Getting Down With It! Part Two

Greetings Fellow Explorers!

So, no doubt you've tuned in this week to find out who the other character is that died and upset me.  Well, I won't prolong the torture any more than I already have.  Here we go!

It was a Star Wars book, a collection of short stories called Tales From the Mos Eisley Cantina and it was edited by Kevin J. Anderson.  Now in case you don't know, this story is a collection of stories, each story is about a different person who happened to be in the cantina during the famous scene in the first Star Wars movie, the one nowadays called Episode Four:  A New Hope.


So There's A Story about the bartender.  There's A Story about the two thugs who bother Luke and Ben cuts them up with the lightsaber.   There's A Story about Greedo, the bounty hunter that gets shot by Han Solo. 

In the movie, when Han shoots Greedo they cut to various patrons to see their reaction.  In one of these reaction shots there is a Jawa (like the ones that sold the droids to Luke and his Uncle) sitting at a table with a little rat-alien thing.  This Jawa has a story in the book, and his name is Het N'Kik.

So apparently all the Jawas were supposed to get together and have a convention, see...I think they were calling it a swap meet.  Anyway, Het N'Kik's girlfriend was among the group that sold the droids to Luke and his Uncle, and was also killed by the Imperial Stormtroopers.  Het N'Kik found this out and declared war on the Empire single-handed!  Omg, he was like the Bruce Willis of Jawas!

So he gets a BFG (the "B" stands for "big", the "G" stands for "gun", I leave the "F" to your imagination) and goes off looking for Stormtroopers to kill.  He stops in at the cantina, gets stuck sitting with the little rat-guy.  So after Obi-Wan slices up the thugs with his lightsaber, the cops, I mean, Stormtroopers show up to look around and do absolutely nothing.  Het N'Kik follows them when they leave.  He jumps out at them from around a corner...AND THAT'S THE END OF HIS STORY!!!  Like what heck!? 

But wait there's more!
The next story is about the little rat-alien that was sitting with Het N'Kik.  He is a Ranat and his name is something like Reegesk.  While sitting with Het N'Kik, he dupes the trusting and distracted little Jawa into letting him look at the gun.  When he does, he takes the batteries out!  

At this point, you're like "What the Hell?!?!  At the end of his story, Het N'Kik jumps out of the alley and starts shooting at the Stormtroopers!  Now the book says his gun had no battery!" 

And it's true, the end of Het N'Kik's story said he kept pulling the trigger, it never said that he fired a shot.  So what the heck happened?

But wait, there's still more!
The next story is about one of the Stormtroopers who came into the cantina.  He was a disgraced AT-AT driver who dropped his AT-AT onto its front knees so somebody couldn't wrap a cable around the legs.  This was against regs so he got busted and sent to Tatooine to look for droids carrying Death Star plans.

He and his Captain (the trooper with the fancy orange pauldron) reported to the disturbance at the cantina, did nothing, and left.  They didn't realize they were followed by Het N'Kik.  Suddenly and without warning this "crazy Jawa" jumped out of an alley and started shooting at them!  Except...he didn't!  The Jawa's gun didn't fire!

So the Captain sneered, says something that basically equated Jawas to rats, and killed Het N'Kik dead with one shot!  It's, like, the only time a Stormtrooper hit what he was aiming for in all of Star Wars history!  Holy crap!  Just like that Het N'Kik was dead!  He was the coolest Jawa in the galaxy, the very Bruce Willis of Jawas and this dipstick Stormtrooper killed him like that!

This was a Thoroughly Antagonizing Situation!  Boy, was I ticked off!  In fact, I'm getting ticked off just thinking about it!

You know what?  I don't really know WHY Het N'Kik's death or Goldmoon's death got under my skin like that.  I guess that says something about the writing...but I'm not sure what.  

What about you?  Did you get mad when some character in the story you were reading got killed?  If so, who was the character and what story were they in?  Please, leave a comment down below, I think it would be interesting to hear about it!

Well, I guess that's all for now, my fine friends!  Until next time I bid you:

Good Adventuring!
Timothy A. Sayell