The twins stirred, looked at each other, and began to dress.
====
He was one of the most feared men in the galaxy, and could be counted on one hand with Vader, the Emperor, and Boba Fett. But where those got their reputations on kills using strange Force powers, a lightsaber, or an array of exotic weapons, this criminal, scum of the galaxy and former gladiator, did his business strictly unarmed.
He wore the double lightsaber of a Sith he'd killed strictly as ornamentation, though it was a secret truth not widely known he was well practiced in its use.
Crime lords and Hutts paid as much for a good show as a job completed. Holotapes of his victims rent limb from limb by his massive, augmented strength sold for more profit than his bounties often awarded on their kills.
He arrived on his starship Dirty Scoundrel. Previous to this he'd flown the Awful Vagabond, but this hunter was notoriously hard on his equipment. Even more so than he was hard on his opponents. And there weren't many people, even with powered suits, who could tear the arms off a Wookie.
On his powered armor he wore the hides of victims fashioned into a decorative mosaic, the upper-reaches of ultraviolet hides from species adapted to the most intensely hostile radon ice worlds, and the cooler infrared from steamy black jungles where not the least shred of real light remained from their dying stars.
Of course, in normal human ranges it looked like normal black and white patches of fur, but that wasn't his fault!
Because of his obesity some of his rivals had taken to calling him Panda the Hutt when he was in his armor, but that wasn't his fault either! At least a panda was a fearsome beast, or so he'd been told. He'd never actually seen one. He'd just had a plush toy of one as a young child and had liked them ever since. Something about them just seemed so... natural. At least he'd never had to face that pandas were docile creatures sold in most popular pet stores, adored by children the galaxy over. His armor had been crafted with such care that he so resembled a live one that children often followed him around when he wasn't on assignment, wanting to play with him.
Strangely, he liked that, too.
It meant free food, and with his environment sealed breath mask disguised as a muzzle adapted so he could eat through it, that wasn't a bad thing. Other bounty hunters sought to save on fuel or weapon expenses. He shaved off the cost of snacks by playing with kids while on assignment. Of course, he also saved on expensive weapons and ammo, since his style was unarmed, and he'd been known to steal fuel whenever possible, flying out of stations with the tubes still dangling off his hull, running out on the bill, and he seemed to acquire his starships by questionable means, but all that because he was saving for retirement.
Not alot of bounty hunters thought that far ahead, he would gloat.
Actually, in the not-too-far distant past he'd tried another retirement scheme, branching out to franchise his business by training successors who could do all the work while he collected the paychecks.
How was he to know the two kids he'd snatched were the children of a Jedi? Luckily, he'd gotten out of that with his hide more or less intact by offering to take the woman to her lost beloved - He'd known the guy as a drinking companion and had a good idea where he was hiding, so he'd led the woman straight to her wayward mate and gotten off without losing important body parts.
He still smarted over the failure of that scheme, though. After he'd done all that to train them, too. Those kids were naturals! And in his present situation wherein he could not personally collect bounties they could be doing the work for him! Supporting him like a loving father in his old age!
Did we fail to mention that?
Not too long ago, while visiting a beach resort planet and showing off his manly physique, Emperor Palpatine had chanced to visit this ultra-posh resort at the same time, saw the rich and famous bounty hunter, and decreed on the spot that he should die at once for daring to wear a thong out in public.
This was long held to be the only decent thing that Palpatine ever did, canceled only by the Emperor's choice to wear a Speedo that day.
Seeing as how this bounty hunter was one of the most elusive men in the galaxy, well feared for his fighting ability, known to the Jedi and presently under sentence of death by the Emperor himself, Bail had felt he was the perfect messenger for certain choice bits of sensitive information. Or rather, he decided that when he caught the felon trying to raid the palace treasury and was wondering what to do with the scoundrel.
How wrong the poor senator was!
But, fortunately for the Jedi's cause, the traitorous bounty hunter was spotted on his way to sell the information on the Jedi's location to the nearest Imperial officer of high enough rank to ask for the death mark to be repealed. And he was spotted by the one thing he feared most in the galaxy.
As The Dirty Scoundrel made its landing in one of the polished bays of the Flamberge, Ranma and company walked out into the hanger to meet the new arrival. The disreputable shuttle was still settling on it's landing gear when a concealed rear hatch popped open and a man in dirty, yellowed underwear shimmied down a rope trailing from the brig area of the vessel.
"Hey!" Ranma called, activating his lightsaber as he saw the furtive figure trying to duck toward one of the other entrances. Both he and Ranko rushed to intercept, and to be stunned as the escapee switched and began rushing toward them.
"RANMA! Thank goodness you're here, boy! Lets go." As the figure burst into motion the dirty handkerchief he'd used to hide his face fell back exposing the figure to be...
"GENMA!?!?" Both twins cried out in shocked dismay. The sound of a landing ramp being extended behind them was lost in the confusion.
Genma grabbed Ranma's robe and dragged him back towards a different ship, slinging Ranko effortlessly under his arm as he dragged both along in their state of shocked surprise. "You kids, come on! We need to hurry if we're to escape in time!"
Before Ranma could even start to protest a robed figure came flying out of the sky to kick Genma's head and throw a capture net after him which tangled Genma up long enough for the figure to rush over to the desperately half untangled man and knock him out.
At this the figure hauled Genma over its shoulder and turned to the staring group. The figure then dropped Genma on his head and ran at Ranma with the hood coming back to reveal, uh-oh. "Heh, hi mom."
"Ho my manly, manly son." Ranma felt his ribs strain under the pressure, but fortunately or unfortunately she saw Ranko trying to slowly move from her line of sight and latched on her as well. "Oh, Ranko! It's been so long. I didn't see you. Oh, tell me..." The redhaired woman stopped speaking to squish her children against her more experimentally.
"GRANDCHILDREN!!! Oh, my doves, it's..." She began rattling on effusively at a rate no one could seem to quite follow while the twin's mother glittered like a newborn star.
While this was going on, in the background Genma and gotten up onto his fingertips and toes, and in spite of being hogtied was trying to slowly inch away from his friend/drinking buddy/traitor's (for leaving him to her and running away) unwanted love interest.
A sharp-eyed Nodoka caught this out of the corner of her sight in spite of her delirious haze and in that instant had released both offspring (this hug to be resumed later) and was cracking an energy lash over the bounty hunter's back and shoulders. "YOU MISERABLE SLIME WERE YOU TRYING TO KIDNAP MY CHILDREN AGAIN!!?! TELL ME WHERE MY HUSBAND IS YOU..."
The twins gently covered each other's ears as the force of those insults began to warp the fabric of spacetime around their mom and her victim.
"Please, No-chan!"
CRACK! "Call me Queen!" KAZAP!
"Mercy!"
CRACKLE-FIZZ-ZAP!
"Queen, No-Chan! Please, forgive! AAAaargghhh!"
SIZZLE!
"Please! AAAH Queen! Your Majesty! I'll tell you anything. ANYTHING! WOHOHOHNOOOOOOO!! NOT THAT!"
CRACK! "Start talking! You kidnapper!" SNAP, POP, CRACKLE! whimper.
"Aaaagghhh! Bail gave me Obi-Wan's address! WAAAAaahhh. He's on Tatooine!" The man's eyeballs turned blue with the latest shock to his sensitive flesh.
"Really?" All of a sudden Nodoka was calm and completely composed, the energy lash dangling from a delicate hand as if it had no right to be there. Some strange, foreign object edited in by a malicious special effects technician. "How interesting. Tell me more."
One of the most feared bounty hunters in the galaxy began to blubber at her feet, whimpering out the words she most wanted to hear.
Princess Amelia gave the twins a very curious look.
"Well," Ranko shrugged shyly. "Mom IS a queen. She got some planet named Dathomir back in the neighborhood of the Hapan Cluster off some Drackmarian warlord in her youth. Something about a gambling debt where the warlord owed her either a kiss or the planet and took the easy way out. She likes to visit the place, calls it home. But we've never been there, yet."
Ranma was slowly shaking his head. "Too scary. Mom says it's the only place in the galaxy where she feels the native women understand her." He paused, thoughtfully. "Dad's often grumbled about if only HE'D had a planet..."
But Amelia wasn't listening. She flung herself in a hug onto the startled boy. "PRINCE Ranma!"
Nodoka saw and got so pleased she almost didn't electroshock Genma's testicles when he'd gotten a bit reticent, claimed he'd 'forgot' so minor a detail as what part of Tatooine Obi-Wan called home. She stood there, smiling beatifically at her son while the bounty hunter screamed and thrashed on the floor beside her.
Read the comments on this episode
See other episodes by Lionheart
(Posted Sat, 29 May 2004 07:33)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.