CHAPTER 1: FOUNDATIONS OF FLANNEL

Fett sped on up the hill.

"Uh, Sarlacc Food? What the %&$# do you think you're doing?"

Fett paused momentarily and looked downwards. "What do you think I'm doing?"

Dengar considered it carefully. "Looks to me like you're speeding on up the hill."

Idiot, Fett thought in disgust, and resumed his speeding.

"Because I was just thinking that, well, since we're doing the &$# cinematic version, you don't really need to speed up the hill at all. I mean, we already know that Kast took off with the DVD and Greedo went with him, and that Boussh and 4-LOM have been kidnapped. What else is there to see up there?" Dengar cringed. "But it was just a thought."

Curse these blasted movie adaptions.

And Fett sped back down the hill.

"HAAAAAARRY!!! NOOOOO!!!!!!!!"

Kast awoke with a start. Greedo was leaning over him, his bulging black eyes wide. "Mr. Jodo, are you okay?"

"I'll be fine, if you take a bath. And have you even changed your clothes once since Endor?"

Greedo fingered nervously at his turtle-neck collar. "I always wear this shirt, Mr. Jodo. As a matter of fact, all Rodians always wear this shirt. Why don't you ever change your armor?"

"Just shut up and get out the rope."

"Why can't we just use your fibercord?"

"Do you want me to vaporize you?"

Greedo whimpered and wrapped the rope around a rather large and sharp-looking rock. He had already tied two knots before Kast caught him, threatened violence, and made him tie the rope on a different rock. "I'm going first," Kast said, "since I'm the best," and down the rope he slid into chasm deep and dark.

Greedo was climbing down the rope after his idol when he had a sudden urge to sniff the Dark Side Compost that Lord Vader had given to him. He paused for a moment and pulled out the small box, popping open its lid and lifting it to his nose. "Ahhh," he sighed dreamily, imagining the weeds that he could grow. At that moment, in his drugged stupor, he dropped the box. It and its precious contents went tumbling down into the mists below. "Jodo!" he shouted frantically. "Catch it!"

From below came the reply. "What? OK.... I've got it—oh, great! AIIIEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!"

"MR. JODO!" Greedo screamed. "Oh, no, what have I done?"

"Greedo, you %$& idiot!" came a long, angry call from within the mists. The Rodian squealed in surprise as his companion began to shake the rope, eventually dislodging him and sending him screaming towards the ground. He landed on his rear, hard, and bounced a few times. Kast threw the box at him in disgust. "What's in here, anyway, that's important enough to get me killed?"

Greedo displayed his most innocent smile. "Seeds."

Kast slung his blaster rifle over his back. "Get the rope and let's get moving."

"But this is one of my knots, Mr. Jodo, and you know how good I am at tying knots. I'm so good, I haven't been able to change my socks in months." But Kast gave him such a furious glare that Greedo hurriedly gave the rope a good tug. Much to his surprise, the rope immediately came undone, seeming to fly through the air towards the two bounty hunters. The second it hit the ground, the rope snaked up and wrapped itself around the Rodian's neck. Greedo's eyes bugged out of his head, and he staggered around, trying to free himself.

"Real Dark Side rope," Kast said in amusement, and started the long journey.

"Mr. Jodo," Greedo gasped, "help. . . ." Kast ignored him and kept walking, and Greedo was forced to chase after him, still trying to loosen the rope's grip. "I . . . can't. . . ." He abruptly blacked out and crumbled to the ground. The rope unconstricted itself and formed a tidy pile on the ground, which Kast slung over his shoulder.

"Come on, Greedo, we've got a long journey ahead of us." The Rodian awoke with a moan and crawled after his idol.

"But Mr. Jodo," Greedo whimpered, "where are we going?"

"You think I know?" Kast snarled. "If it weren't for Fossil constantly ruining everything, I would know where we were going! But no, I have to make a wild guess and say that Skywalker Ranch is this way—"

Greedo winced. "What do you mean by wild guess?" But Kast didn't hear him.

Soon the clouds above darkened, a menacing rumble filling the air. Kast cursed when a thick sheet a rain came down upon his armor, even though the tinkling noise that resulted was rather entertaining. It reminded him of a glockenspiel, which reminded him of the London Symphony Orchestra, which reminded him of his Harry, which made him scowl and curse even more.

"I'm tired," Greedo whined. "Mr. Jodo, can we stop and go to bed?"

"In this rain?" Kast asked sweetly, ready to kill. "Fine. If that's what you really want, Greedo, we'll take a nap in the middle of this rainstorm."

"If you don't want to," Greedo said, "that's okay—" but Kast had already taken off his jetpack and lain down under the shadow of a rocky cliff. With a sigh of emotional exhaustion, the Rodian lay down beside his friend and quickly fell asleep.

"Lucassss stole it from usss," a frightening, nasal voice said from the top of the cliff. A dark shape crept towards the bounty hunters. "My precioussss. . . ." It stopped directly above their slumbering forms and reached out a long, bony hand towards them, ready to snatch the DVD from Kast's cargo pockets. "It'sss mine, and we wantssss Natalie Portman!"

"Hee-yah!" Kast exclaimed, jumping to his feet, and grabbed the Deranged Fanboy's arms, pulling him to the ground. Greedo jumped up and hit the creature over the head with Kast's jetpack, which caused his companion to shout in anger. "You wanna blow us all up?"

Frightened by the reaction, Greedo froze for a moment, but it was just long enough for the Fanboy to leap upon him. Having seen a few other movies besides Star Wars, the Fanboy did his very best Gary Oldman impression and bit the Rodian upon the neck. Greedo screamed, remembering a scene from a John Carpenter film he had seen as a child that had traumatized him severely. "Mr. Jodo! Save me! I don't want to join the legions of the Undead!"

Using his super-fast reaction instincts, Kast whipped out his blaster rifle and aimed it at the Rodian and his attacker. "This is an EE3 blaster rifle, straight from the Blastech Company. You've seen one before, haven't you . . . Fanboy?"

Releasing the Rodian, the Deranged Fanboy let out a long wail of misery. "Feeeehhh—eehhhht!"

Meanwhile, back on Tatooine, Cradossk was sitting in a corner of his museum, whimpering and crying. "Oh, Bossk, my beautiful baby boy," he sobbed, "why oh why did you have to leave me?" He blew his nose on his jumpsuit, then stroked the wookie-hide belt that he had just found on Concord Dawn. "Oh, Thorossk, Great God of War on the Wookiees, why did you take my son? Why? WHY!

"He was strong, my boy, strong and merciless. The greatest warrior Trandosha has ever seen! And yet you took him. When he was but a hatchling, he devoured every single one of his spawnmates. . . ."

Cradossk's reptillian eyes flashed like the lightbulb that had just turned on in his head. "Except for one." He jumped to his feet, forgetting his tears. "No, Bossk, you didn't quite succeed to ruin me. I knew this would happen, and I was prepared." He strode down the hall, still talking to his dearly departed. "Yes, you thought that you had eaten all of your spawnmates. I let you think that. But I didn't tell you about the one I saved from the nest. I didn't tell you about your twin brother."

He stopped before the painting of Jango Fett wielding the Shards of Westar 34 and studied it carefully, searching through the watercolor stands for the face of a young human boy. "And for good reason," he said, and pressed in on the tiny figure of the child Boba Fett. With a hiss, the painting slid aside, revealing a dark alcove.

"Farossk," Cradossk called into the blackness, "my only offspring. . . .

"Would you like to see the suns now?"