I hate planetary winters....

They tend to get all cold and windy and nasty, wet, damp, cold enough to freze your tail off....oy!

Mind you I don't mind the snow.....just the cold....if they could like...Invent a winter with snow while its nice and tropical that would be great! ....yeeahhh...that sounded stupid....anyway...

The ice doesn't do much good either, so when I found myself on the frozen wasteland planet of Hoth with a bunch of rebels...I thought I was gonna go crazy stuck there like..forever! Sure...having fur helps, but the ice everywhere is a bit annoying, yer always slippign on something and the grond is freezing cold....and if ya get fleas they have to shave you and then yer in troublel withotu it and you have to go aroudn in lke ten layers of coats till it grows back.....anyway...

I have a bit of a long story to tell.....so you might as well just get somethign to drink and sit down, it's gonna be a while...hey, I don't have much else to do while I wait for my former employers to come down on this place like a norse god....yes....the Empire.....I used to be a bonty hunter who did jobs for them.....I owed the Republic somethign big for even gettign MY hide off Tersai before it got ruined by just some arseheads in the CIS....little did I know how bad the corruption was until recently....just a bounty hunter doign his work for a paycheck...thas what I used to be....now?


......I don't know anymore.....I certainly don't feel good about my past I can say that for certain....especially when I think about one of the people I was hired to off.....always got away the cocky SOB did but hey....he was THAT good.....not many could get away from me, yeah yeah...Boba this, Boba that....he's just an orphen with a grudge agaisnt the Jedi....anyway...there I go again doign THAT, ugh....ok then, back on topic....where was I?...oh YEAH!

I met HIM, my quarry, the other morning...both of us just kidna stared and stared...then Salen, my partner in crime..heh....anyway, she said something to him and he just kidna nodded and said something to me...something like..."you were pretty good there...now lets see you against the Empire."

Anyway, I was kidna surprised by that....and he then just kidna walked away.

Then....er...Oh I'll get back to all that later....the story.....

[Camera angle shifts, shows the speaker. Foxlike anthro entity, also known as an Iarmitsu....endangered species, due to he destruction of their homeworld along with most of their galactic population...not a very well known race either. Appears to be a male, long rusty red hair and fur, greenish gold eyes, clad in a green vest and teal shorts, breath comign out in fog from his muzzle, props his feet up on a crate near his chair as he leans back and begins talkign again]



I was about twentyone at the time, when I heard the CIS, the Confedeation of Indepndant Systems or something like that...had arrived in system, to challange the Republic for control of our planet.....we didn't want anythign to do with either one of them....so when the shootign started we just hid and stayed out of sight.

In the end...the guy leadign the CIS dcides if he can't have the planet...he'll just raze it into dust....his name was General Grevious....damn him to the ninth level of hell....[spits]

Anyway.....the Republic decides thy are gonna get as many people offplanet as they can, and starts brignign in gunships into the cities to get people aboard and to the landign ships a few kilometers out from them.

Many didn't make it hough, but I noticed soemthing as I was grabbed and thrown onto a gunship....my entire family was left behind.....all five siblings, two btohtrs, three sisters, mothr and father....noen of them cried...none of them wept, as I was taken away from them on the last gunship...the last civillian, thown onto the last gunship that was heading to the last landing ship on planet.....they looked...happy, that at least one of us would survive....my mother was a xenobilologist...a big name one at that....she was the oen they had originally selected to put on the ship, but she refused, and said one of the children should go....so I got picked at random...the one the Jedi had taken an interest in....the way she kept starign at me with that birdliek face was just....creepy....yet calming.

I had a very close friend....but until recentlty, I did not know if she had made it offplanet or not......not until....anyway...the last day we were together she had given me a bandana...a nice green one...this one actually. [he lifts up a vermillion bandana aroudn his neck, sniffs it hen goes back to talking]

Yeah....she said it was for me, and to keep it......I always figured it was meant to be something to remember her by.....little did I know....anyway...goign off track again...oy {hits self]

I watched from the observation longe as my world was taken from me...my home...my familly....all of them.....evry single oen of hem left behind, died that day...because of an asshole who was a sore loser...damn him forever! [spits again and pounds a fist on a bulkhead, then winces]

I got to talk to the Jedi several times..foudn otu her name to be Vergerie or something like that.....real wierd name....anyway, she told me about the Jedi order, she told me about the Jedi themselves..she told me abotu where we were beign relocated to...Correllia.......some of us anyway...the rest were beign cut loose in the outer rimthe important people were beign sent to Correllia that is...te rest of us were uncrimoniously dumped on Tatooine....I never did se the jedi again...hence why I "owed" soemthing to the Republic...for stranding the majoity of us i nthe Dune sea, telling us to find a nice life here....

Sure...I hate to be in cold places but deserts are soooo crappy.....I hate hwo the sand was always so hot and coarse and go EvERYwhere on you....you had to not only use blowers when going into our home, but also had to take full body refresher runs to get it ALL out.....water was too scarse to be even thought of being used to bathe with....you got used to it eventually, and got a thick hide and a thin coat of fur....thin enough to rn yer fingers through and get it all out that way....

We were totally forsaken on that planet....the republic did nothign save give us some supplies to last a few weeks, said we had to make due, and then left.....the sand people were terrified of us for some reason..could never figure THAT one out....

We were always moked and looked down upon b ythe famrers, the Jawas hated us for some reason, and the Hutts, who were actually the real oens in power, liekd to use us for..."entertainment"....namely, Jabba the Butt as we got to callign him would have soem of us taken, hrown into a pit with soem kind of freaky monster thing called a rancor, and laugh sadisticly as it ripped us apart.....we got him in the end....

Thats where I shall pick it up...that was just a summary.....



By the time I came of age...we have very long lifespans...I was around fifty by then....I had decided if Jabba was wanting of entertainment...I was going to show him somethign that would entertain his tail off....litterally.....I had, along wit ha few others, the majority of our race is nonnviolent to the most painful of extremes....anyway....some of the yougner ones had grown weary of this mistreatment...and we gathered up...

We decided to start out by making raids of their outlying perimiter patrols aroudn his big house...that did pretty well..then we grew bolder...hitting a suicidal level by the time we decided to slip into his palace and kill him...THAT didn't go to well....

Basically, we snuck aound in the caves under his palace, from he way the groudn was damp all the time this was the only place water really existed in any large quantity naturally, were down in the caves.

We were poorly equipped...just basically what I'm wearing now, even unshod...we had no armor, only light armament...knives at best..at worst, clubs....though we had managed to take weapons from some of the enemies we took down along the way. One of us had lost his tail to a gamorrian guard on an earlier raid of one of the perrimiter bases. Another had no ears left, they had been shot off by a near hit laser shot from a cannon, another of us was missing an eye, one had no tounge....he had been caight and taken of his ability to speak....he was a poet too....couldn't write it very well...had to speak it outloud for us to hear it.....he never was able to do poetry again...

Anyway....we were down in the caves and the poet was the first to die.....Rancor foudn us...turned out we had ended up beign led on a controlled romp through the subbasement of his palace by Jabba himself...who found us amusing....the Rancor grabbed him and we never saw him alive again.....

I won't go into detail about how we saw him later...it is still too much.

The next one got bitten...in half...it just came down and took a bite.

Jabba was laughing his vile hide off by then.

I freaked liek a coward and ran back to the entrance, which was sealed off by bars, with amused guards and drunken partiers who placed bets on how long we were going to remain alive....

disgusting...


Anyway...I took my knife otu then, and cut off the hand of a drunk who had been up until just tehm holdign my right ear in a death grip.

He let go because..frankly he had no choice, and I turned aroudn to see my buddy Zak get thrown againt a wall, the gruesome crunch told me a few bones were broken, and as I rna to help him, it grabbed him in a foul hand and smaked him agaisnt the floor.....I heard a wet snap and knew his neck was broken...he was down...permanently....

I threw myself at it in fury...the last of my team. We started out as four...and now I was the last...Frankly I didn't think I was goign o make it...especially when it piked me up in a hand and brought me up to its face to take a bite....as soon as it opened its mouth and thew me in I made my move...

I stabbed the relatively mid length blade of my weapon into the roof of its mouth and hope the slight resistance before I felt the blade go all the way in meant I had hit something...which I did....the blade had gone into its brain and killed it.

The damned thing fell with me still in its mouth, feet dangling out and head so close to the back of its throat I could see its stomach.

Ugh.....

What a mess, is all I can describe of my condition after THAT...



Jabba did not appear pleased...not in the least...looks CAN be decievign however....

When I was brought up to him, stripped of everything, even clothes, I thought he was goign to have me shot....instad..he began laughing....and laughing and laughing...if you've ever heard a Hutt laugh...its a frightful sound....it usually lacks any true mirth of any kind, and is almost always filled with evil intent....

He just laughed for several minutes I think it was.....

Then...he spoke, and a droid translated for me....and the rest of the crowd....

Basically, he ranted on about how logn it had taken to breed such a feirce Rancor, and how much it had cost him to keep it as bloodthirsty as it had been...then he looked at me, then the crowd, and said something about how I was to be commended for having survived such a vicious beast....and he would give me one thing in exchange for my service to him, for having entertained him so well.

I asked of what it was, and he spoke. He basically wanted me as a hired hand....to kill people with, or bing them in so he could kill them himself...I would be paid depending on the effort needed....and in exchange for my assistance he would keep the few remaining Iarmitsu alive, and safe....relatively that is....

As I had been even fightign to kill him in order to save my people,. I kinda got all wierd when I heard that....as long as I worked fo him he would protect us? it was a deal made in what I thought was heaven...probably oen fo the basement sectiosn of it but there at last....it turned out to be hell....but thats for later...

I accepted, and I was given my stuf back, cleaned up and given medical atnetion for several injuries I had taken ihout really noticing them...and then I was tansported back home, so I could inform them of the results of our little raid...


The elders did not like it one bit, but saw us as having little else to rely on, and accpeted the terms....

So...the next week I began my carreer as a fledglign Bounty Hunter....


The first hunt as shot...I basically say it was short because the target was an old man who had spoken out against Jabba, and called for his ellimination. Jabba always did find these kind of people, as he put it, "amusing, but enough of a threat to warrant elimination."

It basically consisted of me walkign in, knife out, and looking at him as he sipped tea....he merely saw me, whent pale as a ghost, then dropped dead. he shock of seeign a fox standing fully upright in your living room hldign a knife and lookign all wierd must have scard he life from him.

No one gave me a seconnd glance as I can out again, carrying the body, and driving away with it.....scary....
hough what is more frightful ishow Jabba was so angry the man had goen and died on us he had implants put in to animate the body enough o obey simple moion commands, and had it fed to the sarlacc.....sick...just...sick...

Most of my hunts agaisnt innocent targets whent uneventful, and usually they came quietly, not really havig na reason o be afraid of a cue little foxboy who pulled the sad-puppy trick.....until I brought them to Jabba, who foudn the sad-puppy imitation to be hillarious in its irony...

hen, I ended up, aroudn the tenth victum, with one who decided he would rather not die by Jabba's hands or mine....a Jedi that had been raising cane in the Jundland Wastes....

I was outmatched and I knew it, from the moment the innocent lookign old man with the homespun robes pulled out what could be mistaken by many in this unfortunate age...the Empire existed now...to be a mere glowstick....I knew otherwise and he knew that I knew...and he knew that I was outmatched...AND outclassed.....I could lie and say I managed to somehow turn the tables by outfoxign him or soemthing...but that would be SOOO much a lie that it would not be funny...I still have the scars to prove the true results anyway....

He had a calm, quiet confidence, and spoke kindly as he fought....he even complimented me on a relatively agile escape from a complex saber swipe of his...he must have been doign that to throw his opponents off kilter...

I just shruged and kept going.....I had my entire remaining membrs of my race dependign on my actions for their survival...Jabba had made it quite clear I got his quarry or they all died.....that was after I had signed the contract...foolishly...

He asked me soemthing..."Why are you trying to catch me?"

I lept up onto a ledge above him and spoke as I kept a sharp eye on him, explainign the situation to him carefully.....I made it a point to use my sad-puppy look, which resulted in a funny glance form him as he thought.

Then he got an idea...

WHy not he fake beign knockd out, and then when I brought him before Jabba, he rouses and raises hell, while I bust everyone out of the palace that I could....

I decided I might as well try and we gave it a go....

Here is how it whent down...

I hauled him in on a repulsorlift palate.....and as I boguth it up to Jabba, his eyes snapped open, and he did soem kidn of fancy flip for mthe platform, before landign with hsi saber drawn, the palate already split in half, both halves touchign the floor as my tail disappeared in the doorway.

I got into the prisons and just kept unlocking doors as I ran.

I gathered quite a crowd, and we just kept running, unil we saw daylight a the end of the tunnel, and a nice set of skiffs to escape with.

We all boarded them, and set off, though I waited for the Jedi, who came out with a tattered robe and a smile.

He hopped aboard and I took off after my collective family of survivors.

A week later, we had managed to fully relocate to a nearby planet, with the help of another Jedi who kept his name unknown o us, wore a pancho, scarf that hid the entire lower half of his face, and a bald dark skinned scalp that had a dramatic scar that came alogn the left half of the top of hsi head, startign fo mteh back underneith the scarf, and runnign along the top of hi heand, going past the left of his left eye, and vanishing under the scarf.

He spoke with a deep yet calm voice that had a great intelligence to it, yet had a fierce quality. Overall he had a sort of wild nobility to him.

I would guess he was Korun, or at least related to them, now that I look back...

anyway....he got in touch with Kenobi, the Jedi who helped us escape Tatooine, and this unnamed jedi assisted us in findign a new home on Naboo.....


He was a drifter of sorts...a Jedi who had no name and liked it that way....he lived life like a ghost, flitign about from place to place.

Kenobi had told me, as he was calling this man up, that he knew this Jedi fom theera of the Republic...he had been a Jedi Master then....Still was, Kenobi insisted.

Anyway....most of us remaiend on Naboo for a logn time, some of us still live there, but I craved a life of action now....and I had someone to look for now....as I had, durign a shoppign trip i nheed, run into another Iarmitsu from my local area, who was a friend of Her....

We sat down and talked for hours about evrythign that had led up to his moment, and she had quite a story to tell as well....

We talked for a while, then whent our sepeate ways, I with the knowlege now that more of us had survived...and if she had, then She coudl still be aliv ot there..my lost love....alive....

I whent to bed that night to a dreamfilled sleep, dreams filled with memories, and posible meetings and reunions....some more...interestign than others.


The next mornign I decided I would go and look for her, and I would nto give up until I did find her.

I looked for a long while.......and then late into the year...I found her......in a rather odd way...see, I had becoem a bit of a bounty hunter, who worked for the Empire to haul in some of the big nasties that they didn't have time to get ahold of themselves....I was good at what I did...but then when I go a rather interesting bounty from the local Moff Seardon...

Basically the target was a young man who had been stiring up trouble in the area around Chandrilla, along with what had been refred to as a terrorist group...at the time it was merely a random group of resistance fighters.....it eventually evolved into the Rebellion, but thats for later.

I never did see Seardon face to face, he always hired me via the holonet.

anyway....


Litle did I know that another Bounty Hunter had ben hired incase I failld....he always did have a twisted sense of humor Seardon....



I foudn the resistance base and, clad in a cloak, infiltrated rather efficiently, killing and maining as per orders from the Moff.....then I found the target, who was in a hand to hand with another Bounty Hunter wearing a shawl and weildign Nunchuks....scary...

I never did get a good look at the Hutner until later, after we double teamed the target.

Th Hutner got i nthe final hit and took him down, as he fell dead...THEN, the shawlclad Hutner turned on me and tried to kill me for the body..andtherefore the prize.

Soemthing Seardon had put into the contract, anyoen else wo itnerfered with my takign the body once he was dead was to be eliminated...

The hutner appearently had gotten the same contract and signed...

I rolled my eyes, by now fellow Hunters were nothing new to me, and I took the hunter's chalange, dashign up and gettign into one hell of a fight, in the end though....

We got so close I could smell the Hunter.....and so could she infact....I ripped aside the Shawl and was shocked to find who I had been lookign for.....gaspign as I saw her face.

I ripped aside my own hood and she gasped as well.

"Salen!" I shouted..I remember that quite clearly....

I also remember how she gasped a second time, "Seate!" she said then, before we embraced, before remembering what was going on...

I felt somhing hit me in the stomach, her voice in my ear, "Naboo...Theed....Xander's" she said, before I blacked out.

When I awoke, I found myself in the woods outside my ship, fully armed still, but sans the target.

I cussed a bit, then boared my ship and flew to Naboo, on a hunch about something related to the words she had said.

I landed in Theed, and waited at the caffshop she had mentioned.

I waited about a full hour, listening to a news story about how Alderaan had been whiped from existance by the Empire's new toy called the Death Star as I shook my head sadly, before I heard her coming up beside me, and taking a seat next to me.

We lasped itno silence after the initial greetings...for about a couple of minutes...just enjoying being with eachother again after so long apart.

Then we started rambling on until the shop had to close, and we took it into a roving walk around the town at night, as we just wandered about the city, chattign away.

By the time we had finished, the sun was risign again on the other side of the sky, and we foudn ourselves with a beautyful view of it, as we were on a walkway by the waterfalls, which cascaded down beneith it, the land below slowly lightign up as the rising sun, first red, then changing colors as it got higher and heigher, rose into the sky before us, with the clouds illuminated in a wonderous variety of sunrise hues, and even a few colors that on many worlds do not show up in their morning skies.

We found ourselves unable to speak as we watched the spectacular visage.

well...before we found ourselves in eachothers arms on a bench just holding one another.

That day, the day of that meeting, of that amazing sunrise, was the day the first Death Star met its doom in the skies of Yavin 4, the simple resistance cells had been discoverd to have been a majorRebellion, having kept themselves seemingly unrelated until only recently...and in the tempestual cries of a newborn infant of destruction, their fledgling Rebellion annihalated the Death Star.

I realized we had different ships...and we were probably goign to have to go our separate ways soon...nless I acted fast.

I turned to her, vey willign suddenly to sell my ship in exchange for beign with her for the rest of my life, and asked her a question.

"Salen?......would you allow me to join you? To be with you from now on, together? We could still be bounty Hutners...just as a team, not alone anylonger...." I asked her.

She paused for a moment, as we held eachother, before she tightnened her hold on me. "Yes.....come with me, please....."

Then I figured I might be able to keep my ship if I could rig it to dock with hers or if h ship was large enough, merely store it aboard.

That afternoon I flew my ship to her hangar, the jurryrigged Jedi Starfighter, the Runeblade as I called it, semed small enough that if I were to engage the compact storage mode on it, that I had installed, to hide it in ver ytight places..I couldl probably get it into the hold of her YT-1300 freighter, the Silver Snowflake...ironic that I liek snow but not cold..anyway....

so yeah.....I showed her the fighter, she looekd it over, and then I pushed the buton and she watched as the nose of he fighter pulled in, then the sides, and the back, until it was an odd squarish shape, still flgith capable, but certianly small enough to fit into her largest hold.

We managed to laod it in via a cargo loading lift that came down, the platform actually a part of the deck of the hold, and I flew it onto the platform and set it down, then climbing out from it and watching as it slid up into the ship, screatching as the starboard side ubbed against the lift frame as it vanished into the ship, the doors then sliding over it and conceiling its existance.

Thus, our team was formed.



We hunted all sorts of bounties, everywhere, for everyone who could pay us...

And then we fell into the Rebellion by "happy" accident.

By now Rouge Squadron was a household name, and we had our share of run-ins with 'em...damned fine pilots.

Then as we got a bounty to hunt Han Solo.....which Boba Fett kept interfeering with, in his own singlemidned pursuit of the man, we happned to fidn a Rebellion base on Hoth........well...we were captured before we even were aware of it, havign been spoted by Rebels before we were even aware of them being there. The actual capture didn't happen 'till after we landed and I had set foot on the bleak world, Salen havign said moments before, "Captain first."

I just shrugged and dropped my weapons, there were just too many to take on.

...and I was looking for a place to fall in with the Rebellion...it got my interest during those battles with Rogue Squadron....something about their cause just struck me as being....right.

So......Salen and I were hauled in and were face to face with Princess Leia herself.....she lookd at us annoyedly, and I gave her the sad-puppy look as I asked her..."How do we sign up for this party?"

Salen and I had agred before hand if we were captud alive by them, we were goign to ty to join them.

Her face lit up as she realized that two Bounty Hunters....good ones, relentless in their dedication to geting the job done, had intentiosn on joininng them.

Then, still smiling, she slapped us both, saying something cryptic about "..thats for Han..." under her breath befoe she calld over a rather young faced man with an honest, kind air about him, who looked kinda similar to her in a couple of ways.....and a major similality via their mutual scent...they smelled almost totally alike....like siblings hat had been born from the same person at the same time, having spent the same amount of time in the womb together, twins such siblings often were called.

Neither semed to even realize it which I found odd.....I still don't think they know it, but I don't have the heart to tell them....

I frankly do not think its my business to.



Anyway.....I foudn out later that the young man who spoke with us in a chilly room, as I kicked idilly at a patch of frosty ground with nearly fozen bare feet, yeah....I have that odd little habit...I don't like how shoes feel...too tight..ow...and I must have picked up the habit on that dustball..just oen less hign to shake sand out of at night, while shivering under a thick blanket, that HE was this famous Luke Skywalker, the killer of the Death Star....

Salen seemed unfazed by the cold, under that shawl...probably had some kidn of thermal rgulatioanl system in it or soemthing...or maybe the bleeping thign was just warm...anyway....

He explained to us all te risks and benifits of becoming a Rebel, and we aggreed to it...most of it......free housing and food always did appeal to people who had survived great disasters....and he seemed like a decent kind of guy....I signed the contract and so did Salen.

...and for the first tiem for both of us it was with our full names....Seate Maloc...and Salen Zagra.



Now....we've prety much establishd ourselves as contributign members of this little town of rebels, and aw damn..I think I hear the walkers upsurface now.....huh....I hought so...[looks up and sets his feet down on the floor. frowns...]

huh...standard SOP for Lord Vader.....huh.......Luke and his buddies mustve really gotten the Emperor's attention...if he decided o send his pet Dakr Warrior of fear and dispair...rar...oh phear and terrorz..[makes odd faces for a moment]

huh...I REALLY hate when I end up on a contested planet.....heh, the irony....anyway..I gotta go now...if anyone ever heard this and actually listened o my story.....remember that there are always people who will fight the good fight...for the people....[looks right at the camera]

They will always fight for love......don't EVER forget that...and also this....I love you Salen...if you're watching this...I love you and I will always be with you.....may the gods and the force be with us all...I gotta go now...byez...[waves weakly to the camera then the screen goes blank]