Chapter 3: A Royal Pain

My life passed before my eyes.

Five seconds later and it was done. I think I was short changed.

What about the wild nights on the beach? What about the dancing girls?

Oh ya, that's right. Those were just dreams.
I'm just a jawa, and soon to be one very dead, very flat jawa.

I closed my eyes at my impending doom and tried to consol myself that at least I'd still have Qui-Gon to talk to in the afterlife.
I was just about to demand a rerun of my life when... CRUNCH!!!

(???)

Oddly only the wind was knocked out of me. I seemed to have landed on something light and boxy.

I opened my eyes.
Well what do you know? I landed on some boxes. Some nicely wrapped, recently purchased boxes by the look of them. All with very expensive brand names attached to them and even more expensive price tags. ..uh oh...

Somehow I had managed to fall into a passing speeder. Not just anyone's speeder either.

"You are so going to pay me back if any of those clothes are damaged."

My eyes whipped over to the drivers seat. "Senator Amidala? You mean...I landed in your speeder?"

"uh...YA! As if you couldn't tell by the hot pink color and the fur lined seats?"

"Then...these boxes...they cushioned my fall?"

"They should have. I paid enough for the extra wrapping. They're not presents or anything. They're all like, for me, cos like, there was this huge sale at the Coruscant Clothing Outlet, but like, it was only good till midnight tonight so I thought, sure, I just got paid and all. And they had the cutest shoes there too. You would have just died. But like, since these are all sale items, they won't even take them back if they are damaged so if any one of these has so much as a scuff or a...stain...on them, you are so reimbursing me."

"Ya, ya. Sure, whatever. It's worth it. Don't you see? You...you just saved my life."

"Wow. I guess I did. Hooray for me! Wait till some of the other senators hear about this. I bet none of them ever saved someone's life before. They are going to be SO jealous. And I'm going to be like 'ha ha, guess who's cool now.' Say, you're Qui-Gon's little buddy aren't you?"

"Eh...I wouldn't have put it that way, senator Amidala..."

"Please, call me Padmé."

"Padme?"

"No, Padmé. So what were you doing falling out of the sky, anyway?"

"Holy crap! The ewok!"

"You were falling for an ewok?

"No. He's a Sith Lord."

"Ewwwww. Master Yoda said you we're a little creepy."

"No, this diabolic ewok Sith Lord suddenly jumped out of my...Yoda said what? Never mind. We got to get back to my apartment."

"As if! I got to get these clothes home before they wrinkle. I got a very important senatorial dinner function tomorrow and there's no way I'm going to send Sabé to sub for me. That backstabbing bitch.. .Besides, I also picked up this cute little black number I was going to surprise Anakin with but I got to first try it on to make sure that is makes me look all hot and stuff. Not like that thing I wore when we returned to Naboo with that big ol Aztec headdress thing. That was so wrong on so many levels. What was I thinking of?"

"But this...this..evil fluff monster almost killed me. In fact, I don't think he will stop until he kills me. And I don't even know why. He's got to be stopped and before he totally trashes my apartment and steals my...eh...videotapes."

"Look, I'll help you out. Just cos you're a friend of Qui-Gon's and all. And it'll look good on my resume. I'll just drop these off at the house, change into something a little more sporty and we'll go get some help."

"But who's going to help us. All the great Jedi's are still back on Tatooine with that Survivor game? Who's left?"

"I think I got just the person...."

A Door creeks open. A man in slept in robes stumbles out the door to the clatter of empty beer cans at his feet. A fine mist of Cheeto dust wisps out.

"BrrraaaacCCCHHHHH!!!!! oh, that was a big one."

...to be continued.