OOC: New Blogger Woes

I've updated this blog to the new Blogger. I seem to have been successful here, but not so successful with Star Wars: Unplugged. Read my post here and see if you can help.

Stay out of trouble

We said our goodbyes in Moenia.

Where: Moenia, Naboo.

Feeling: It’s time to go home.

Listening to: Jardena.

Continued from here.

There was about 30 minutes to spare when I was done. “Sorry about that,” I mumbled as we headed to the shuttle.

She took my hand. “No worries, I figured you needed as much sleep as you could get. And you can sleep on the shuttle ride.” We took our seats and she looked over at me and said, “What kept you up so late? Are you worried about staying?”

I scratched my head absently. “I thought it was more about being unable to relax because of wondering if our Trandoshan friend has any other friends, but... maybe what you said is true.”

“So have you decided to stay on Naboo? Will you stay in your house or go to Theed?” She took my hand. “You know, they do have excellent doctors on Coruscant.”

“So I’ve heard,” I said. She laid her head down on my shoulder. It was one of those public displays of affection that I was going to miss when things got back to normal. “I think I know what I’m going to do.” I relaxed next to her and dozed off and on until we reached our destination.

--

A few hours later we arrived in Moenia. We walked in silence back to our lockers in the shuttleport. I had made up my mind to stay on Naboo for my rehab. I’d briefly wavered when she’d mentioned the doctors on Coruscant. Maybe that was her roundabout way of saying she wants me to come back with her. So… why not just say that? But that’s not her. Or maybe it’s me. Maybe there’s just something about me that makes it impossible for her to say or do anything that may come off remotely vulnerable. I guess that’s the way it is with us. Always guessing.

I gathered my gear from the locker and consolidated the bags with what was left from the gear we took to Dee’ja Peak. “Give me whatever you don’t want to take back with you,” I said. “You’re taking that voopak back to Coruscant?” I asked. “You’re starting to collect them now. You’re not going to eventually become one of those old spinster ladies in Theed that they occasionally show on the news, living in a house with a thousand voorpaks, are you? This is how it starts,” I joked.

“Hmm,” she mused. “Well, then I suppose I should make you come back to Coruscant with me to make sure that doesn’t happen. Either that or we can run off and secretly elope. I hear that’s the thing to do these days.” She smiled suggestively.

“Oh, I’ll be back on Coruscant with you. It’ll be weeks, though. As for running off and eloping, well, seeing as how I can’t run, that’s out. But the fact that the thought has crossed your mind has been duly noted,” I added with a wink.

“You don’t actually have to run, we could just take a cab to the city clerks’ building,” Jardena persisted.

I’d vastly prefer an elopement to a ceremony that took a year to plan and which was basically for the benefit of other people. Not that I took her seriously, of course. She was joking, I think.

I reached out and took her hand and gave it a squeeze. “Well, goodbye for now. Have a safe flight.”

“You too. And stay out of trouble,” she said.

I gave her a kiss and I shouldered my bags. It was a long walk to my gate, so as slow as I was going, I had to start moving now.

I took a look back at her and smiled briefly before I turned the corner. There was a lot on my mind, but the dominant thought was that it was going to be a long, boring flight back to Kaadara. And there will be many long weeks ahead without Jardena.

The End.

See Jardena’s blog for her point of view.

Technorati tags: Star Wars | Captain Typho | Typho | Jedi | Clone Wars | Fanfic | Fan fiction | Naboo

Something warm, yummy and fresh

We arrived too late to get the shuttle.

Where: Dee’ja Peak, Naboo.

Feeling: Time to wake up.

Listening to: Jardena.

Continued from here.

"We could try to get a transport to Moenia tonight then go where we need to go early in the morning. Or we can stay the night here, then head to Moenia in the morning. Which would you prefer?" she said.

"If we're lucky enough to make it into town in time to catch a shuttle, we should definitely take it," I said. "If nothing's available, we'll stay overnight in Dee'ja Peak. I can take over with the driving if you'd like to relax a bit."

"I'm good, but thanks for the offer," she replied.

~~

The last shuttle to Moenia had left when we arrived. We purchased tickets for the next morning and found a hotel to settle in for the night. "So, I'm feeling like getting some take out, something warm, yummy and fresh. Maybe hot chocolate for afterwards. What do you think? I'll go pick it up and bring it back," she offered with a smile.

"Sounds great," I said, retuning her smile. It was her neck of the woods, so she probably had a specific place in mind. I sat on the bed and propped my leg up to check the swelling in my knee, then I pulled up my shirt to see how the wound in my side was doing.

"While you're out, could you bring back some more bacta, bandages and a cane?" I added. I wasn't entirely joking. I could use the aforementioned items. The cut on her arm probably could use tending to as well.

"I'll see what I can find," she replied.

While she was out I took a shower then caught up on local news. I saw my uncle on the holonet with Queen Jamillia and I was tempted to call him, but I'm not supposed to be here, so that was out.

The sports coverage was lackluster so I was bored by the time Jardena came back with the food.

"So, food or medical first?" she said.

"Meds," I replied, reaching for the bandages and bacta. I changed the dressing on the blaster wound and put a little bacta on the scalp wound. The latter was in good shape. There wasn't anything useful I could do with my ears and I didn't want to touch my knee anymore.

"How's that cut on your arm looking?" I said.

"Ehh, I'll live. It just needs to be cleaned and spritzed and I'll be fine. Anything good on the holonet? Anything about the party, Padmé, or Bibble?" she said as she walked into the bathroom. I gathered that she was taking care of the gash on her arm. When she came back out she sat down to join me for dinner.

"There was a piece about the guys making the documentary about the Chancellor," I said. I had some of the hot chocolate. It was perfect for this weather. "There was also a segment about the party and a critique of the costumes. The reporters interviewed the Queen. They really wanted to talk about the war, not the party, but she kept steering the conversation to other topics. The reporters also attempted to interview my uncle, but he was a bit resistant," I added with a grin. My uncle isn't terribly media savvy.

"Well, who can blame them for not wanting to talk about the war? It was a Gungan who motioned for Palpatine to have emergency powers and all that good stuff. I think she's doing fine, Padmé is just a hard act to follow." Having finished her meal, she said, "I'm going to get ready for sleep, we have an early day tomorrow."

I nodded absently as I concentrated on the food and Jardena got ready for bed. I polished off the food, which was odd because I really wasn't that hungry. I thought that having such a heavy meal would make me feel sleepy, but the opposite was true – I was wide awake. I made a go of trying to get some sleep, but when that didn't work, I ended up in front of the monitor, watching the holonet. I know that was probably extremely irritating, but I just couldn't get comfortable. It was one part mental, two parts physical.

~~

"Dante, it's time to get up. The first shuttle leaves in about an hour."

I looked at Jardena blankly before her words finally registered. It was morning. "Oh. Right," I said. I scratched my head and yawned. It felt like I'd only slept for two seconds. I got up, hurriedly took some semblance of a shower and got ready as quickly as possible.

There was about 30 minutes to spare when I was done. "Sorry about that," I mumbled as we headed to the shuttle.

To be continued...

See Jardena’s blog for her point of view.

Technorati tags: Star Wars | Captain Typho | Typho | Jedi | Clone Wars | Fanfic | Fan fiction

The invites were tagged

Soon we'd have to report back to Padmé.

Where: Dee’ja Peak, Naboo.

Feeling: This journey’s almost over.

Listening to: Jardena.

Continued from here.

“Sure thing,” I said. I reached back, retrieved the surviving deck and got to work. The state of the data was poor, to put it mildly. We had audio, but little in the way of video. I worked through the mess, running filters to patch the corrupted data and fill in the gaps.

There was little of interest at first. Minutes and minutes of the happy couple talking about nothing. Then I started delving into the incoming transmissions for Bibble that Jardena’s gear had intercepted. A staffer at the Chancellor’s retreat had contacted Bibble and informed him that “the invitation in question had been collected and its embedded chip confirmed its identity.” We’d been marked.

I took my headset off. “Great news – the invites were tagged with a chip,” I said. “It never occurred to me that they were tracking the invites. That’s almost funny, considering I’ve been tracking Dormé through her use of marked credits. They might not know why we were at the party, or where we are now, but they know we’re around and that we were operating incognito.”

This will probably drive them underground, I thought. Or at the very least make them very circumspect.

“Hmm, not good, I’m surprised we both missed that. But would it be possible that he thinks that Padmé sneaked in and he didn’t notice her? And even if we’d known the chip was there, I doubt we could have removed it and still gotten in to the party. We should probably keep a very low profile when we go to pick up our stuff from there,” Jardena said.

“Good point,” I said. I turned my attention back to mining the audio. I played it out loud so that we’d both hear. Sure enough, Jardena was right about Bibble. Instead of assuming that the invites had been passed on or stolen, he was sure that Padmé had been at the masquerade party.

“I understand that it’s bad manners to record guests at events like this, but we should have, we should have made up some story about the need for security in times like these, it was the Chancellor’s house,” said Bibble. There was a gap in the recording, then he asked Dormé, “You were mingling, you were supposed to keep an eye out for her, didn’t you see her? Or at least whomever she came with? If she starts getting suspicious, we’ll be in grave danger.”

The conversation continued in the same vein, then there was some distortion and unidentifiable sounds. The last salvageable scrap of audio was Bibble saying, “Ah, my new friend is here.”

“If the ‘new friend’ is the Trandoshan bounty hunter, does that mean Bibble really does know about us,” I said. “Or could the Trandoshan have discovered us independently?”

“My guess?” she said. “The Trandoshan was probably hired to kill Padmé and he was the one who figured out we were here, he could have seen our speeder, or surveillance cameras, tracks, or even smelled us. But I don’t know if we were a side trip or he told Bibble. I don’t think Bibble knew about us, I think we would have caught some strange veiled terms and there would have been less talking if he’d known.”

She paused, then said, “I really hope he doesn’t know. If he did know that it was us specifically, there will most likely be repercussions, and probably fairly quickly. If he just knows that he was being watched, but not by who, then we should be ok. In fact, my alibi could be me working on my apartment to get it fixed and yours could be that you’ve been on Naboo, but resting and recovering from a knee injury you got during the blackout. I doubt your mom would blow your alibi,” she said, flashing a smile.

“No, but she’s going to point out that, should anyone else inquire, a blackout isn’t a very plausible explanation for how I got shot, had my ear drums ruptured AND blew out my knee,” I said, smiling in response. “Unless I live in a very rough neighborhood on Coruscant.”

“True,” she said with a shrug, “Wishful thinking.”

~~

It took several hours before we reached a small town where we could stretch our legs and refuel. When we got back in the speeder she mentioned that at our current pace we’d reach Dee’Ja peak at sundown.

“We could try to get a transport to Moenia tonight then go where we need to go early in the morning. Or we can stay the night here, then head to Moenia in the morning. Which would you prefer?” she said.

To be continued...

See Jardena’s blog for her point of view.

Technorati tags: Star Wars | Captain Typho | Typho | Jedi | Clone Wars | Fanfic | Fan fiction | Trandoshan

Your Twi’lek Stalker

A stalker?

Where: Dee’ja Peak, Naboo.

Feeling: Uh, oh. Feels like an argument coming on.

Listening to: Cranky Jardena.

Continued from here.

I smiled, thinking. “I suppose I’ll have to be the one who does his bachelor party. That oughta be interesting.”

“It could be a lot of fun, you just better request time off now so as not to have to worry about work,” she said.

“I’ll probably still be rehabbing, so time off might not be a problem,” I said. “But the logistics of arranging this will be a problem on crutches.” An idea started to form in my mind. Maybe I could arrange to do this on Coruscant. He’s never been there, so that would be a blast for him. And I think I know someone who could help with the arrangements...

She stood up. “Well, we better get started so we can make it before it gets dark. We can catch a shuttle from Deeja Peak back to Moenia and pick up our stuff. We should be able to make it out of here by tomorrow morning hopefully. Unless you want to stay. I could stay with you for a day or two, but I have to get back to my post soon.”

“Stay with me where?” I said curiously. “Here? But you just finished cleaning the place up.”

“I meant when we got back to civilization, back to wherever you were planning to have your leg cared for. But like you said, your mom will take care of you and I wouldn’t want to intrude on family time.”

Was it me, or did she sound a little miffed? She picked up a bag and put it in the speeder.

When she came back inside, she said, “Anyways, you made enough of a splash on Good Morning Naboo that you being home might get some attention. No need to add to the drama or romantic intrigue. She took two more bags out to the speeder then returned. “Ready to go?” she asked.

I nodded, shouldered my bag, and made my way back down the steps to the speeder. Once in the speeder I looked back at the house. Under other circumstances it might not be a bad place to spend a vacation.

I took some more painkillers, but either they were weak or I was getting used to them. Now that was a troubling thought.

I was silent for the first 20 minutes or so of the trip into town, then I asked, “What did you mean by ‘No need to add to the drama or romantic intrigue’?”

“I meant if I stayed with you at your parents, there would probably be a pretty good chance of people finding out. Your mom does work for the government, they are a gossipy group. If our peculiar luck continues, we’d wake up one day to see BB:N fans peering in the window. “And with that small but persistent rumor about you and Dorme,” Her voice trailed off and she gave me a teasing smile.

“Hey!” I warned with a mock frown. “I see your point. I would love to take you home with me, but that will have to wait for another day,” I said.

I scratched my head, considering what I wanted to do again. “It’s just that if I go back to Coruscant, it’ll be very inconvenient. My girlfriend, unfortunately, is a very busy young lady. I might have to hire someone to help me out while I convalesce. That’s the downside of being a bachelor. I might have to get a droid, or a maid, or call up a pretty Twi’lek dancer, or…” My voice trailed off as Jardena’s had and I flashed a grin.

“Ha, ha,” she said humorlessly. “Have fun hanging out with your Twi’lek stalker—”

“I do not have a Twi’lek ‘stalker,’” I interrupted. “If anyone has a stalker it’s—”

“—it’s kind of unfair to be punished for working, but—”

“Punished? How am I—”

“—but if you’re offering to let me quit work so that I can sit around all day doing nothing other than be at your beck and call while you work, I’d give that some thought,” she concluded curtly.

“Okay, OKAY, I’m sorry! Wow, you really can’t take a joke today, can you? Disposing of Trandoshan bodies and incinerating speeders while freezing our butts off makes you cranky, I guess?” I said, trying to smooth over her ruffled feathers. “But what you just finished up with – you know, retiring from a dangerous profession and spending more time with me – is a great idea. I’m amazed – and happy – that you’d even consider it. I’m sure you’re not serious, but do keep it in mind. It is an option.”

She raised a skeptical eyebrow in response to my offer, so I could only smile and shrug. Well, I’d put it out there. Maybe she’d consider it again sometime in the future.

She was pissed, so she dropped our discussion and turned to something else.

“We have lots of surveillance on that data deck,” she said, gesturing to the deck on the back seat, “Now might be a good time to review it, just so we know what we have and what we don’t before we leave the planet.”

”Sure thing,” I said. I reached back, retrieved the surviving deck and got to work. The state of the data was poor, to put it mildly. We had audio, but little in the way of video. I worked through the mess, running filters to patch the corrupted data and fill in the gaps.

To be continued...

See Jardena’s blog for her point of view.

Technorati tags: Star Wars | Captain Typho | Typho | Jedi | Clone Wars | Fanfic | Fan fiction | Twi'lek

In a matrimonial way

We finally said goodbye to the Trandoshan.

Where: Dee’ja Peak, Naboo.

Feeling: I’ve lost all feeling in my extremities.

Listening to: Jardena.

Continued from here.

Turning to me she said, “I think we’re good to go. Stand back -- I’ll give this a push and we’ll see what happens.”

She leaned forward to give the speeder a push and, ignoring her request to stand back, I added my weight to her effort. The speeder and the Trandoshan in it weighed a lot, repulsors or no. I braced myself, gave it a better shove and I was rewarded with the sight of the speeder floating off, heading inexorably toward the gorge. That was worth the raw, wobbly feeling in the knee any day.

I couldn’t resist peeking over the edge to watch the speeder’s descent. The vehicle was in free fall for a brief time, then the repulsors activated, causing it to rappel off of the sides of the gorge. Jardena activated the detonators and BOOM! The speeder and its dead occupant blew up. The vehicle burned brightly. It looked like it would take some time before it was totally consumed.

“Do you want to watch it burn completely, or would you like to head back? There is virtually no chance of the fire spreading. It’s all rock and snow down there,” Jardena said.

I scratched my chin. I was freezing, my joints were stiffening up and I wanted to go back to Jardena’s cabin, but I wanted to be sure, otherwise it would always bother me.

“How long will it take to burn?” I asked. Maybe it wouldn’t take too long.

She glanced down at the burning speeder. “I would guess anywhere from 20 - 40 minutes. I’ll be in the speeder, I want to get out of the wind.” Without waiting for a reply from me, she turned, headed back to her family’s speeder, and got inside.

I, however, needed to make sure the deed was done. Forty-five minutes later, it was over. I limped back to Jardena’s speeder and sat inside blowing on my hands for a few minutes. The heater was on, but it wasn’t doing much.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said hoarsely.

“No need to ask twice,” she said as she eased the speeder back towards the cabin.

I still hadn’t made up my mind if I was going to stay here or not. Not here as in stay in Dee’ja Peak for another day, but here as in stay on Naboo another few weeks or not.

“Aww, hell,” I muttered aloud to myself as I realized something. I’d conveniently neglected to factor in one thing – my father would be around if I stayed in Kaadara to convalesce. Stuck in the same house as him while doing physical therapy? Joy.

--

When we pulled up to her family’s cabin, she said, “If we’re taking off today, I just need to clean up some before we go. I can call Patrin and let him know that we were here and that the speeder will be in town.”

I nodded. Her brother would be cool about it and keep our confidence. No one else would know we’d been here.

She must’ve noticed that I was limping more as I made my way into the cabin, because she said, “Just sit and hang out, I need to wash some stuff, put things back in place and pack our gear, I should be done in less than an hour.”

Being stubborn, I packed my own bag and put away my own equipment. It was slow going. I thought about helping her do the rest of the cleanup, but the bending and lifting was beyond me. I mean, yes, I could’ve gotten it done, but it would’ve slowed down the whole process, which made little sense. Reluctantly, I found a place to sit and silently watched Jardena doing all the work. Again.

When she was putting the finishing touches on everything, I ventured something by way of conversation. “So, how’s your brother doing?”

“He’s doing well, he likes being his job and his wife just started teaching again. And the kids are doing great, they keep my mom content on the grandbaby front, though she does give Brishen and his wife a hard time about not having had several kids by now.” Jardena smiled and rolled her eyes.

I nodded knowingly. “I guess by the time mothers reach ‘grandmother’ age they’ve forgotten the challenging parts of being around small children,” I said. “I suppose all mothers do that to their adult children, although I must say, my mother seems to have given up on the grandmother idea. She’s very disappointed with me in that respect.”

"I doubt that your mother has ever been disappointed in her baby boy," she said teasingly.

"It's called 'unconditional love,'" I said with an easy smile. "I have to get it from someone," I teased back.

“Speaking of being maternal and such, how is your cousin Kory doing?" Jardena said. "Isn’t he in a matrimonial way?” There was a teasing sound to her voice. She took a seat next me to catch her breath, having finished cleaning the house.

“Yes, he’s supposed to get married in about two months,” I said. “I got a message from him a few weeks ago. He was very stressed. He was asking for my advice. Me, with my bad track record? I told him, let the girl’s mother make all the decisions about the wedding, and leave it at that.”

I smiled, thinking. “I suppose I’ll have to be the one who does his bachelor party. That oughta be interesting.”

To be continued...

See Jardena’s blog for her point of view.

Technorati tags: Star Wars | Captain Typho | Typho | Jedi | Clone Wars | Fanfic | Fan fiction | Trandoshan

It'll go faster if we do it together

We had a body to dispose of.

Where: Dee’ja Peak, Naboo.

Feeling: Like we need to blow something up.

Listening to: Jardena.

Continued from here.

Her mood had changed. I had thought she wanted to get this over with and go back to Coruscant. Although I did like it here, I needed to leave before the fact that I wasn’t at 100% and she was picking up the slack started to get on her nerves.

I shook my head. “We need to leave and get back to reality,” I said.

“You sure,” Jardena teased, “It will be the last time we have time alone together with no one calling or even knowing where we are.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way, but you could be right,” I mused.

She patted me on the butt. “But this could be your way of telling me that you have your limits for dried and defrosted foods.”

“I don’t mind the food,” I said. “You did a great job.”

“Dante, I know you’ll get mad at me for this, but I think you should stay,” she said unexpectedly. “We need someone to go through the data and I don’t know what’s important and what isn’t. I really don’t want you to hurt your knee more, the harder you are on it, the greater the chances it won’t fully heal.”

I pointed at my ear. “Did you say something? I didn’t catch that.”

She gave me an irritated look. “Dante, I’m being serious, I don’t want you jacking up your knee any more than you already have.”

I had let her go get the bounty hunter’s speeder on her own in the first place, and I still didn’t feel right about that, so was going to stick it out. Suppose something else had happened to her other than getting cut by the weapon in the bag?

“It’ll go faster if we do it together,” I said. I headed for the closet where I’d hung up my jacket.

Jardena picked up the keys and headed for the speeder.

Outside I said, “I’ll drive the Trandoshan’s speeder. You follow with your family’s vehicle. What are the coordinates?” I held out my hand and she handed me the Trandoshan’s keys and the coordinates of the location she’d chosen for disposal of the body.

“Be careful, ok?” she said.

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “What are we going to use to ignite this thing?”

“I have that covered. No worries.” She said. She climbed into her speeder and prepared to follow.

~~

The drive out to the site she’d selected took way longer than I’d anticipated, but when we got there the site was sufficiently secluded. I was grateful to get out of the Trandoshan’s speeder. The vehicle didn’t handle that well and it had been slow going on the snowed over trails.

Jardena came over as I stepped out of the speeder. “We need to get it as close to the edge as possible. I can set the det tape in the trunk, then we can send it over the edge. It shouldn’t actually crash if we leave it in neutral, it’ll just bounce hard at the bottom. Then I’ll trigger the charge which will cause a small but very hot and fiery explosion. There is plenty in there that should burn.”

She was unwinding her det tape as she spoke. “Or we could do a grenade. A girl should always have a grenade,” she said, smiling.

“A girl should definitely not have a grenade, ‘cause she’ll use it,” I replied. I popped the trunk so that she could set the tape. I emotionlessly stared at the Trandoshan’s folded up body. His scales had faded a bit. He had a slightly fishy smell. It was a good thing that the weather had been cold, or there surely would’ve been quite a stench by now.

Jardena recoiled from the minor smell, and backed away from the speeder. “I don’t usually stick around long enough for the bodies to get stinky,” she said.

“Don’t get squeamish,” I said. “It’s not that bad.” She had an overly sensitive nose.

She placed the tape around the trunk and closed it. “There, all we need to do is adjust the repulsors so that the vehicle has a softish landing, and we’re good to go.” She popped the hood of the speeder and adjusted the computer so it would land the way she wanted.

Turning to me she said, “I think we’re good to go, stand back, I’ll give this a push, and we’ll see what happens.”

To be continued...

See Jardena’s blog for her point of view.

Technorati tags: Star Wars | Captain Typho | Typho | Jedi | Clone Wars | Fanfic | Fan fiction | Trandoshan