooms he was staying in under an assumed name at top speed, or rather as fast as he could go without catching the attention of the local law enforcement. He brought the young "princess" that he had taken from the royal retreat into the 'fresher where the hair dye and skin darkeners were already laid out and ready for use. He carefully applied them making sure not to miss anything. If he was going to get Leia off planet, he didn't want a pale spot on her skin or a brown patch in her hair to give her away. Once finished, he surveyed his work. He idly noted that with the dye, the seemingly vast differences in appearance between the twins had all but vanished.
Now that his task was complete, he would have to go tell Luke to put his contacts back in because they would be leaving soon. He'd left Leia's eyes alone because they were brown, and went well enough with her current appearance. The blue eyes that Luke shared with his late father did not go well with his.
He felt rather nervous as he approached the spaceport, as this was the part of the mission he'd assigned himself that could very easily go really wrong. The facts that he wasn't wearing his armor, and that the ship he was going to take wasn't his were making him feel unusually vulnerable already, which made him feel uncomfortable, since he didn't like feeling vulnerable at all. He had one slight advantage in this situation though. When the call went out, the security forces would be looking for one child instead of two. He would have to act calm and hope everything worked out.
Upon reaching the spaceport he shifted the sleeping, well, actually drugged, girl to his left arm so he could get at the chips that identified him as Jaster Skirata and the twins as his younger siblings if he needed to.
"Idents please." A rather alert looking security officer said as soon as they reached the spaceport entrance.
He pulled the three identichips out of his pocket and handed them to the security officer, not letting any of the unease that was roiling in his gut show on his face. He'd committed a crime that would be punishable by death on just about any world other than Alderaan, and he was very close to getting away with it.
"These seem to be in order." the officer said as he handed the identichips back "Though, I must say..."
"What?" he asked, wondering what this delay would cost him. The liner to Bespin would be leaving soon.
"Well, you'll probably find this ridiculous, but you look almost exactly like the clones from the Clone Wars." the officer replied, studying him a bit more closely than he would've liked.
"It's not that ridiculous actually, I've been getting that alot lately. It seems that my mother's first cousin on her mother's side was the original. People didn't start noticing the resemblance until I reached my mid-teens." he lied smoothly, hoping that the officer would buy it and stop looking.
"Really, is that so?" the officer said, the suspicious tone in his voice clearly stating that he didn't believe it, and he was more closely studying the kids. "You know, come to think of it, your brother and sister don't look all that much like you."
He briefly wondered what he should do next. If the officer requested a genetic analysis, it would prove that he was completely unrelated to the twins. That, and that he was a 99.8% match to the clones that had been mentioned. The slight difference in DNA was due to the genetic tampering the Kaminoans had done to his father's other clones.
"Well, they're adopted. After Dad died, I decided to take care of them." he lied. Technically, every word he'd said was true as the Larses had adopted Luke, but they added up to a false statement.
"Really?" the officer asked only slightly mollified. "Then I guess you wouldn't mind speaking with one of my superiors."
He was then led to said superior, a middle aged man with graying brown hair and green eyes who upon seeing him did a double take, making him wince as he realized that he should have dyed his hair or something. He'd never really thought much about his appearance, as his face was usually hidden by his helmet, but it was causing him some serious trouble now. The wink he got from the officer he was led to confused him though.
"Skirata, huh?" he said as he looked down at the idents "I met your "Dad" when I was working Security on Corusc...er the Imperial Center."
"Really?" he asked, wondering if he was going to start paying for some crime his dad's friend had committed. Kal Skirata had played fast and loose with the rules when it suited him, and those "boys" of his had been no better. He had enough bad memories of Ordo to last a lifetime.
"Great guy." the officer said before turning to Luke and kneeling until he was at eye level with the boy.
"So Fi, what do you want to be when you grow up?" the man asked.
"A bounty hunter." Luke replied without missing a beat.
The officer laughed at this before turning to Leia, noticing that she was still asleep. He poked her, and she shifted slightly but didn't wake up. The officer's eyes narrowed at this.
"Parja's afraid of space travel, but she really wanted to see Bespin. I figured it would be best for her to be asleep until we were offworld and I could calm her down in our quarters so we wouldn't make too much of a scene. Getting on the ship to Alderaan had been a nightmare." he explained, hoping that the officer would buy the story.
"Ah. You wouldn't mind if we did a genetic comparison of those two would you?" the officer said. "We've got a missing girl that's about your Parja's age, and the family wouldn't be too happy if we let her slip by us."
"Not at all." he said, offering the child so the officer could take a genetic sample.
After a genetic analysis on the twins proved that the two of them were biological siblings, Fett was personally escorted to the liner headed to Bespin by the security officer who told Luke about the time a Republic Commando named Fi had thrown himself on a grenade, saving several people in the process, and how Kal Skirata had helped out in the hostage situation that Fi and his squadmates had been sent to help resolve. He wondered what that man would have done if he learned that thanks to his admiration of Kal Skirata's little band of misfits, he had let the missing "princess" slip right past him.
Once they were safely in his quarters aboard the liner, he gave the sleeping girl a sedative that would keep her out until they reached Bespin. The instant they reached Cloud City, he got his ship out of the long-term storage facility he'd had it placed in, and set off for the stars and possibly a bounty that would cover his losses in getting the young twins out of the hands of the Jedi.
One hour after entering hyperspace, he was awoken from his nap which had been the first sleep he'd gotten in nearly forty-eight hours by a brat who was screaming for her mother and father. He headed over to the bunk space that belonged to Luke, and now his twin sister Leia as well. Upon reaching the bunk, he saw that the girl was in the corner crying. Luke was on the other side looking uncertain as to what he should do. When she saw him, her eyes widened in fear.
"What are you going to do to me?" Leia asked as she tried to back even further into the corner she'd holed up in.
"Nothing." He replied, remaining in the doorway.
"But you're a bad man, and bad men hurt little kids." the child stated, staring up at him.
"I'm not a bad man. The man you call father was a bad man." He said, his anger at Organa over the man's complicity with the Jedi hadn't abated. The man could have easily taken in and cared for both children or neither for that matter if it had meant separating them, but he hadn't.
"My father is not a bad man!" Leia shrieked, her fear suddenly forgotten in the face of his accusation.
"You see that boy over there," he said, gesturing toward Luke who was silently watching the conversation "He's your brother, a-"
"No he isn't, I don't have a brother." Leia said cutting him off.
"Yes you do. When you were both babies, the man you call father took you away and left your brother to be given to people who hit him." he said, his anger at the Jedi rising once more. Neither child knew they had a sibling, and the Naberries never knew that Amidala's children had survived, all because the Jedi hadn't wanted to keep all of their eggs in one basket. Organa who was now also on his shit list had happily allowed the Jedi to tear the small family apart, just so long as he got a daughter out of the deal.
It was as he looked at the children who were now his responsibility, children who both feared him, one of whom humored him for fear of being hurt, that he realized how foolish he'd been when he'd gone through with his hastily thrown together plot. He had no idea how to take care of a child much less two, and the fact that he'd taken the both of them from families that they loved and cared for complicated matters. Then, there was the fact that using the children to get revenge on the Jedi would just about make him as bad as the Jedi who had taken them the day they were born.
Returning them to the families who had raised them was not an option, and giving them to their family on Naboo who were under the belief that they didn't exist would just place them back in the hands of the Jedi who would use them for their own purposes, that was if the Naberries even took them in the first place.
He could probably find Kal, and the two brats could become Fi and Parja Skirata in reality. Kal had been a sucker for kids that were caught in bad situations. He'd taken in six clones that were about to be scrapped after all.
When Leia had calmed down enough for him to enter the small space that housed the small bunk his father had made for him, which would soon need to be expanded to fit both children, he sat down between the children and began to tell them about the day they were born. Leia had interrupted once. He couldn't believe the crap she had been told about how her real mother had died. He'd seen the cut those damned droids had made, and was amazed that Senator Amidala had lasted as long as she did.
&!&!&!&
Obi-wan Kenobi had always regretted his actions on the day Luke and Leia were born, but the children were the last hope for the galaxy. At least the stronger one, Luke, was. This, and Luke's capture by Jabba's bounty hunter a couple months earlier had most likely been the cause of the dream he'd had last night. He had been sitting in the living-room of Senator Amidala's apartment. Across from him was a very familiar looking corpse, her eyes were lit from within by a strange glow and she spoke with a voice from beyond the grave.
"You knew I wouldn't give them to you." She said an accusing look on her face "That's why you did it, isn't it? Well, they're beyond your grasp now, and whether they save or destroy the galaxy is up to them. Nobody will use my children, not you, not the Emperor, nobody."
The scene had suddenly changed. He found himself sliding into a burning pit, there was someone in Mandalorian armor standing on a ledge above him, as he fell the man simply watched instead of trying to help. When he finally fell in, the man simply shrugged and walked off. The eyes behind the visor in the man's helmet were blue.
&!&!&!&!&
Kal Skirata who didn't move nearly as quickly as he used to, despite the fixed ankle, and who discovered a new ache or pain in one of his joints every morning thought that he was dreaming when he answered his comm which had woken him up in the middle of the night with its insistent chirping. Why else would Jango's brat whom he hadn't heard from in the nine years since Jango had died be calling him out of the blue?
He learned why else rather quickly. Apparently, the boy had gotten himself into trouble, and had wanted him to bail him out. For some reason that the boy claimed had to do with the Jedi, the idiot boy had kidnapped the Alderaani princess that was all over the news, and now that he had her and another kid he'd kidnapped, he didn't know what to do with them. Hence, the call.
He probably would have helped if bringing the children here wouldn't put his family including and especially Bard'ika and little Kad at risk. He had to weigh the danger toward him and his however against whatever assistance he could provide for Jango's brat, and Boba wasn't his, even though he could have been at one point long ago.
He gave the boy the only reply he could.
"You took them, they're yours." he said as he disconnected the call, and called for Ordo to change their comm code before the brat could call back.
He then got everyone up and told them to start packing for a vacation. If the kid came knocking, none of them would be home.
Edited on 3/13/2012