Imperial times- Coruscant

Old man Minero nearly laughed himself off his stool when he finally let Tarik into the back room of the restaurant.

"Oh ho, old friend, what�s this?" he laughed, "A new fashion statement?" Tarik winced, grumbling to himself as he limped into the room. He happened to like wearing pants for a change, at least they hid his scars.

"Not cold," Tarik said, shrugging as he leaned heavily on his staff.

"I like it, makes you look more like a person instead of a overgrown Vornskr," Minero said, crossing his arms. Tarik grumbled again, orange eyes darting around the room nervously. "So, what can I do for my friend today?" Minero said, cocking an eyebrow at Tarik.

"Hungry," Tarik mumbled, looking at the floor in embarrassment.

"Hurt too I see," Minero said thoughtfully, the playful tone fading from his voice. "Drekano?" he asked. Tarik nodded, shifting his weight uneasily. "Don�t worry, my friendship doesn�t come with that kind of price," Minero said, smiling again.

Price. Tarik dug into his waistband pouch, chirping.

"Pay for food," he said, setting the handful of coins on the table next to Minero. Minero�s eyebrows went up in surprise.

"Republic credits? Where in Hoth�s frozen plains did you find those?" he said quietly, fighting to keep his voice hushed. Tarik shrugged.

"Junk pile," he said, sniffing. He wasn�t about to tell him that he�d broken into an empty apartment after being chased by a Dark Jedi.

"Some junk pile," Minero mused, sorting the coins. "Corellian?" he said, picking up the coin with the string on it. Tarik shrugged again. Minero turned the coin over in his hand studying it. Suddenly he closed his hand around it, looking around nervously. Tarik cocked his head curiously. Minero looked down at him.

"You don�t have any idea what this is, do you?" he said, rolling the coin around his palm again. Tarik looked at him blankly, shaking his head. "I�ve only seen one of these in old records and stories. This," he said, holding the medallion up by the cord. "This is a Jedi ascension medallion. Minted by a Corellian Jedi to commemorate his becoming a Jedi knight." Tarik�s orange eyes flashed at the thought. Something from a Jedi? His claws flexed nervously, something about the word Jedi...

"Tarik?" Minero said, looking at him strangely. He looked up curiously, suddenly realizing he�d been growling. He shook his head, snorting.

"Bad day," he muttered, stretching his claws and leaning on his staff again.

"So I noticed. Come on, let�s get you some dinner, then I�ll see what I can do about those wounds," Minero said, mussing Tarik�s hair like a little kid. He chirped, fake-swatting at Minero�s hand playfully. "Stay here, I�ll bring you in something," Minero said as he opened the door. Tarik nodded, twitching his tail happily.

Dinner! he loved the sound of that word. His stomach started growling again as Minero closed the door behind him. He poked at the coins on the desk, picking up the medallion. Jedi.... Tarik snorted, dropping the coin back onto the table. Why did that word bother him? The Jedi were supposed to be the good guys, or at least they were a few decades before the big war the people talked about. Tarik never really paid attention to the up-siders� version of the world, he was happy living far away from them, down where no one else went. Too many Stormtroopers top-side. The further up you went, the more soldiers there were, and the more soldiers there were, the bigger the guns they carried.

Someone had told him once that there weren�t any Stormtroopers before the war, that the planet had been relatively peaceful until the Emperor came along. Tarik had no idea who or what an Emperor was, though he�d been told he was the person in charge of the entire planet and more planets besides. As far as he was concerned, anyone who was in charge of the Stormtroopers was no friend of his, in charge of the galaxy or not.

The door to the office opened and Minero walked in with a large plate of food. Tarik yipped happily, nearly tripping over his own tail as Minero put the plate on the desk and slid a chair over for him. He completely ignored his own instinct to act sensibly in front of others, instead he followed the instinct that reminded him he�d been starving for almost four days now.

"Hey now, don�t eat the desk!" Minero said jokingly, laughing as Tarik climbed into the chair and virtually attacked the plate. Minero shook his head, ignoring the glance from Tarik as he scooped up the credit coins he�d brought. He weighed the medallion against his palm, watching Tarik eat from the corner of his eye. He finally shook his head, setting the medallion back down on the desk and carrying the rest of the coins over to his concealed wall safe.

Tarik was almost done eating already as Minero slammed the bio-recognition lock closed on the hidden vault. He slid a holographic portrait of Mrs. Minero over the vault door, hiding it from view. I know I�m gonna come to regret this moment, he thought, pulling another chair over to the desk and taking a seat across from Tarik.

Tarik was trying to lick a stray spot of gravy off his snout as Mr. Minero sat down. He finally remembered that he had hands after a few tries, grabbing the napkin from the table and wiping off the spot. Minero saw a flicker of something odd in Tarik�s eyes as he looked down at the napkin in his hand. He realized what it was after a moment, embarrassment. Tarik was easily embarrassed, this being said about a creature who ran around town in a loincloth and shorts all day though.

He tried his hardest to behave like a civilized being, but occasionally either instinct or bad habits would kick in, making the poor thing wish he could crawl under a rock for twenty years. His table manners were a combination of both. The foolish chirping and whining due to an old void in his social behaviors, and the panicked lunging at the plate due to his nearly starving to death.

He didn�t have to tell Minero he�d been starving, he�d seen it in him the moment he came in the door. Being able to see rib-bones through Tarik�s massive muscles was enough to say things were getting lean out on the streets. Drekano was purposely driving every lurker in the area to desperation, making them come to him to beg for his help. Fortunately for Tarik, others had been coming to Minero too, so he knew Tarik would probably be along soon as well.

Tarik stared at his plate as if wishing it would magically refill with food. Minero smiled.

"Tarik, staring a hole through the plate only works if one is capable in the force," he said, ruffling Tarik�s hair again. Tarik looked up a bit confused, then caught the joke. He gave one of his hissing snickers, his snout crinkling a little. The usual expression of "ha, ha, very not-funny" that Tarik used around Minero. Minero picked up the Jedi medallion from the table thoughtfully.

"Perhaps if you wear this long enough, someday you may sprout the knowledge," Minero said, holding the medallion out to Tarik. The green striped tail stopped twitching behind him completely, though his face barely reacted at first. Then the orange eyes went a little wider, flicking back and forth between the medallion in Minero�s hand and Minero himself.

"No dupat?" Tarik said, astonished. He�d assumed that Minero would keep all of the coins he�d brought, especially after his obvious interest in the medallion coin.

"Yes, I�m serious. You found it, and from your wounds, I�d say you�ve earned it," he said, stretching out the loop of cord and leaning forward to tie it around Tarik�s neck.

Minero almost got whacked in the face with a green pointed ear as he finished tying the knot. Tarik was trying to turn his head far enough to see the medallion around his neck already. Tarik was obviously overjoyed. He was always having things taken away from him, but he�d never been given anything before. Another thing became painfully obvious to Minero as he backed away from Tarik. Tarik had rarely ever let anyone get this close to him before.

Close-up, Minero could see why a lot of people were scared of him. From a polite distance, Tarik almost looked cute, like someone�s escaped pet that grew wild on the streets. Closer up you could see the fact that he had very sharp teeth and jaws that were obviously designed to bite, and bite hard.

Those oversized, hypersensitive ears that looked silly at times were just as much weapons as his claws or his staff. And the reflective properties of those nearly bio-luminous orange eyes said they were clearly designed for night vision. That, plus the fact that Minero had seen Tarik home in on and track a fruit gnat across the room once proved that he wasn�t as dimly precepted as people thought.

The one thing that bothered Minero the most were those claws. He�d heard a story from one of the other lurkers that Tarik had ripped through a Stormtrooper�s armor like wet paper when they cornered him and tried to capture him a few years ago. Those exposed talons looked lethal to anyone, including people who knew there was almost another inch and a half of claw hidden behind what could be seen.

Minero suddenly found himself feeling nervous, and Tarik picked up on it almost instantly. He swiveled one pointed ear toward Minero, chirping curiously.

"Oh, I was just worrying about those bandages. Let�s get you over to the South Street Clinic and see how bad those are, Hmm?" Minero said, standing. Tarik looked at him for a second longer than Minero was comfortable with, then he snorted, nodding and sliding off the chair.

Why did he have to keep making jokes about the force around him? Minero thought. The longer he was around Tarik, the more uneasy he became. Tarik was almost empathic in the way he could guess what people were feeling toward him, and he supposedly had a bizarre knack for knowing when someone was in trouble nearby. And he had the uncanny ability to keep himself alive, even with nearly the entire universe conspiring against him.

Minero was starting to regret giving Tarik that medallion for more reasons than its value now. What if he really was latently force-sensitive, and that medallion somehow encouraged him to activate whatever abilities he had? Minero shook off the idea. That was so completely absurd that he didn�t know how he let the idea get into his head.

Tarik was looking at him strangely again, those orange eyes studying him. He was leaning on his staff like he had when he came in, the tip of his tail twitching slowly. For a moment, Minero had the bizarre image of some sort of ancient, wizened creature with the same soul-searching glances and pointed ears superimposed in his mind over the image of Tarik leaning on his staff like a crutch. He closed his eyes, shaking his head wearily.

That�s what you get for sampling the cooking wine all day, he chided himself.

He opened his eyes at the sound of a miserable sounding chirp. Tarik was still there, just Tarik, no creature with a cane this time. He looked worried, his tail twitching even slower as he watched Minero.

"I�m coming, I�m coming," Minero said, grabbing his jacket off the rack next to the door. "Well, one good thing I can say about you today," Minero said, waiting for Tarik to hobble out through the door. He looked up, the befuddled look that meant �What?�

"At least the pants look good on you," Minero said, smirking down at Tarik as he locked the door behind them. Tarik rolled his eyes at Minero, then shook his head, snickering as Minero closed the door.

----on to Part 5 of Chapter 1---

© 2000 Michelle Petrosky

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