It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single engineer in possession of several repair droids and a top-notch (if not fully accredited) hangar, must be in want of credits. However little known the feelings or views of such an engineer may be on her first encountering someone, this truth is so well fixed in her mind that all are considered as a rightful mark for some scheme or another.
Much has been written about Tatooine. The Tusken Raiders, in their hoarse language no outsider ever fully mastered, sing ballads and lays of great beauty about the suns setting over the sand. Several outworlders have raved, at great length, of the stark majesty of the canyons of stones and of the humble life of moisture harvesters — although they usually did so from the comfort of their own homes in the Galactic Core and conveniently left out that feeling of one's nose peeling from the inside after a day of breathing in the scorching local air. Very few writers and poets native of the planet have reached even a modicum of galactic fame: the prevalent poverty and the lack of superior education had seen to that. They had been, nevertheless, the subject of several obscure academic literature courses, and inspired the epic novel The Destitute that had, a few years back, been the talk of the fashionable circles of Alderaan, when it still existed.
To the inhabitants of Tatooine, however, Tatooine was mostly home. To Peli Motto, born and bred in that place where it is abnormal not to have sand in one's hair, Tatooine was a necessary evil that she loudly proclaimed to hate, while in truth she was as proud of it as if she had been its mother. There were more backwards worlds in the Rim — Jakku springs to mind. Because Tatooine had the dubious honour to be both fairly accessible to passing starships and remote enough to deter all but the more determined law enforcement officials, Tatooine had become a hot spot for wretched scum and villainy, and Peli Motto was here to make profit from it. Fix their ship and take their money had been her way of life since she had been old enough to hold a wrench. And if they died doing business on Tatooine while said ship was in her hangar? Well, who would turn their nose up to some free parts? Not Peli, no. But she would have gutted the stranger bold enough to assume that Tatooine was an immoral place to be.
Still, she reluctantly admitted to herself, it might have been nice not to get caught in the crossfire of a gang war. Not that she had made a habit of it — the shoot out at Mos Espa was her first forage into that territory, and she hoped it would be her last. The Mandalorian who dangled from behind her rickshaw asked, fairly politely under the circumstances, if that thing could go any faster. Never one to refuse a friend's request, Peli threw a hammer on the driving droid's head and yelled at that bucket of bolt to go faster. Faster, indeed, it went. Pushing engines over the red line being exhilarating as it was, Peli hollered in pure, unaltered, engineering joy.
It wasn't enough, however, to allow her to forget they were being pursued by a Scorpenek droid, and it might have been time to have a conversation with the Mandalorian.
"Hey, Mando," she called, uncovering a bundle by her side, "look who's here!"
The ugly-but-cute face of that green kid with ears like a desert bat popped up from the covers. In another life, he might have been enough to make Peli reconsider the issue of having children, if she still had been young enough. Instead, she focused on their surroundings as the Mandalorian lost most of his steely composure to fuss over the child. Men and their feelings.
Shots were fired all around them, so many that it was hard to tell if they came from friend or foe. A pungent smell of cordite hit her when the rickshaw took a sharp turn. One of the repair droids she had brought along gave an electric whine of fear, and she grabbed its hand before it fell from the vehicle.
An explosion destroyed most of a house. That chase wasn't going the best way. With a groan, Peli took a heavy-duty blaster from her bag; she turned on her seat and, getting on her knees, started firing.
"Save your tender moment. We got a Scorpeneck droid chasing us," she cried to the Mandalorian.
But the Mandalorian wasn't done (although he was busy firing again, thank the Force) and gave all signs of wanting an in-depth conversation about the kid. Fortunately for Peli, who hated nothing more than lengthy explanations, at that moment, the driving droid overheated in a shower of sparks. The rickshaw crashed, sending all of the passengers flying.
Peli Motto had never left Tatooine, and therefore never experienced weightlessness. Her stomach churned. She decided she cared very little for the sensation. The hard Tatooine ground crashed into her face — bloody planet — and hit her body like a broken engine hits the bottom of a dumpster.
Adrenaline running through her veins, Peli scrambled up, her wild hair a brown tuft full of sand, and spat a tooth. Her blaster wasn't too far off, only a short lunge away. By the time she had grabbed it, turned around, and faced the Scorpenek, the Mandalorian had already lodged a dozen shots, all useless against the droid's protective force field. Peli lowered her blaster, scanning the street for something that would be useful against the damn thing.
A growl — the long, raw, and angry kind — resounded somewhere. It was hard to pinpoint where it came from in these winding streets, but it was the unmistakable growl of a rancor, and Peli's insides turned to ice. The Scorpenek paused. Peli, the Mandalorian, the child, and the repair droids, scurried away to shelter under the closest doorway. This had to be a nightmare: first a gang war, then a Scorpenek, and now a rancor? She must have hit her head harder than she thought.
Peli tried to catch her breath as the growls came closer. And closer. And everything trembled. And a giant claw — then another — grabbed the roof of a house on the other side of the street. And a monstrous head with small eyes full of acid fury emerged. Dank farrik it had teeth, too.
The good thing about the rancor was that the Scorpenek noticed it, too, and decided in the depths of its electronic brain that it was a bigger threat than a Mandalorian and an engineer. The bad thing about the rancor was that it was a kriffin' rancor. What was it even doing here?
It has been chronicled elsewhere how the rancor was ridden by Boba Fett, daimyo of Mos Espa. In the ensuing fight, where flesh prevailed upon steel and where half the city was wrecked, Peli Motto barely noticed that the Mandalorian had once again dropped the child on her. Grade A parenting, really. Not that she was really watching the tiny creature: the fight was mesmerizing, and she watched it with a scowl. Peli's natural inclination would have been to cheer for the Scorpenek, but that thing had shot at her so let it get what it deserved. She was dizzy from her fall and looked as the child — Grogu, what a wretched name — somehow pulled a servo from the Scorpenek, sending it crumbling to its iron knees.
Damn kid. She grabbed him and unceremoniously flung him into the Mandalorian's arms. Boba Fett and the rancor turned heel and left in search of the other Scorpenek. Presumably.
The Mandalorian ran away after them. Peli considered not following him. She was fairly sure her ribs were broken and that she had a concussion. Ah, hell, though. She liked him well enough, she couldn't let him face a Scorpenek alone. Limping, she went after him through the empty streets where rubble smoked.
The other Scorpenek, it turned out, had also met its fate under the rancor's claws, and only Pyke Syndicate henchmen remained. They were scattering, and Peli shot at them. That was what Tatooine was, fishface assholes! Not that Peli had ever seen a fish, apart from a few holos. Creepy, slimy beasts. A stray blaster shot tore down a low wall by her side — the decorative kind, with hollow bricks that made pretty patterns — someone was hidden there, was it a Pyke? Before her conscious brain had fully registered the appearance of the man, she had him at blasterpoint, ready to shoot. Oh but it was a Twi'lek, and a handsome one at that! He was raising his hands in surrender, protesting that he was not a threat.
"Nice, head-tails," she shouted over the din, and the Twi'lek, bewildered, touched the pale pink appendages that grew on his head. That man was too pure for such a place. "Come on, get behind me, pretty face. Peli's got you covered."
He folded his tall frame to shelter behind her small body with the big blaster; he was well dressed, too well for a street fight in Mos Espa.
"Pleasure to make your acquaintance," he panted.
"We don't have time for that," replied Peli with a grunt.
The Mandalorian, the child in his arms, followed the rancor's bellows. Peli followed the Mandalorian. The Twi'lek followed Peli.
They found the rancor as the animal was driven to a rampage by blaster fire. He was busy climbing (and tearing apart) a tower that had, until that day, been a lovely little café a bit on the expensive side — the kind that Peli Motto avoided like the ixian plague. The Mandalorian shoved the child to Peli's arms, telling her to keep him safe.
"Well, who's going to keep me safe," she protested as he activated his jetpack and flew to the rancor. Certainly not the Twi'lek, who was hovering by her side in a state of advanced helplessness. It took less than a minute of the Mandalorian trying to tame the beast for Peli to realize that she should get her ass out of here, as she didn't need to be buried under a ton of brick. She didn't want to be buried at all for the foreseeable future. The Twi'lek and she ran to get shelter behind a table on the street — good restaurant that one, very tasty — as the rancor flung the Mandalorian to the ground, beskar armour and all.
The rancor saw movement and followed them. He — no, not growled — he roared, his gaping maw full of teeth way too close to Peli and the Twi'lek. Peli and the Twi'lek shrieked. The rancor turned away. It was then that Peli noticed that the child had slipped away.
She called for him frantically; the Twi'lek looked around and pointed to the unconscious Mandalorian. Peli's heart skipped a beat: the child, small as he was, had hobbled to face the beast that threatened the bounty hunter. She watched in horror as he got closer to the rancor.
A strange peace seemed to permeate the air where only violence had been instants before. The child — Big Eyes, Grogu, whatever — raised a tiny hand; slowly, aggression died from the rancor's little eyes, and the giant beast settled, until it slipped in a quiet sleep. The toddler took a few steps to the rancor and sat, curling up under the great mass of its head, before falling asleep like a log.
In the middle of the street, the Mandalorian was stirring; Peli walked in great strides to him, the Twi'lek still at her side, and she helped him rise.
"I'm guessing there's not gonna be a barbecue," she regretted as the rancor let out a little snore.
"Hey, Mando," said Peli, nursing her glass of Bantha blaster, "have you heard what the daimyo intends to do now?"
The Mandalorian replied that he had not. The starport cantina was unusually quiet around them; whole destruction of the city center tends to do that to the suburbs.
"Because Mos Espa is without a mayor," returned she, "without everything, and my pal here's too polite to ask him directly."
The Mandalorian made no answer. The Twi'lek by her side murmured some elegant apology and turned a darker shade of pink.
"Don't you wanna know what'll happen?" cried the engineer impatiently.
"Not really, no."
With that, the Mandalorian bent to pick up the child and straddled him upon his knees. The child cooed. He was obviously pretending to be riding a bantha or something, jumping up and down the beskar. The Mandalorian went along with enthusiasm, clippity-cloppy noises coming out of his helmet.
With a scoff, Peli turned to the Twi'lek, telling him to never mind mister Sulky Helmet. "But ya know, handsome, you still haven't told me your name," she added, with the shit eating grin she usually reserved for rich customers. "You're from Coruscant, that much I can tell, but apart from that…" For good measure, she opened her hands in that Galaxy-wide gesture of benevolent ignorance by scoundrels of all shapes and sizes.
That had been effective: the Twi'lek beamed like a flower under the suns.
"Kopecz Baaa-cap, at your service," he replied with elation. "What an ear you have, mistress Motto! For my accent has become very faint indeed with the passing years; it has been long since I left the hubbub of the Core to devote myself to the career of an advisor."
"Nonsense, you can't be that old, you don't look the part, I can't believe it!"
"Oh you flatter me, lady! I had been with the mayor for nigh on twenty years before, as one might say, fate — unless it was his own greed — brought his demise."
"Yeah, speaking of demise, don't you wanna hang out with the daimyo? Would be the logical thing to do. When you know what he's up to, of course."
"Unfortunately, no. To be true, as we are amongst friends, I feel my real calling now is that of a civil servant, and a private enterprise such as the daimyo's doesn't, if you will pardon me the poor choice of words, fit the bill. I have grown weary, these last years, of catering to a specific person's whims — although, do not mistake me, Lord Fett strikes me as a much more moral character than my late employer. I would serve the community."
"But there's no money in that! Tell you what, I'll do you a favour, because you're such an upstanding guy and your head-tails are so pretty in your little emerald hat. If you're willing to relocate to Mos Eisley, I can offer you a room, at a great price, until you get on your feet again."
"That would be too kind, mistress Motto — but I wouldn't wish to impose."
"Pschaa," cried Peli, hitting him on the arm. "It would be my pleasure. There's plenty of room in the old hangar for mister Baaa-cap. Come on, Kopecz!"