........and speaking of Red Baron fascinations......

[Snoopy]

  As yet another crisis is resolved (or at least, delayed) by RBL, our faithful pilot in the WWI helmet and goggles heads happily back to the hanger deck to rdy his craft for another hunt for the notorious RedBaron.  Halfway down the corridor though, he comes to a complete stop, with a look of disgust on his face.  He'd COMPLETELY forgotten that all RBL pilots had been GROUNDED, due to some unknown paperwork snafu at headquarters!  Frowning, he scratches his head wondering HOW he was ever going to catch up to his nemisis, if he couldn't even take to the space lanes. 

  Sighing heavily, Snoopy starts to remove his helmet, when a thought hits him with a flash like a lightbulb turning on above his head : he might be GROUNDED, but he could STILL hunt for the RedBaron on the ground! Grinning from ear to ear, he pulls his helmet back on.  The hunt is ON once again! 

  But wait! The only time he's ever spied the RedBaron was in flight.  How would he ever recognize his prey???  Puzzled, Snoopy makes his way to RBL's conference room and trots over to the IMP Rogues gallery that RBL members have set up over the years.  Pehaps he'd be able to pick out the RedBaron from that list!  Scanning the holo pictures of various notorious imperials, he spots one of the emperor and considers it for a moment, but quickly discards it.  Too high a profile to be the Red Baron.  Besides, since when was the emperor known to pilot his own craft?  "Hmmmm", Snoopy thinks, "this might be more difficult than I'd thought".  He resumed scanning the images.

  Suddenly, Snoopy saw an image that sent cold shivers down his spine!  The figure wore the dark robes of the Sith and though partially hidden in the holoview image, there were clearly horns rising from the images head.  But what really confirmed his suspicions was the color of the skin.....it was RED!  Obviously it HAD to be the RedBaron, thought Snoopy.  Pulling up further information revealed that the figure was known as Darth Maul and indeed, a Sith!  A formidable opponent indeed!  The name was just as obviously an alias, but Snoopy KNEW he seen through the disguise.  He at last knew what his old foe looked like!

  One other problem presented itself.  WHAT would he use as a weapon to capture or destroy his foe?  He couldn't very well carry around his blasters from his ship and a simple handheld version wouldn't be very impressive.  Snoopy thought for a few minutes, thinking about what he'd seen other RBL use......then it hit him!  A LIGHTSABER!  He'd watched Tank practise with one several times over the years, and he'd always made it look so easy.  It would be the PERFECT  chioce.  But where to get one?  The only one he KNEW to be on the station would be in Tank's quarters.  Welp so be it, so off to Tank's quarters he trotted.

  Outside Tank's quarters, Snoopy carefully looked around and listened to make sure no one else was around.  Slipping Tank's credit card he's 'aquired' some time previously through the lock scanner, he opened the door and snuck into Tank's room.  Everything inside was so NEAT and TIDY, so unlike what Tank's office tended to look like, thought Snoop, HOW would he ever find the lightsaber??  Slipping over to a bureau, he opened the drawers and rooted through the contents.  "Let's see", whispered Snoopy to himself, "Jedi robes, vest...garter belt????...frilly panties????....a BRA?????  Well, NOW I know what he wears under those robes of his.....brrrrrrrr".  Then in a corner of 1 drawer, he finds his target, the desired lightsaber!  Cackling, Snoopy quickly leaves the room and heads to the hanger bay with his new prize.....

[Snoopy]

  Upon reaching the hanger bay, Snoopy looks around carefully to make sure no one else is around, but the place is deserted for the moment and he has it to himself. " Best I get the feel for handling the lightsaber before going into battle with the RedBaron wielding it", Snoopy thinks to himself.  Gingerly, he slips the weapon from under his uniform and inspects it closely. "It's far heavier than I expected and I KNOW there HAS to be an 'on' switch here somewhere...". Yet despite all his attempts, he remains frustratingly unable to switch it on. "Dang it, I KNEW I should have paid more attention to Tank when he used this thing" Snoopy thinks.  Finally conceding defeat in his attempts, Snoopy starts to toss the lightsaber aside in disgust.  Naturally, as he does so, he accidently trips the arming sequence on the lightsaber and a beam of intense blue light extends from one end!  Barking a cry of alarm and surprise, Snoopy makes a grab at the lightsaber, not considering what might happen if his paw hit the blue light rather than the lightsaber shaft (he'd have had a tough time explaining THAT one to nurse C, for sure).  Whether by luck or by chance though, he misses the lightsaber entirely and it crashes against the hanger deck, sparks flying as the light blade cuts through the hanger deck floor as though it were butter, making a fair sized hole in the floor. Into the hole falls the lightsaber as Snoopy makes one last desperate effort to catch his lost prize, losing sight of it as it goes spiralling down into the darkness below, occasionally banging and clanging against who knows what til it ultimately comes to a rest.  "Welp', thinks Snoopy, "at least it shut itself off again on the way down, otherwise that COULD have gotten rather messy".

Thinking quickly, Snoopy grabs a tarp from a corner of the hanger bay and spreads it over the hole in the hanger floor.  "There, at least that will take care of that problem for now" Snoopy thinks happily, "but it DOES leave me back to square one on what I'm going to use for a weapon against the RedBaron".  Frowning deep in thought, Snoopy leaves the hanger bay and wanders down a side corridor....

[M1A2Tanker]

Tank walked down the ramp of his ship, a datapad in his hands as he pondered an odd feeling, as if something amiss was going on outside the ship.  In fact, it was a familiar feeling, but he'd be damned if he could place what it was.

He looked around the hanger, and didn't see anything out of the ordinary, outside of a tarp laid out over the hanger deck.  "Odd place for a tarp.  Maybe one of the mechanics forgot to put it up."  He shrugged, and decided he'd tell the mechanics about it later.  A tarp was a tarp after all, nothing bad comes from them.

Still, that sense that something was amiss did not go away.  The Jedi sighed, went back into his ship to put the datapad away and clipping his lightsaber hilts to his belt.  That done, he closed up the ship and decided to go explore the station.  See if maybe he could track down that odd feeling. 

His patrol took him through a lot of different parts of the station, from engineering to medical, to weapons and crew quarters.  At one of them, he paused, looking at the door for several moments.  This had been his quarters at one time, many years back, but he had moved out long ago.  Some other member of RBL had moved in, and left, and now, if his memory served him right, it was the 'home' of a Jedi apprentice that was staying on the station for awhile before leaving for another part of the galaxy. 

A sinking feeling struck him as a thought passed through his mind: surely someone in the squadron wasn't preparing a prank for the apprentice.  "It'd be just like them to do that too.  Get them initiated properly."  He mused aloud, before taking his officers card and swiping it.

The door hissed open, and he walked in cautiously, on the lookout for the usual traps and pranks.  To his relief, he found none.  But he did find some of the drawers open and clothing gone through.  "The hell happened here?"  He scratched his head before picking up some of the items.  He was in the process of dropping them into an open drawer when a shocked voice behind him prompted him to spin around in surprise.  "What are you doing?!?"

He looked at the girl, then to the bra and panties in his hand, before back to her.  "It's NOT what it looks like!"

The Jedi was running shortly afterwards, being pelted by various items, and vowing he'd find the culprit.  For clearly there was a panty thief.  "Emperor's Black Bones, it's not me you crazy apprentice!!!"  He yelled back, dodging a projectile thrown with the Force as he ran back into the hanger.

He didn't pay close enough attention though to where he was going, more concerned with escaping than anything, and, naturally, ran across the tarp. 

When he woke up later, he found himself wrapped in said tarp, his body in a very uncomfortable configuration as he was laying on top of some gear, and looking up at the hole in the deck above.  "This is so not my day."

[Holmes]

Piloting an old freighter on the way back from a nearby system carrying some parts needed for the station, Holmes is jamming out to a 20th century classic "Heavy Metal - Sammy Hagar" on his rPod.

He notices a nebula buildup ahead on the scope, pausing the music, "R3 whats the status on those lateral stabilizers? With the hyperdrive being out were gonna be in for a bumpy ride navigating a nebula storm with all this mass on board..."

R3 whirs as it plugged in to the aging freighters subsystems and chirps a reply to Holmes. "only 40%?" Holmes exclaims in disgust, "Great, just great."

An alarm is heard coming from a nearby communications console, "What now..." Holmes accesses the comm panel to find a message from the RBL station's monitoring subsystem. The messages reads [Structural integrity compromised, Hangar Bay #2]. "What the %$^*, are we under attack?"

He keys up the comm panel initiating a subspace link to RBL's station core. {Greetings Holmes, Accessing systems core, retrieving structural alert details} .... [Structural Integrity compromised in Hangar Bay #2, deck plating compromised, large void, probable cause- incineration, safety force field - unable to compensate, lifeform in void present] ... {Identify lifeform} ... [Matching lifeform to alien species database - no match, Matching lifeform to crew database... Lifeform has 99.92% probability match to crewmember RBL_M1A2Tanker]

"Hmm what the heck happened there Tank" Holmes mutters, "Oh well nothing we can do about it from out here, will have to deal with it when we arrive, R3 keep after those stabilizers we're entering the edge of the storm."

Holmes hits resume on the rPod as the old freighter slips out of site into the thick murk of a nebula storm...

[Azis]

Stirs in the bomb bay of his personal Tie Bomber in a shudder and sweat. Senses much more activity on ship than present in some time. Imagines Nurse C being revived from her carbon-freezing chamber...tucks himself under his brushed helmet and sings soft lullabies.... :-X

[M1A2Tanker]

It took much maneuvering of his protesting, and agonized body to get him extricated from the tarp and the pile of gear that he had fallen on top of.  As he stood up, he put his hands into the small of his back and pushed as he leaned backwards, cracking it back somewhat into place.  "Ooh geez...I need a chiropractor..." He groaned. 

As he started to walk towards the turbolift that would get him out of the storage area, a gleam caught his eye, and he paused.  Kneeling, he picked up a lightsaber hilt, one that was in far better condition, and looked newer, than most of the equipment in the room.  Looking at it, and then up at the hole above, he sighed.  "So, someone lost their lightsaber through the deck, huh?"  Straightening up, he continued his walk for the lift, wondering how the hell a lightsaber was simply dropped down here without the owner coming after it. 

Somehow he had a feeling nothing good could come from this.

[Snoopy]

As Snoopy wanders down the side corridor, he feels his stomach rumble and realizes he has't eaten in some time.  "I wonder what Aslan's got on the menu today at the Bar & Grill" he thinks hungrilly.  Picking up the pace, he hurries to Aslan's where a rich aroma of something tasty tantalizes his nostrils.  Sneaking behind the counter, he spies a huge pot over the flame with something simmering inside.....without doubt where the aroma is coming from.  Gingerly, Snoopy slips the cover slightly on the pot and sticks a large spoon inside to scoop up a little taste.  "Ummmmm,  not bad" he says to himself, "although it seems to be missing a little something".  Slipping over to the shelf of supplies, he spots a jar of wookiee ghost peppers and has a 'eureka' moment.  "Just what the stew needs to bring out the flavor!"  Taking the jar over to the pot, Snoopy reaches up to shake some of the contents in, but, as luck would have it, loses his grip on the jar, splilling the entire contents into the pot!. "Dang clumsy paws" Snoopy mutters to himself as he grabs the thankfully still intact but now empty jar and replaces it on the shelf.  Hearing someone coming, Snoopy hurries from the room, unseen, wondering if anyone will even notice the 'slight' addition he'd made to today's main course......