WPRT Ch. 7 Double Rescue (Updated 2021)

Aaron:

I ran from the crowd to go after the kid and the guard. I stopped and waited around the corner, and I heard some talking.

"Your Father has been a problem for my client's business long enough. He has been known as the best bounty hunter for far too long. So, he has decided to reward him by removing him of the only thing he loves before he kills him. You should be thankful I don't like spilling the blood of children. Now you get to be a slave on a far away planet, where your father will never find you."

It was the boy who spoke next. Very smugly, might I add.

"Then you underestimate him. He is the best for a reason. He will find me no matter what."

The guard laughed at this and said, "I doubt that."

Now or never.

I ran around the corner and pistol whipped the back of the middle guy's head and knocked him out cold. All eyes turned towards me.

The guards were human, but the one doing the talking was some sort of lizard man, similar to the one in the bar, but this one had different armor. The thugs had looks of shock and rage.

One liner time.

"You know, it's pretty sad someone has to pay four people to go after a kid."

If they weren't mad when I showed up, they were now. The Lizard man's face scrunched up and yelled to the remaining guards "GET HIM!"

Before they could, Lizard man yelled loudly and fell to his knees. The guards were distracted by this and I whacked another behind the head.

Call me Old Whackamole.

I was not lucky with the other as he charged right into me and knocked the Colt out of my hand.

But, I was still in the game.

I put my hands around his head and brought it up for momentum. And just as fast as I brought it up, I brought his head down, right into my kneecap.

He was out cold.

Alright, three for four. Thankfully, none of them were armed with guns from what I saw. Now, I wonder, what happened to Lizard Face?

I turned to see the kid standing triumphant with one foot on top of Mr. Lizard's body with a stun stick of some kind.

The kid looked down to the body and said, "Thanks for the weapon, wimp."

I smirked at his comment, then bent over to pick up my gun to holster it.

Thankfully, I didn't have to waste ammo. I only have about a few mags worth for my gun, and I don't want to run out so fast. This gun means a lot to me.

"Thanks for the help, and I'm sorry you had to do that. I let my guard down when I shouldn't have. Especially Mos Eisley, of all places. The name's Boba, you?"

He walked over to me and held out his hand for a shake.

I shook his hand and said, "Aaron Shepard."

"Well, Aaron, you saved my dad a lot of trouble. But, I got to ask…"

He lost his smirk.

This can't be good…

"Why did you help me, I mean, you're definitely not native… I mean, look at you."

He was smiling at this jab at me. I don't blame him for making fun of my outfit.

My sister and I are out of place.

Before I could retort, his face went back to what it was.

"Anyone else would have just brushed it off, or would be too afraid to get in trouble. And you heard who my father was: the infamous Jango Fett. He is far from a good reputation."

I thought for a moment before I replied.

"The answer is this: I don't want to let another thing bad happen to a kid as long as I'm around. Yesterday, my sister and I saw a kid, a few years older than you, killed before our eyes. And bot just killed, brutalized. His head was smashed to pieces by Tusken Raiders."

He went wide eye at what I said, and looked as if he wanted to say something. But he held off for now and let me continue.

"Less than an hour later, me and my sister liberated that camp and freed the families there. But...I couldn't look at the father in the face. I could have done something. Even at the cost of my life, I could have done something. So I told myself that if I saw any kid in trouble, no matter what, I would save him. Even if I have to give up something, myself if I must. I wouldn't let families be broken if I could help it."

He looked shocked by what I just said. The family part seemed to hit him the most. But, I was wasting time. I had to go.

As I was turning. I was interrupted by Boba asking "Where are you going?"

"To keep my promise. Before I went to help you, I saw the family of the boy about to be sold off as slaves. Because the father couldn't pay off his debt to someone named Jabba because he was captured by the raiders. I can't let that go….. I'm going to at least try to save him and everyone else, Lord willing… I wouldn't be able to live with myself."

I turn to leave. But my hand was grabbed by Boba, telling me to hold on.

"You don't have to do it alone, I could help. I am trained by the best bounty hunter in the Galaxy. This would be too easy with my skills. It's the least I could do."

I thought for a second.

Well, any help would do.

"Alright, but we need to be a team on this, partners?"

Boba didn't hesitate on that and held out his hand for a shake and said firmly, "Partners."

I decided to humor him with something different. I held out a fist instead. He was obviously confused, so I told him, "You make your own fist, and bump it."

And he did that, but was still confused at its significance.

Kids these days.

We were about to leave the ally, and then I heard from behind us…

"I'LL KILL YOU!"

As soon as I heard this, I pulled Boba away from where he was standing, almost about to be shot by a beam of orange light. And no sooner did I pull him out of the way, I pulled out my colt and returned the shot aiming directly at the head of the lizard man. His brains blew out from the back of his head, painting the sand red.

Boba got up and saw what happened and said, "How DID you DO THAT?!" He saw me walk up to the corpse of the now dead Lizard man, and he watched me as I looted the body.

"How d-did you KNOW?!"

"He yelled out "I'll kill ya!" with his weird accent. I guessed he was going for you, and pushed you out of the way."

"What?"

I ignored his question for now and just tossed him the blaster. He catches the blaster, and was shocked I would give it to him.

"We can play 20 questions later, right now we have some people to save."

With that, me and Boba started sprinting towards the crowd that was bigger than before. I could hear that Robot talking once more. Time to plan. I signal Boba to stop and ask him while pointing across the street, "Do you think you could get to the top of that roof?"

"Sure can, lemme guess, cover fire?"

I give a nod and say, "Wait for my signal. Also, could you hand me the stun stick?"

He tossed it to me, and we both turned to do our parts, but Boba said, "Wait," I turned back to him and he went on. "If you're going to take out one of them, take out the auctioneer first, they have a remote that controls those collars. If he becomes desperate. He will terminate them with the bombs in the collars."

I gave him a nod, and he went off to the other building.

Show time.

As I moved through the bigger crowd, I started to hear Mr. Roboto again. I saw who was up next.

It was Airk's father!

"Now we move on to the last slave here, a human male, still a few good years in him.

Let's hear some offers."

I yell out loud "I will take him, and the rest of the ones you have sold."

All of the people were shocked by what I just said. Some of the people looked mad that they might miss out on a deal.

"That is a bold request 'stranger', you look very young. Who are you to ask something like this from us?"

Airk's father looked up to see who was buying him, and was shocked to see that it was his rescuers from the night before. At least half his rescuers.

"Aaron Shepherd, and I'm here to pay you one."

The crowd laughed at this.

"I'm sorry Mr. Shepherd, it's going to take a lot more than one peggat for something like that- wait, why are you laughing."

Everyone stopped and looked at me. All of them were just as puzzled when they saw I was laughing with them.

I stopped after a few seconds and sighed.

Man, the heat must be finally getting to me.

"Sorry, not one 'Peggat.'" I drew my gun and fired it at the robot's head. When the .45 round hit, the kinetic energy alone popped off the head, killing it. The remote was still in his hand.

"ONE SHOT!"

The crowd started screaming and running all directions, knocking out a few of the guards by trampling over them. A few guards on the stage were armed with guns aimed right at me and were shot by a couple of laser bolts from across the street.

The guards off stage looked like they didn't know what to do, until one of them said. "Get him!" They armed themselves with more of those stun sticks.

Time to try this baby out.

I turned on my stunstick and aimed for the first guard's throat with a stab motion. He fell forward to the ground twitching.

Another one almost got me with a thrust aimed towards my stomach, but I moved in time. I rewarded his effort with a jab in the back with the stick. The remaining two tried overwhelming me but failed. One of them was shot from across the street before he could strike. That distracted his buddy, so I brought the stun stick across his face, knocking him out.

Then I saw the guard who yelled "get him" near the slaves, going towards the remote still in the mech's hand. As he was reaching for it, I shot him in the hand with my colt. It was enough to keep him from pressing the "Termination" button. He yelled in agony while gripping his hand. The man then jumped off the stage with the slaves still there, and made a dash for the nearest alley. I got onto the stage to go after him.

Surprisingly before the guard went into the alley, he yelled to me, "You have made a GRAVE mistake today, Jabba will have your HEAD FOR THIS SHEPHERD!" With that, he ran off.

Great thinking Aaron, now the space mafia knows your name. Well, it doesn't matter. I need to know how to use the remote.

Boba was now running up to me in the now almost deserted square. As he got closer, he held out his hand, which I assume was for me to hand him the remote. And I did just that. He took but a few moments to look at the remote and pressed a green button. As soon as it was pressed, all of the collars fell into the sand. They had their freedom now.

I wasted no time in saying, "Get out of here, quick! Before someone comes back to get you all!"

Almost all of them did just that, except Airk's family.

"That's twice you have saved us. How can we…" I cut him off, as his family didn't even have time for thanks.

"You can pay me back by us never having to rescue you again, and getting off this planet."

Of course he knew I meant it in humor, not anger, and smiled, giving me a nod before running off with his family.

Boba looked relieved as they left.

"It's a good thing they weren't chipped, otherwise, we would have had a harder time doing that. Chips are harder to find when they're installed."

I nodded in confirmation at this fact. But this scenario, it reminded me of something you would do in video games. It was very invigorating to do, and felt like I could do more.

Before I could think more on this energy, I heard Boba utter the words, "Oh no…"

I looked to see what he was talking about. My jaw dropped a little as I saw the same boat that my sister and I liberated from the War Raiders, in the hands of similarly dressed guards as the one we just took out.

"Dang it Lars…"

"What?"

"No time for questions, RUN!"

We ran the opposite direction.

We obviously can't out run something like that, we need to use its size against it…. THE ALLEYS!

"Quick! Down this alley!"

"Right!"

We both made a sharp turn down it to lose the guards and succeeded. And still in ear shot, we heard the gunner say, "Quick! Go around before we lose them!"

It was too late, because by the time they came around we were already out of sight near some big pieces of junk.

"Well, that was close. Well, thanks again Boba with that, you're a pretty good shot with that gun."

"Thanks, I learned from the best. But, where did you learn? And what kind of blaster is that?"

"Well, I learned how to shoot from my dad and firearms instructor at my home town's shooting range. And as for the blaster, it's not one, just a gun."

Boba looked shocked at this, "A SLUG THROWER! You're even braver than I thought! Although, that has to be strong if it knocked that droid's head off."

"I guess robots are called droids here. I'll keep that in mind."

"Well maybe they have been just misunderstood as a weapon here."

But before we could continue, the junk in front of us started moving away.

And are those… Feet?!... Ah.

It was a droid, we were hiding behind a droid, not junk. This place kept getting weirder by the second. And that wasn't a bad thing necessarily. Just... Different.

As we moved forward, we noticed the bar across the street. The same one I left my sister in.

"Hey, my dad is in there now! He might be able to help you."

"Really, that's the same one my sister is in right now."

I put my head out of the alley, looking left and right.

"The coast is clear."

We both walked out of the alley at a jogging pace. We made it halfway before the guards came around the corner…

Boba and I thought the same thing, and said in unison:

"OH COME ON!"

END CHAPTER