Eternal Star Royalty

It was a perfect day, Princess Mure Insei thought, standing up from where she'd been painting. Painting flowers was her favorite thing, she thought, pushing red-gold hair out of her blue eyes. There were lots of them on... She frowned for a moment, having forgotten the name of the planet she was on. It was something exotic.

She was here to represent the Asteroid Kingdom of the Yavin Asteroids in the big festival the planet was hosting. As much as she loved dressing up, it was tiring. Today, she wanted to just explore the huge city and have fun.

Mure watched the world's citizens go about their business with wonder. She knew that she wasn't supposed to be out without her bodyguard, but that didn't really bother her. She was adventuresome and liked taking risks.

Unfortunately, she picked the wrong day to take that risk.

The princess screamed as a man grabbed her. He held a vibroblade to her neck and threatened to kill her unless she gave him all the money she had. Frantically, Mure tried to remember if she had any money with her. She knew she had a tendency to overspend and so avoided carrying much money with her. However, before she had to give up anything, a tall man spoke. "I'd suggest you let the lady go."

Mure's scared eyes sought out the face of the new voice. It belonged to a handsome man with short sandy blonde hair and startlingly blue eyes. She wanted to ask him to help her, but the knife at her throat made her think better of speaking.

With a harsh laugh, the man with his knife at Mure's neck shook his head. "Nuthin' doin', freak."

The blonde man grabbed a cylinder hanging at his waist. With one practiced movement, he brought the cylinder so that it was horizontal at chest level and thumbed the switch.

A warm beam of light shot out from one end, casting his handsome face into hues of orange. "Let her go!"

Mure fell to the ground as the man who had been hold the knife to her neck fled from the lightsaber-wielding man.

"Are you all right?" the blue-eyed man asked her as he reached out a hand to help her up.

The Asteroid Princess dusted herself off and let him help her up. "Yes, thank you. My name's Mure. Mure Insei." She watched him for a moment.

"I'm Amara Leostellan."

He didn't say anything else, so she thanked him again and began to walk off.

"Hey. Hey wait!" the man called after a few minutes.

Mure turned around, her long red-gold hair swishing behind her. "Yes?"

"Let me escort you to wherever you're going. It'd be safer." He smiled at her and offered his arm. It was rather exciting, Mure thought, to be escorted by a real Jedi. She hadn't ever seen one. Her father was notoriously lenient with any smugglers or spicerunners that found their way into his kingdom and very uncooperative with the Jedi who tried to weed them out. Mure didn't know if allowing the outlaws free reign was worth the protection they offered the kingdom. But that wasn't her concern. She had two brothers who were in line for the kingdom before she and they'd do with it what they pleased. She frowned.

"But... is something wrong, Mure?" Leostellan questioned, seeing the frown. "Smile!"

She complied with a laugh. "Nothing much. I was just thinking about home."

"Where is home for you?" he asked, curious. She was dressed more nicely than any of the people he'd seen on the planet so far.

Mure shrugged. "Wherever the solar winds take me, sometimes."

Leostellan shook his head. "That's not a very good answer," he admonished teasingly.

"I'm a Princess of the Asteroids in the Yavin System," Mure smiled. "You saved the life of a lady."

He took a grand bow. "Well then, my lady! Which way shall we go?"

Instead of going back to the rest of the delegation - like she probably should have - Mure led Leostellan to the field she'd been painting before. "I forgot my brushes," she explained, blushing. "I forget a lot of things."

"Ah." He didn't say anything else as she gathered up her brushes. The silence was okay... for a while. "So you're a Jedi?" Mure questioned.

Leostellan shook his head. "Well, something like that." He thumbed his lightsaber on again for her to look at.

"Wow!" She looked enthralled with it. "This is so cool. I've never seen a lightsaber before."

Leostellan looked a little surprised. "Really? I'd have thought with the new hyperspace routes opening up that there were Jedi everywhere."

Mure shook her head. "No... my father's kingdom is very lenient with smugglers. And he refuses to cooperate with the Jedi or even allow them into our system." She sighed. "But that isn't my concern. I have two brothers who are going to rule. They can decide all of that!"

"Oh. I understand that. Jedi aren't allowed to interfere where I live, either." The handsome man smiled. "But you don't want to rule your kingdom?"

"Nope!" Mure exclaimed. "I want to have a huge family and raise lots of kids with someone who loves me."

Leostellan shook his head and slipped an arm around Mure's waist. "That's a noble dream," he said.

Something about him made Mure grin from ear to ear as their eyes locked...

"Sutaatorekku!" Amara Mure shouted. " Sutaatorekku! Get in here!" Mure groaned as the child walked in with his hands on his hips and covered in mud. Despite the fact that the boy looked just like his father, he had his mother's adventurous spirit.

"Sutaatorekku," Mure sighed. "What am I going to do with you?"

"Clean him up," Leostellan suggested, dropping a kiss on his wife's cheek.

In response, she glared at him. "Don't mess with the ugly pregnant woman," she threatened.

"I think you're beautiful," he responded, hugging her.

Mure shook her head. She didn't think she was that pretty with her overly large belly and other signs of her pregnancy. She sighed as she tried to straighten Seidan's dress. The little girl was determined to have her red hair in a mess and her clothes in worse shape. But the child's sparkling violet eyes made Mure forgive any of her transgressions. "Whatever you say."

Suddenly, there was a panicked bleating from the comm unit. "I'll get it," Leostellan told her. Despite the fact that the pair was trying to keep a low profile, Mure's parents and some of Leostellan's relatives had access to their comm unit. "Mure... I think you need to hear this."

There was a heaviness in her husband's voice that Mure had only heard a few times. Once when he was telling Sutaatorekku not to play with his lightsaber, and then again when he was telling her about his sister - Orleans.

Mure moved over to the comm as fast as she could.

The signal was broken up, despite Leostellan's best attempts to make it clearer.

"...Mure! An attack... Matataki dea... father too..."

The signal became unreadable for a few moments. It was long enough for Mure to comprehend what was happening in the transmission. Someone or something was murdering her family, and her eldest brother was trying to warn her of it.

"Princess Ast... d Mure... protect her, Leos... take the throne..."

The signal faded off into static. But that was okay; Leostellan had seen enough to know who was behind the attack on the powerful Asteroid Kingdom. "Orleans..." he muttered.

Mure tugged her son closer. "Leo... what's going to happen?"

He turned his incredibly blue eyes on her. They were filled with an anger that she didn't know he possessed. "Orleans will probably come after me. She knows about you... she has to. She attacked your family."

"We can run," Mure suggested, biting her lip.

"You don't know who we'd be running from. Besides... your kingdom. You've got to go protect it."

The redheaded woman looked stunned. "You've got to be kidding."

"No." He shook his head and checked his lightsaber again. "I'm going to have to leave, Mure." At her panicked look, he kept talking. "Look, Mure, she doesn't know where we are yet. You'll be safe for a few days, then someone'll come to get you to your kingdom. Once you're there, no one will be able to hurt you."

Standing a little straighter in light of his confidence, Mure nodded. "All right."

Mure screamed. She did her best to wield the large section of pipe in her hands, but to no avail. The girl - who had introduced herself as "Meda" - laughed cruelly and kicked it out of the pregnant woman's hands. Mure screamed again.

As she moved in closer, Mure could see that Meda had violet eyes. Unlike Seidan's eyes, this child's eyes were filled with hate and malice. "What do you want?" Mure gasped.

"For you to die." The words sounded strange coming from the child's mouth.

"I don't think so," an older voice retorted. Standing in the broken doorway of the house was a slim and beautiful woman. She had impossibly long black hair and deep aqua-blue eyes. "I have a duty to protect her." The black-haired woman jerked her thumb at Mure and the two children.

The evil odango-haired girl growled and launched herself at the woman. "Then I'll kill you first!" she insisted.

Smashing the girl against the wall, the woman managed to free herself. She aimed a kick at the child's midsection, but missed as the white-haired girl backed up and produced a dagger. Meda twirled it and smirked at the other woman. "You might be eternal, but I know how to kill you!"

Mure gasped and pulled her son and daughter closer. "Don't look," she warned them. Seidan struggled to see anyway.

The black-haired woman faked a move to the left, leaving the little girl off balance. She threw the little girl up against the wall. "No. I'm not going to kill you," she said in response to Meda's taunting eyes. "But I warn you, if you ever mess with them again, you will die."

"Who... who are you?" Mure gasped, clutching her belly as Meda disappeared.

"My name's Jeri," the violet-eyed woman informed her with a smile. Despite the fact that she had her hair doubled up in a ponytail, it still hung below her knees. "Leostellan sent me."

"Good," Mure said, almost smiling. "I'm going to pass out now."

Jeri caught her on her way down.

"Princess? Princess Asteroid?"

Mure blinked. "What?" she asked, cross. She had been staring at the paperwork that she had to, trying to concentrate on it.

"Princess," her advisor said quietly. "You need to sleep."

The newly-crowned Princess of the Asteroids glared at him. "I'm fine! Just leave me alone!" She tried to fight the impulse to break into tears again, but failed.

Her advisor hugged her comfortingly. "I'm sorry, Princess."

Mure couldn't hold the tears back anymore. "I'm sorry," she tried to apologize after several minutes of sobbing.

"Princess, I understand," the advisor assured her. "It's hard on someone to lose even one member of their family, much less..."

He didn't have to say it. Mure knew that his next words would have been something about her father, brothers... or her husband. Her dead husband... just the thought made her start to cry again. "Leo... what am I going to do..." she sobbed.

"Princess..." the man tried to comfort her. "At least you have your children."

"Wait... so you're telling us that you were alive five thousand years ago?" Priire did not look impressed. "You saw all this happen?"

The man, his sandy blonde hair and blue eyes still so much like his father's, smiled. "Yes. And I wanted to say hello to you two, my children."

Ippin furrowed her brow. "You're being kinda creepy."

"'Kinda creepy'?" Priire shook her head. "Coru, the guy just told us he's five thousand years old and our great-great-et-cetera grandfather! And that's only kinda creepy?"

"Don't forget, he also said he's Nom's grandchild."

Priire rolled her eyes. "This is supposed to make me feel better?" She fingered the blaster she'd pulled earlier.

"Sutaaatorekku!"

The mercenary looked around to see Ciel almost collapsing in shock. "Now, is it some strange coincidence that Ciel knows this guy who's claiming to be her nephew?" the blonde snickered.

"Jeri!"

"And he knows her too," Ippin smiled. "Put up the blaster, Aster."

Ciel stared at the man in shock for a few more minutes before hugging him. "Sutaatorekku... I can't believe it's you! How did you find us?"

Sutaatorekku returned the hug. "I was looking for Seidan."

"Seidan?!"

The man nodded. "Then I came across the name 'Seijoutai' and had to investigate. I knew that was the name of a line of Asteroid Princesses..."

The blonde didn't look convinced. "So... you and your sisters Seidan and Seizu are some long dead Asteroid people?"

Priire's comment earned her a headache. Nom had walked up just in time to hear the last few comments. "I believe that he has explained to you that he is a Child of the Maw." She raised an eyebrow. "Hello, Sutaatorekku."

Sutaatorekku grinned. "Hello, Grandmother."

"You have got to be kidding."

Ippin snorted at her sister. "Apparently not. So what about the other two? Seidan and Seizu?"

Sutaatorekku's eyes darkened. "After Father died and Seizu was born, Seidan was kidnapped. To this day, no one knows what happened to her." He shook his head. "I've been looking for her for forever." Then, his face broke out in a smile. "She had red hair, just like yours."

Usually, comments about her hair made Ippin angry... but she was willing to forgive him. "I'm sorry you never found her."

"Yet," the man corrected. "I haven't found her yet."

"What about Seizu?" Priire questioned, curious now.

Sutaatorekku's brow wrinkled. "Something very strange. She... aged. The only one in our family to ever grow old and die."

That seemed to cast a pall over the group. Nom broke it with a question. "Are you going to stay?"

He shook his head. "No, probably not for long. I'm still trying to find Seidan. I have a few leads..."

"You mean you think she's still alive?" Priire asked, surprised.

"I know it," Sutaatorekku answered her, seriously. "She's out there, I just have to find her."

Priire shook her head, not entirely believing him. "And how do you know that?" The blonde ducked, because Nom looked like she was going to 'tap' her again.

"Priire," the warrior said seriously. "Children of the Maw are extremely powerful in the Force. Siblings such as Sutaatorekku and Seidan have a special bond. If he says she is alive, then she is and he must find her. I wish you luck, Sutaatorekku. But before you leave, you must have something to eat."

Everyone in the room knew that tone of voice, even Sutaatorekku. As the group walked towards Nom's kitchen, the warrior spoke to Priire. "You have made several mistakes. Immortals know each other. It is quite logical when one lives longer than one's companions to notice when others do the same. Come, Sutaatorekku."

Priire narrowed her eyes as Nom, Ciel, and Sutaatorekku walked into the kitchen. "Anyone want to explain that to me?" she asked, quietly. The mercenary didn't really expect an answer. She got one, however.

"That is only the beginning," Nom told her, pausing in the doorway. Apparently, that was plenty of explanation because she continued into the kitchen.

Ippin frowned. "Ever get the feeling you just missed something?"

"All the time," was Priire's soft response.