A Life’s Adventure…………………………………….…….……………………………………………..……….Joshua Doolan, V

A Life’s Adventure

Joshua Doolan 23’

I was floating through space towards the head of some sort of mythical creature. It was a huge head with no skin left and all that was left was the skull. Although everything had fallen away the eye was still in its place being harvested by the people living inside the head. I was shivering in my suit. The cold oxygen hitting my face from the suit and the freezing cold temperature of space was getting to me. As I started losing consciousness I saw a light slowly coming toward me. It was a small landing craft that was used on the mythical planet. These vehicles were used to get around the planet for trading and mining of the eye. The skull's head, Grotius, was an unrestricted place for trade and collection of goods. It was one of the wealthiest planets in the galaxy with no empire rule it was free. The light got closer and closer and soon there was an orange blob right in front of me. I saw a shiny metal claw reach out and grab me. It was one of my bounty hunter friends, Keem Jok. He always wore this mask and never took it off for anyone or anything. He was extremely smart with some of the best weapons in the business. Although I never saw his face, he and I were virtually brothers. I made it back down to the surface and was taken to some art collector. I was still groggy from the cold temperatures. I stumbled around his collection as he looked at me like I was an alien and was supposed to be in one of his cages. He looked like Santa Claus but with a shorter beard and crazy glasses. The glasses did not fit his all-black suit and his white fluffy hair and his groomed pearly white beard. The collector and Keem escorted me to the back room where there was a Bacta tank. A tank with light blue water and used for healing. I lay on the floor of the tank while the bubbled glass covered the top of the tank. I was locked in and as the tank filled up a tube with a scuba mouthpiece floated in front of me. These tanks were great for healing but awful for the user's mental health. As I started falling asleep I started slipping into a dream. Bacta’s are notorious for causing nightmares and vivid memories to appear as if you are living in them. I went straight back to my past. I used to be a bounty hunter. That’s kind of wrong. I used to do anything for anyone. I was in fact a bounty hunter but I was also a gun for hire or anything that anyone wanted. I just wanted to make money, be feared, and shoot people. So that’s what I did. I stole from people I didn’t like and made as much money as possible. This was the life I wanted to live. The memory I got from the tank was the time that I was hired on a mission to rescue a friend from prison. This particular prison was a ship that traveled from galaxy to galaxy picking up prisoners at every stop that they made. The man we were rescuing was named Jin. He was a strange-looking man that had orange skin and long tails coming out from his head. He was a bad man who had stolen credits from his employer. I had worked on a previous crew in the past. In that group, we did everything under the sun. We made so much money that we bought our own planet. There I was doubled crossed by Jin and left with my ship and all of the group's credits. Now going back and rescuing him from jail was not a good feeling. I felt almost as if to fake the mission and leave home in that cell to rot away. Although the feelings for this mission were very uneasy I decided to go on the mission although I did not need the credits. Although fuel was super expensive during this time it did not change my partners or my needs for credits. The mission was pretty simple considering we were going to go into jail for the sole purpose of getting ourselves out. There was a little raccoon-shaped creature that was on our team. His name was Satellite.

He was in charge of getting us and the prisoner out of the prison as he had broken out of 8 of these imperial prisons. Satellite was crazy and id does not give a rat's ass about anything or anyone. His goal was to piss off as many people as he could and make sure that he was having a good time. This was the same with the escape of the prison. Although he acted like a nut job he knew what he was doing. He started to come up with a plan as we ate that day for lunch and it escalated quickly “I need an alternator, the guys metal arm, and that guy in the corners leg.” “Ok where can we get the alternator,” I responded. Keep in mind we have a rag-tag group of people that are bounty hunters and are completely crazy. I forgot to mention we also have a crazy tree guy on our team named Captain Coco. He was a thing that was made out of trees and could extend everywhere. They could stretch and grow rapidly and could grab onto anything and everything. When he got angry he got really angry and would shoot his tree limbs into people he didn’t like. Then there was some green thing or person. It was hard to tell. It was the same size as a human but had many different physical features. Although it kinda looked like a human it didn’t act like one. Instead of speaking the thing was named Angeliarc. It had many scars on her body with lots of mechanical parts from the fights in her childhood with her mother. These mechanical metal parts on her body represented losses to her mother and when she lost a new part of her would be changed. The rest of the group consisted of Keem and I. The whole group is experienced bounty hunters the chance to win the bounty of this prisoner in theory should be easy. I woke up from my daydream by getting dragged out of the tank by Keem. The room still smoking from the battle that had ensued before I had woken up. The collector dead on the floor was lying face down on the floor next to his desk. The desk was large a dark deep burgundy color with huge drawers on each side. With one of the drawers open there was a bucket with a lock on the top. As I stumbled around the room I saw lots of other creatures in these tanks. Almost like they were being displayed as art. The collector collected everything in the galaxy. From metal orbs to the rarest creatures. It was a dark room with spotlights on the tanks and all the cases throughout the room. There were glass cases with crazy-looking weapons and ancient armor. The lights were bright enough to see what was inside but the lights showed the dust floating around the room well. The room was very humid and the steam created white walls where the spotlights were shining down. As we left the double doors opened up like an escalator. As the door opened we got blasted with steam. My legs were still weak from the freezing temperatures of space I hobbled out of the top floor of that nightclub. As I walked down the stairs the whole entire room stopped dancing. The music stopped and the large group stared at me as if I had killed their brother. I tried to open my mouth and all that came out was a loud moan. My vocal cords had been completely frozen from the cold and dry nitrogen that went into my lungs. Although the loud moan was better than not being able to function it was still embarrassing. As I continued to walk down the stairs the band stopped playing their smooth jazz and I could hear the eyeballs staring at me. As I stumbled down the stairs I tripped on the second to last step and landed directly on my stomach. The pain was unbearable but the embarrassment was the real thing that hurt. The large room burst out in laughter. Keem stepped in and blasted one shot into the ceiling to get everyone's attention. The room went silent and Keem started to speak, “If you want to mess with my friend then you will have to go through me. What he has done in the last 24 hours will dwarf anything that any one of you have done in your whole life.” The room stayed silent as a couple of murmurs came from the back of the room. The crowd parted for one man. It was Jin. As soon as I saw him my body collapsed. The mission was going to be easy but there was one problem with this ship. It was manned by a human captain. This was extremely dangerous because droids can act in a certain way when brought

upon the problem of being threatened with their life. Humans are very different as they can act in different ways. The captain of this ship held a beacon with him at all times. If the beacon was pressed, a squadron of fighter pilots would show up at the doorstep of that ship that had been the source of that beacon. As the ship rose from the ground and started shaking from the turbulence we got closer and closer to the cabin the ship started getting faster and faster. We faced a group of droid fighters that was protecting the command station doors. As we went up the stairs to fight them captain stretched out his limba and penetrated every single droid. After he had done so he interlocked his two arms and started throwing the droids back and forth against the walls of the staircase. After the sparks and the metal parts went flying. The commander of the ship locked the doors. Lucky for us Satillitte brought a door breach and we got in without a miss-step. After entering the room the four of us surrounded the commander. We pointed our weapons at him as he held the beacon in his hand. Threatening to press the button to activate it if we started coming closer. Crack! The sound of an electric shock coming out of Satellites new weapon. It was a ball of electricity and as soon as it hit the guard he was lifeless on the floor with static electricity coursing through his body. The fob dropped to the ground and landed face down a couple of feet away from the guard. I walked up to it, picking it up slowly making sure not to touch the button. As it left the ground the fob was making a reflection off the ground and I could see the light coming from the fob illuminating the ground. I turned it over and the light around the button was flashing. We had 20 minutes to get off the ship before it was blown to smithereens. Making our way out of the control room we searched around looking for our prized prisoner. Moving our way quickly through the long hallways with all the prisoners the dirty looks continued to get worse as the other prisoners looked us up and down as we stormed the halls looking for our key to getting out. Jin was the farthest cell from our escape door. The other part of the mission was our employers put a ship on the doorstep of the prison as an escape from the wretched moving metal box. We got to his cell anmd it wreaked of the smell of fecise. The smell was so wretched that I puked all over the wall. Making the smell worse and making Satilliet follow my lead and evacuate all over the floor.

Keem put in the key to the door and the little cell lock beepeed and the roar of the door opening spread throughout the hallway. The door opening up like a garage door and Jin standing in the middle of the cell gave an even more sourer taste in my mouth. When the door finally opened the full smell of his cell filled the hallway and the sound of other prisoners throwing up ecoed throughout the whole prison. As soon as I saw him fully the hatred spread over me. He was a man I did not like, a man with zero talent and was a scrub. He was able to move still but was badly beaten by someone or something recently. He had been in that prison for two years and the years had not been nice on him. He was uglier than I remeber with scars all over his face and body. He took one step out of the prison then collapsed.

Jin walked up to me with his evil grin on his face and looked at me from head to toe.

“Looks like your the one in bad shape this time,” exclaimed Jin.

“How are you alive?” I asked.

“Do you know that little tracking becon you placed in my pocket? You destroyed my planet and all of my people. I managed to get away in a speeder and make it out as the X-wings bombed my people.”

“Maybe next time you shouldn’t steal, and maybe, just maybe you should take a shower,” I said jokingly as the room brokeout in laughter.

“You will pay for what you have done,” screamed Jin.

He started running towards me with hatred in his eyes and Keem stepped in front of him killing him with one swift motion.