...by me, Boba Fatt. I just got home from my week long workcation and needed Lindsay's time. Because you know, I was gone for a full week.

That's right, dinner was made.

Anyway, I need to sleep and fix my schedule. I will see you all next week! Congratulations to The Musket Ears for first place!

OK, I'm flying out the door for a vacation. Congratulations to Death by Misadventure! OK, this blog is really short and I'm sorry for that. Here, I'll post some of my Star Wars fan fiction, in which I describe Leone Zerex, a dangerous bounty hunter in the Old Republic area. Yep, that's embarassing enough.

See you all very soon!

_________________ 

The bounty hunter spoke to the restrained man, despite his prisoner's silence.

"Name's Leone Zerex. I don't matter, but we do. The trash men. The ones that help the civvies live in sterile peace. The problem with sterility is it's so fragile; one piece of flotsam and jetsam and the entire environment is contaminated. That's what I learned the most from Czerka: creating a sterile field. Many ways you can do so. Steam, fire...destabilized super-heavy elements. Hollinium chloride for example: essential in making turbo lasers. Also, a cytotoxic mutagen. You haven't heard someone beg until he's done so with a maw he just grew out of his nasal cavity. Trash is trash though. Sterile fields can't exist if the rabble drink from the same water well.

So why did I work for Czerka? Because, 'there is no one more important than the trash man!' That's what I think the barvy geezer said to me on Nar Shadda.

I was honestly too busy having seven shades of happy juice beat out of me.

Before my old man got himself sent to the Tempest mines, he told me that the reason all us refugees were so miserable is that there was a finite amount of happiness in the 'verse. Whenever someone was sad, it was because someone somewhere was experiencing joy and was, 'drinking the happiness out of our cup.'

Well, I'm pretty sure that the entire Republic was charging up General Garza's loading ramp that day in the slums. Just sip, sip, sipping away on my happy cup. Guzzling. Swallowing. Relishing.

But that's the hits off the ol' cosmic deck: sometimes you're the Coruscant piffer, other times you're the kid getting rancor rolled by your completely thermal dad because you threw a rock at the google-eyes and his droid cleaning out a shipping container. I just wanted some happiness.

'Without the trash man, we'd all be living with the trash. He isn't trash because he's working with it! He's better than you and me because we just make the trash; enable it with our excess! THAT'S WHY WE LOST THE WAR! THAT'S WHY WE SHOULDN'T LET THOSE MADCLAW WOOKIES BLAH BLAH--'

Listen, I'm not sure what the brix he was on about. Everything's fuzzy on account of me nearly getting the Big Push. Ever since that day, I have problems sometimes with taking 'accountance.' I can also see screams like fireworks. Bucketdoc tells me I won the brain injury hololottery with a slight case of synesthesia on account of my old man poodoo stomping me. That's another pot of Giju entirely and not a very interesting one to talk about.

What were we talking about? Oh, the reason I worked for Czerka. Sorry, not firing on all thrusters today. Czerka, yeah. Nothing really too exciting behind that story. The Corp made planetfall on Nar Shadda looking for cheap labor. I was looking to not get sent to the Tempest mines.

I don't think us gangers were meant to survive the wasteyards they took us to. We were mostly driving jury rigged speeders with barrels of weapons-grade sludge siphoned from wrecks without much protection. You got a bonus for getting back to the Czerka warehouses faster than the rest but if you even jostled a rock sticking out the terrain, BOOM, you scattered like a house of Pazaak cards hit with a slugthrower. And those cards were on fire. And made of meat.

I decided it was time to kick it into Corellian overdrive. I had made swoop fuel out of less on the Jewel, making me more useful than the rest of the backrocketeers. I could even distill some Boga Noga from the stuff Czerka couldn't use which made me popular with the gearheads (on account it worked as a wondrous engine flusher) and the officers (as two droobs could get an entire office drunk). Tariffs were so high on the station that alcohol didn't really make it to anyone but the highest Czerka officials, so they kept me out the field and in a modified cargo hold they hauled up. Before you know it, I'm cranking out enough B&N to give the Devaronian army a right crisping. Everyday I'd see more gangers go out to the wasteyards, knowing they weren't coming back. Czerka was drinking their happiness- and so was I. Didn't bother me. I was here, sipping with the trash men. An ounce of my happiness was more than the parched gangers deserved.

Speaking of the happy juice, I got some to get. We'll finish this conversation later."

___________________

The man was raimed, and he knew it.

"Hey, glitbiter, wake up. You've been out for a while."

The voice of the bounty hunter who had introduced himself as Leone Zerex was followed by a steel booting to the ribs. An involuntary cry came out of the man, weakened from the sleep deprivation, lack of nutrients and not least of all, his vices. How long had he been out? Leone was a night mynock, mixing and testing various chemicals throughout the night with his protective gear on. The man didn't have the luxury of a breather however, and was kept up most of the solar night retching and stinging from the experiments wafting to him. He might have protested if he wasn't so stubborn. Even speaking to Leone would be an "admission of submission" in his mind. Strangely enough, Leone had struck up a conversation with him anyway, albeit a one sided affair.

"I'll never understand why someone would pollute themselves with death sticks. I mean, look at you! That trash is making you sweat, making you twitch." Leone's voice was non-accentual, the kind of tone you'd hear on the holonet news.

The man's sight was still hazy from the gasses of last night's experiments. Partial blindness he felt, was the least of his worries with this nut. Leone continued to lecture.

"If you hadn't been such a can of corrosion, I might give you some stims to help with the withdrawals. See, alcohol is alright; the body's built for it. But deathsticks...straight laserbrained. I mean, you MAKE alcohol dehydrogenases! Our body binds with the liquor, deprotons it and --"

Blackness enveloped the man, a Stygian dark that he welcomed over his current accommodations.

Another booting to the man's ribs. "You're drifting off again. That doesn't interest you, how trash is viewed by the body? That's firm. Let's talk about something more pressing then."

Leone walks impatiently, almost stomping over to a nearby workbench. Half as tall as him, the workbench is the definition of controlled chaos, with wire tubing spilling from numerous drawers, scorched beakers and numerous holoscreens projecting his random thoughts and diagrams of over a dozen schematics. Some of the screens are caked with soot, others barely flicker with electric life. A crackling noise hisses to life on one of the screens when Leone comes within proximity, the image of an oscilloscope wave fading in and out of focus. A voice strains with what little power remained in the jury-rigged device.

“Base actual, it's case green down at the cantina. Whatever it was, we missed it. Looks like our target left plenty of drink vouchers, over.”

Leone twists a makeshift knob on at the bottom of the screen, causing the volume and background static to die out. He kneels down and opens the bottom cabinets of his workbench to reveal a strange circular metal container, big enough for a human head. Pulling it from it's cradle, the edges of the container had cylindrical swellings in three key points, as though an awkward, oversize triangle had been shoved inside. The casing's lid slid upwards with a wet smooch. The bounty hunter retrieved patchwork industrial gloves from the back pocket of his field breeches and lifts out a canister the size of a Tall Wookie you might buy from a low cred cantina. It resembled a miniature version of a bacta tank with digital readings on the sides of the durasteel casing. The container was wiped down with the front cloth of Leone's undershirt, the damp excretions staining the imitation Tomuon cloth. Leone removed a second container that was identical, except this one made tiny sizzles on the patchwork gloves, burning droplets of adhesives and chemicals stained from repeated experiments. A third was removed less cautiously than the others and sat casually on the workbench. The canisters were fitted upside down into an umbrella-esque durasteel disc retrieved from the workshop's wall. The umbrella disc accommodated all three canisters while Leone slathered a generous helping of a nova lime green gel between the canisters before bringing out a final casing that encompassed them and self-affixed itself to the umbrella disc. It would have been comically big for a normal flamer, but one glance at the walls of Leone's ship showed that he had an arsenal of homemade flamers capable of handling such a fuel tank.

If Wroshyr trees dreamed, Leone Zerex was their incubus.

"Don't know if you drifted off again," Leone started casually, "but the radio told me that everything's astral dirtside. No one's coming for you. The credits I left the patrons weren't even a tenth of what I'm getting for you, but they sold you out just the same. THAT'S why I don't drink with bishwags! Aruetii net a huge payday in their former circles. Do you know what that means? It's Mando'a for foreigner in a literal sense, though the Mandos used it sometimes for traitor."

There was a long pause, a stretch of uncomfortable silence marked only by the hum of the starship's engine. Finally, Leone broke the tension with an overly enthusiastic interjection." I digress, I got this out to keep you entertained!"

Leone pats the massive fuel container in a condescending fashion.

"This is a homebrew of mine. It's actually very hard to concoct because of the delicate conditions required for each one of the components. The first container is actually the most dangerous: modified air scrubber hydrogen. Did you see the condensation? It's because you have to keep it at 21 Kelvin. The second container is a silver, liquid metal that you can extract from Manaan clay on account of the planet's brine infusing it with all sorts of minerals. I first discovered it junking outdated Kolto machinery from their ruined surface cities. With the Selkath existing mostly underwater at this point, you'd think it'd be easy to come by, but the clay is mostly at the bottom of the ocean! From what I heard, the Selkath are going native, so it's becoming a pain to come by. Regardless, you have to keep the extract at 453 Kelvin! The third part of this tripropellant is a yellow gas from Zersium moon mining facilities. It has no practical industrial use on account of the damage it does to oxygen rich environments, so it's actually just vented into space as a nuisance. You should have seen the look on the foreman's face at Dor when I asked for it; he thought he was grafting me at 20 creds a tank!"

The proud tone in Leone's voice trailed, the courteous smile melting off like candied bofa fruit in the Anchorhead market. His face became grim and authorial, like a superior officer about to address his subordinates.

"When I hook this into my heavy flamer, not only does it do a better job of crisping than Sith lightning, but the fumes from the burning aftermath are also very toxic courtesy of the Zersium mining gas, frotzing the local flora and breathing conditions. Finally, the metallic components from the Manaan clay actually ionize when combined with the supercooled hydrogen, meaning that the smoke interferes with radio communications, blinding droids and those with optic implants."

Leone walked away from his workbench, a majority of the screen readouts fluttering off as he exited their proximity sensors. He sat back down on the stool in front of his captive audience.

"I'm sure you understand why I pointed that out to you, so I won't insult you by spelling it out. What I will do is let you know you aren't getting out of this alive. Trash gets recycled into something useful everyday. I am able to continue working by repurposing trash into credits, funneled towards a better life for others and myself. Now, with what little life you do have left, all I ask is for you to remain respectful and pay attention when I am talking to you." Leone's lips stretched into a smile as barren as Hoth.

"Because this ship really only needs one pilot. You're just allowed to ride with me as long as you're courteous. If you keep drinking from my happy cup, I'm going to have to refill it."

The bounty hunter turned away, talking to the man while walking over to a ladder leading up to the upper level. "Now, I'm going to go to the refresher. When I get back, we'll talk more about myself and Czerka and eventually get to why you're here instead of planetside with your paid Twileks, namana liquor and deathsticks." Leone 'tsked' to himself as he climbed the ladder, "Deathsticks, tsk tsk tsk."

The man was raimed, and he now knew why.

_______________________

Left alone, the prisoner used himself as a toilet. He had lost his dignity almost a standard time unit after Leone left, mocking him. Threatening him. The man wanted to try to sleep, but the bounty hunter's vague inferences had him swimming in theories, in addition to his expulsions. The withdrawals were creating fantastical scenarios in his mind regarding Leone and "the former circles" he had once been included in. The prisoner tried to collect himself, reassure himself, but there was a cold certainty in the barvy bounty hunter's words: you aren't getting out of this alive.

The hatch opened, with Leone climbing down with a musical whistle. It was a song by a heavy isotope band called Raging Tauntaun. The man had heard the band during shore leave on Nyriaan nearly 10 solar cycles ago. That shore leave ended yesterday when the bounty hunter pulled him from the pleasure den of the Bantha Traxxx cantina, half-conscious from giggle dust.

The man always laughed at his fellow soldiers that considered Nyriaan cursed because of what happened to Darth Glovoc and his flagship in the planet's orbit. In fact, the cantina he saw Raging Tauntaun in was partially constructed from the wreckage of the Dying Sun. The coincidence seemed funny to him then.

Now, the thought of it annoyed him.

"Recognize the tune? I'm surprised it stuck with me. I'm more of a Gliz fan myself. Technological, yet swinging. But, ever since I heard it on the holocorder at The Burning Deck, it pops up in my head from time to time. You ever been to The Burning Deck on Nar Shadda?"

The man continued to ignore Leone. The bounty hunter was a few starships short of a fleet. The man figured if he annoyed him enough, Leone'd kill him and be done with it.

Instead, the bounty hunter sighed softly, then sniffed once, twice before his face scrunched into a look of inspection. Leone's lips pursed to his nose for a moment; a look of apathetic acceptance.

"Guess the outside finally resembles the inside," he said dismissively. He brought over the metal stool closer to the man, almost within biting distance. The bounty hunter grabbed the man's hair and jerked it back. The man instantly regretted his unkempt appearance.

"I'm going to let you in on something glitbiter: everything I say, is rhetorical. I know where you've been. I know you prefer yellow ixetal cilona with your Fizzyglug. I also know that one of those paid Twileks back at the cantina wasn't just a woman. Trust me, a trash man knows a hermaphrodite squid when he sees one." Leone did a sharp intake of air, punctuated by a singular noise that could constitute as a laugh. The smile on his face died off when the prisoner didn't show any response.

"That was a waste port operator joke. Dianogas? They're self-impregnating cephalopods that live in garbage? Nothing?"

The silence was palpable with awkwardness.

Leone closed his eyes and rubbed his eyebrows back and forth, his lips in a tightly packed frown. The man thought the bounty hunter looked like a kinrath pup that just ate a dead slashrat. The image would have been more amusing if he wasn't so frotzed.

"Anyway, I'm trying to get you to contribute to this conversation. But I do have to admit that you might not want to given your current situation. So I tell you what: you listen and contribute and I'll let you use the refresher, maybe even cook up a nerf steak and some garto eggs for your last meal. I'm almost out of black hole pepper, but I do have some Felucian glasscap mushrooms. One thing about being a torcher is that you learn how not to overcook meat when the job calls for it." Leone smiled dryly. "Hard to get paid if there's nothing left."

The prisoner paused and reflected. He tried to speak, but nothing more than a hoarse whisper escaped through bloody, cracked lips.

"That's strange," Leone observed with a quizzical tone. "You haven't been without water for that long. You probably have developed a fungal cheilitis from the balo mushroom intake. Did you know deathsticks were made from the balo mushroom?" Leon laughed to himself incredulously, "You must have done a LOT of deathsticks."

Leon crossed over to a man-sized military locker. The metal push lock opened with some persuasion, revealing a haphazardly organized stash of medical supplies. Various shop hooks hung medpacks and pouches of stims. He pushed aside a set of yellow paged medical books on a top self to retrieve a small duraplas container. It was unremarkable, three fingers thick and round like a medipill box.

"Republic-grade lanolin. Backrocket hunters call it 'wool wax' since it can be made from any wool-bearing animal. I smear this on my face before a burn job. Keeps the moisture in the helmet and protects against the elements."

Leone stuck two gloved fingers into the lanolin container and smeared the yellow tallow with his thumb. The glove's tips took on a different sheen, turning them a dark olive in comparison to the kath hound leather base. "I'm going to put some of this on your lips to fix that cracking. Hopefully, your lips will be astral before your final meal. I had a mind to dash your garto eggs with serrian salt, but it'll burn like sith's blood in those lip fissures. If you should decide to bite me while I'm applying this, you won't get nerf steak. Or garto eggs. What you'll get is a modified flyboy's helmet hooked up to a tank of concentrated dioxis. You'll cough so hard you'll internally decapitate yourself, am I shiny?"

The man nodded. He'd take a blaster shot or an energy blade, maybe even beat to death with Mandalorian crush gauntlets. Dioxis gas was part of the security system on the ship he had served on. A careless worker once choked to death on his intestines after perforating a variable gas emitter with an arc cutter.

He had no interest in dying that way.

Leone sat on the metal stool in front of the man. The waxy substance smelled like neutral discharge, the slough around a clean wound. Leone's application was apprehensive, his anthracite-stained cuffs smelling of charcoal. The man's lips hummed with sudden awareness of the lanolin. The bounty hunter's thumb hooked underneath the man's top lip, forming a pinching motion as he continued to spread the sealant. Even if the man wanted to bite him, all Leone had to do was twist and pull to give him a Draethos smile.

"There, just keep spreading it around." Leone leaned back. "Where were we in our conversation?"

The man licked some of the lanolin. He had never licked a Hutt, but he had a good idea how that tasted now. The wax helped him develop some saliva. "Get..." he hoarsely replied, swallowing the few droplets his tongue produced, "...flacked."

Leone's warm smile oozed, like a fresh cut. "See, you just filled my happy cup. You look like trash. You talk like trash. And sometime within the last STU," Leon said with a dismissive hand gesture, "you decided to make yourself smell like trash. All of this helps depersonalize our situation and creates a buffer between my empathy for a living being and the contempt I have for waste. You've honestly made my job a lot easier and for that, I thank you."

A look of inspired remembrance dawned on Leone's face. "Wasteyard! That's where we were! I was working the Czerka wasteyards as a boozemonger. Did you know Boga Noga was Huttese drink? That's how I knew the recipe, because of my time on Nar Shadda. I diluted it somewhat because true Boga Noga starts to eat through whatever container it's in after a short while if it isn't drank immediately. The reason it doesn't kill you when consumed is because the hydrochloric acid in your stomach mixes with the lithium hydroxide content of the alcohol, creating a reactive dissociation constant that keeps it within non-lethal levels. That's why you can use old rebreathers or starship grease to make it! They both use anhydrous forms of LiOH because it's water resistant and removes carbon dioxide from gas."

Leone shrugged, his face forming the frown of an argument accepted he must have been having internally. "There's some more to it than that, but it's really boring. I'd have to explain dimensionless chemical metathesis, draw out some scientific expressions. I mean, it's interesting to ME," Leone sighed, "but I digress. Just remember the 'bass' components. Bass, like music BASS, not the military BASE I'm taking you to. Stands for base, acid, solvent and salt. Easier that way."

The man's face darken, and the bounty hunter read his dismay. "I worked up a stellar thirst just now." Hiking his gloved thumb at the ladder hatch, Leone continued. "I just got a couple of decanters of Bloodsour at a Barabel shockboxing event. It is an acquired taste for sure, but the irony finish goes well with vorzyd sliders. Well, any meat really."

The bounty hunter whistled the same Raging Tauntaun track as he walked back to the ladder.

The man's voice cracked as he screamed at him defiantly, then desperately. The annoying thought had returned to him.

And the last quiz of April comes to a close, we had two main teams last night (and a third that was one guy) battle it out for quiz supremecy. The Musket Ears ended up pulling off the win despite the fact The Other Team bought me drinks, flirted with me and generally tried their best to worm theirselves into my heart. You're already there guys, don't worry.

I'll see you next week!

• Bumsted's - Tucson 8:00 PM
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• Old Chicago (Tejon) - Colorado Springs 8:00 PM
• Casey's Bistro and Pub - Denver 9:00 PM
• Moe's BBQ (North) - Denver 8:00 PM
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• Old Chicago (Market Street) - Denver 8:00 PM
• Rooster & Moon - Denver 7:00 PM
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• Monroe's Lounge - Loveland 7:30 PM
• Piper Pub - Boise 8:00 PM
• The Spirit Bar - Cambridge 8:00 PM
• Shoppers Cafe - Waltham 8:00 PM
• Coaches Sports Grill - Albuquerque 9:00 PM
• Greenhouse Bar - Nashville 8:00 PM
• Nomad Bar - Austin 8:00 PM
• Strange Brew - Austin 7:30 PM
• Capital Bar - Fort Worth 7:00 PM
• Christian's Tailgate (Heights) - Houston 8:00 PM
• The Maple Leaf Pub - Houston 8:00 PM
• TRUELOVE - Waco 8:00 PM
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