Leia still couldn't believe that Han had been dumb enough to land the Millenium Falcon in the stomach of a giant space worm. But then again, it was partially her fault since if she'd been paying more attention to their surroundings, she could've warned him before he did so. She hadn't been, and they barely escaped from the worm's gullet. Actually, they'd barely escaped being crushed between the worm's teeth.
She thought Han's latching the ship onto a Star Destroyer was pretty neat. It was one of the less common tricks in the book, and worked on just about everyone but her dad. As they waited to drift away when the Star Destroyer they were clinging to dumped its garbage, Han reviewed the limited number of places they could go without a hyperdrive. There were very few places they could go, but Han had connections on Bespin, which was one of the options.
&!&!&!&!&
Boba Fett wondered why in the galaxy Darth Vader thought that Luke would be riding around with the smuggler turned Rebel general, Han Solo. The last he heard, Luke was headed to Dagobah to cause some chaos and destruction for some strange reason. He thought it had something to do with that little green troll of a Jedi master that he should've shot ages ago. Perhaps Luke had gone to do it for him.
While everyone else went on their little wild goose chases across the galaxy, he followed the Falcon as it drifted away from the departing Star Destroyers with the trash. He knew Leia was somewhere nearby, and he decided to call her to see if she wanted to help out with the hunt since he hadn't seen her in months. Sintas and Ailyn were on some sort of shopping spree on Coruscant for Ailyn's eighteenth birthday. He knew he would not bee happy to see his account balance when they got back.
When he finally reached his daughter, she sounded like she hadn't wanted to answer her commlink. When he heard the voice in the background he knew exactly why she'd been reluctant to answer. Apparently, she'd been hanging around the Rebel base in hopes of getting another bounty from them and somehow ended up needing to hitch a ride with Solo. He would have to find a way to get her away from the Imperials without them noticing when he led them to the smuggler turned General.
If Solo even looked at his little Leia the wrong way while she was aboard his ship, he would be floating around the galaxy in little pieces.
&!&!&!&!&
The Millenium Falcon landed at Cloud City on Bespin without further mishap. A dark skinned human male wearing a blue cape came out to greet them as they disembarked. After some posturing on his part, he happily greeted General Solo and attempted to introduce himself to Leia. Attempted being the key word. The droid got to him first.
"Hello, I am C-3PO Human Cyborg Relations. Please either state your business in five words or less or Fuck off. " C-3PO said as he raised a blaster to further drive his point home.
"Uh Han, this droid is..." Lando begain as he noticed that the blaster was charged and the safety was off.
"Threepio, stop that." Leia yelled at the reprogrammed protocol droid before apologizing to their host.
Lando turned and invited them inside where they all followed him on a tour that ended with them in the custody of Darth Vader.
&!&!&!&!&
Boba Fett felt like tearing his hair out through his helmet. He'd failed to get his daughter to safety before the Imperials had captured the group she was with, and now, he would have to find a way to get her back without upsetting Vader. Leia's former status as "Princess of Alderann" and her involvement with the Rebellion while she had been under Organa's control wouldn't help in this regard. The best thing to do at the moment would be to go with the flow and take his shot when the opportunity showed itself.
&!&!&!&!&
Darth Vader was somewhat confused. Luke wasn't on the ship as he had believed him to be. He had captured a pair of rather prominent Rebels though, which could be considered something of a bonus. Luke Skywalker being what he was, wouldn't fail to come to their rescue. He would have to hold on to General Solo and Princess Leia until his son came to him. He decided that he didn't want to be in their company any longer than he had to, and turned away from the young woman who strangely resembled a combination of both the women he had loved most in his life, his mother and his beloved Padme.
He needed to go fix something. Fixing things had always helped him focus, helped him get a handle on things when his life started to spiral out of control. The golden droid that was in pieces in the box near Chewbacca would do. Using the Force to summon the box with the droid on his way out, he left the room that contained his captives.
&!&!&!&!&
The only reason Luke hadn't killed Yoda the moment he met him, was because the old Jedi had known his birth father. While R2 had many stories of when the droid and his father met, and of the Clone Wars, Yoda knew what had happened in between those times. Yoda knew that Luke hadn't wanted training, and chose to respect his wishes. Instead, Yoda told Luke of the father he never knew, the father he lost before he was born. Yoda told Luke everything he knew, even the most painful parts.
"Know that after a thousand generations, finally gone the Jedi order is. By our blindness, destroyed it was. Try to rebuild it, I will not." Yoda had told Luke on the first day.
Luke let his mind wander as he watched Yoda practice his Lightsaber technique. He wandered into the Force as he sometimes did, seeing flashes of the past, present, and possible futures. One vision jarred him violently, and it was because of that vision that he decided that it was time to leave.
"Leaving, are you?" Yoda said as he held out an object to Luke. "With you, take this. Learn what you want, you should, and leave the rest, you should."
Luke took the object from Yoda as he ran toward his ship. As the ship departed a blue ghost appeared next to Yoda.
"Why didn't you train him? That boy was our last hope." Obi-wan said.
"Hope for the Jedi order, there is not. Hope for the future, there still is." Yoda said as he headed back into his home and resumed his old job of sending Palpatine visions of the future he had wanted. Served him right for sending Anakin visions of Senator Amidala dying. Yoda regretted not being more helpful in that situation, but the past was gone. Spending time with Luke had been a pleasant interlude. As he had gotten to know the boy, Yoda began to understand why several Jedi had left to join the Mandalorians over the millenia.
&!&!&!&!&!&
Luke looked at the present that Yoda had given him before he left as his ship raced towards Bespin trying to figure out what it was besides some sort of data storage device. Suddenly, it activated.
"Greetings, I am Jedi Master Kmi Ivarros keeper of this Holocron. What is it you wish to learn?"
Luke considered destroying the object then and there, but remembered Yoda's words. Take what you want, leave the rest. He would learn to hone his abilities in the Force for his own reasons, but he would never become a Jedi.
&!&!&!&!&
As Darth Vader repaired the golden droid that he had taken from the Rebels, he came to realize exactly what it was. It was his C-3PO, the one that he had rebuilt for his mother, and had given to Padme. The bastards who had stolen it from his Padme had reprogrammed it, then destroyed it. He would return the droid to it's original programming later. First, he had business to take care of. He would have to be present for the testing of the carbon freezing chamber to make sure the method would work for Luke, after all, it wouldn't do to accidentally kill his son the moment he got him back.
&!&!&!&!&
Leia looked across the carbon freezing chamber at her dad. She had spent several years with him, and because of that, she could tell that he was troubled even though he was doing his best to not let his unease show, and his helmet hid any and all of his facial expressions. It was something about the set of his shoulders that gave him away.
The reason she was here was because the man she loved, the man she had decided to marry, was going to be used as a test subject to ensure that a trap that had been set for her brother wouldn't be fatal. Chewbacca had nearly gone into a berserker fury when what was about to happen was revealed, but Han had stopped him by requesting that he take care of her. She didn't need a seven foot tall fur covered bodyguard, but she appreciated the gesture.
Looking into Han's eyes, she knew that he returned her feelings. Right before he was to be frozen, she ran up to him and kissed him. In her peripheral vision, she saw her dad's finger inch toward the trigger of his blaster, a clear sign that he most definitely did not approve. Two Stormtroopers roughly pulled Han away, and put him into position for what was coming next.
"I love you." Leia called out to her intended as the process started.
"I know." Han replied.
&!&!&!&!&
"Wrong answer dirtbag." Fett said, aiming his blaster at the man who was being lowered into the pit. The man who had been a thorn in his side for longer than he cared to think about. The man who was really going to regret messing with his little girl.
Before he could pull the trigger however, Vader pulled the blaster up towards the ceiling.
"You can kill him later, we need him alive at the moment." Vader said.
A few moments later, a living Han Solo who was encased in carbonite was raised from the carbon freezing chamber.
Fett watched as the frozen Han Solo was loaded onto his ship less than an hour later. Death by blaster would be too good for the man. He'd have to find something suitably slow and humiliating. Until then, he could ask Jabba to store him as a favor. Since, despite the fact that Solo had paid him off, Solo wasn't one of Jabba's favorite people, he had a feeling that Jabba wouldn't have much of a problem with doing so.
He was about to find a way to rescue his daughter when she gave him a subtle signal that informed him that she'd be rescuing herself, and not to take any unnecessary risks. Trusting her abilities and judgement, he departed.
&!&!&!&!&
Leia frantically tried to figure out some way of causing a distraction and blowing her way out of Imperial custody that wouldn't end up getting her killed. She would team up with Chewbacca and take the Falcon out of here as soon as they were free, which she had yet to figure out how to manage. They and their Imperial escort rounded a corner and found Luke standing in front of them with an old DC-17. Without warning, he began mowing the stormtroopers down. An officer tried to drag Leia away, but she rewarded his efforts with an elbow to the genitals before knocking him out.
The team that Lando had assembled to help rescue Leia stood there and stared in awe as Leia picked up a weapon that had been dropped by one of the fallen Stormtroopers and joined Luke in the carnage. As Lando watched the scene he realized that they apparently wouldn't be needing his help in this situation. If he wanted to get them to let him hitch a ride off-planet, he would have to find another way.
"It's a trap" Leia said to Luke in a rather conversational tone as the last of the stormtroopers was taken care of. More would be arriving momentarily, and they needed to get out of there fast.
"I know it is. I figured I may as well spring it." Luke replied, glad that his sister was safe, and that the vision that had brought him here hadn't come to pass.
"Just as long as you're sure you know what you're doing." Leia said. "I'm off to swipe the Falcon. You know, the whole Plausible Deniability thing we agreed on."
"Ah, I'll go where my feelings are leading me, and spring the trap then." Luke replied. "See you around."
&!&!&!&!&
Vader sat restoring the programming on the newly repaired C-3PO as he waited for his son to arrive. This confrontation would be the beginning of everything, all he had to do was convince the boy to join him. Soon the Emperor would be dead, and the Galaxy at his and his precious Padme's son's feet as they ruled it side by side, making it a place that Padme would have been proud of.
Hearing a noise in the carbon freezing chamber, he halted his task and went to investigate. It was his son.
The fight that followed his failure to freeze the young man had been fierce. It took several minutes before he had been able to take the blaster from the boy. It was only after the blaster had been taken that the boy began to use his lightsaber. The lightsaber battle had been relatively intense though it soon became obvious that the boy was rather inexperienced with the weapon. He had been able to back the boy out a broken window and onto a narrow walkway over an abyss. He honestly hadn't meant to slice his son's hand off afterward, but he'd never faced an opponent that so inexperienced in a lightsaber duel, and he had expected the boy to block the blow. But slice the boy's hand off he did.
It was when the young Rebel was reeling and going into shock that he decided to tell him his most devastating secret.
"Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father did he?" he said.
"No." Luke replied already knowing where this conversation was headed thanks to Yoda.
"I am your father." Vader said waiting for the shock.
"I already knew that." Luke replied as casually as he could in the situation, considering the rather considerable amount of pain he was in.
"But you said that Obi-Wan never told you." Vader blurted out. This was not going the way he had planned. The plan had been to get the boy to his most vulnerable point, reveal that they were family, turn him to the Dark side, kill the Emperor together, and rule the galaxy with him as the master and his son as the apprentice. Right now, the boy was at his most vulnerable, but he didn't seem to be turning like he should. What had gone wrong?
"Yoda did. About five seconds before he died." Luke said. The little green troll was helping him out, so there was no benefit to bringing a Sith Lord down on his head. The lie had apparently gone unnoticed since Vader seemed satisfied with his explanation.
"You could destroy the Emperor, he has foreseen it. Join me, and we could rule the galaxy as father and son." Vader said as he continued on with the conversation he had planned out in an attempt to regain his footing. He was supposed to be doing this in a secure location after he unfroze the boy from carbonite. Nothing was going to plan.
"How much?" Luke asked. He needed to hurry this along quick, the half focused healing trance wasn't doing anything for him and he was really in need of medical attention. He had only been half paying attention to Vader as he was losing track of the situation and threatening to black out, but he'd heard something about killing the Emperor, which meant a bounty.
"Huh? How much what?" he asked completely thrown off.
"How much to kill the Emperor? I won't do it for anything less than ten million." Luke replied. He thought that the figure of half the galaxy was ludicrously high. Usually it was him who listed the ridiculous figure and the guy setting the bounty who tried to drive the price down. There was no point in owning half the galaxy anyways. Ruling half the galaxy wouldn't leave him any time for the necessary things in life like raising the children he planned to have once he found the right woman. He'd most likely be stuck in endless meetings every day and have to do a ton of paperwork.
"Twenty million." Vader said realizing that the boy was starting to drift off and was seriously in need of medical attention. The boy would likely resist him and further injure himself or even accidentally kill himself considering the position he was in if he tried to grab him right now. He'd give the boy whatever he wanted to make him more willing to join him if only so he could get him to the nearest doctor, and if he wanted money, that was fine.
"Deal. Pleasure doing business with you." Luke said "And since certain parties would be quite suspicious if I joined you due to the reputation I somehow seem to have gotten, I guess I have to do the whole plausible deniability thing."
Vader watched in shock as his son dove off the walkway and into the abyss below. As he retrieved C-3PO on his way back to his ship, he wondered why in the moment before his son jumped to what could've proven to be his death he had reminded him of a slightly deranged Boba Fett.
&!&!&!&!&
Leia had been somewhat surprised when she discovered that she had to pick Luke up off a weather vane at the bottom of Cloud City on her way out of the system. She was glad that she had slowed down to reactivate the hyperdrive before she jetted out of the system in Han's ship.
"What happened?" she asked when she noticed that her brother was missing a hand.
"The son of a bitch that impregnated our biological mother cut my kriffing hand off before hiring me to kill the Emperor." Luke replied before passing out.
Once Luke was properly stowed, she set course for the one place where he was sure to get free quality healthcare no questions asked, the Rebel Alliance rendezvous point.
&!&!&!&!&
Vader had been glad to discover that his son was alive and would probably continue to be so for a while yet. He was unhappy that his son wasn't at his side though. This brought his tally to neutral. The constant aggravation that was the protocol droid that he finally remembered why he foisted off on his wife tipped the balance to dark.
After putting up with two days of listening to a droid that could whine far worse than he used to when he was a Padawan, he shut the droid down. Glad he saved a copy of the program that had so changed his childhood project, he reprogrammed the droid once more, adding a couple of necessary extras as he did so.
"Where's my blaster meatbag?" the newly reprogrammed droid said by way of greeting upon being reactivated.
Watching his crew cower at the sight of his childhood friend and creation was going to be soooo wizard.
Edited 3/14/2012