Section 9.Mileena

The story so far:

Mileena Ve’Tan, daughter of Porten Ve’Tan, a wealthy and highly respected citizen of Aurorus-4, is definitely not a rogue of any sort. She is more of an innocent bystander, but there is no way she is going to let her father get murdered by bounty hunters. She already lost her mother that way.

The story continues…

As Aaron and her father left, Mileena smiled and turned to the controls. She whipped the ship around and headed back down to the planet’s surface. The huge freighter touched down outside the city with a resounding slam. At the point of impact, Mileena was almost jarred from her chair. It took her a moment to regain her footing before she was out the hatch and sprinting back to town. She could already see the bounty hunters on all manner of beasts and motorized mounts hurrying to the site where she had landed.

“Fools,” she chuckled to herself, “don’t they realize they’ve already gone?”

Luckily, there was no shortage of people flowing into the city as well. Mileena, with her clothes a little more ragged and dirty than usual, managed to blend in quite splendidly and did not even have to show her identification at the gates amidst the throng. Once inside, she hurried to the estate, which was surprisingly empty, save for the servants, who all looked terrified. At the sight of her, the head butler, Faldore, rushed up to greet her.

“My dear Mileena!” he exclaimed as he gave her a great hug. Faldore was tall, especially for a Aurorusian, standing almost seven feet tall. Mileena had always enjoyed this aspect of him, because his embraces always seemed to envelop the entirety of her being and made her feel like everything was going to be all right. “We were so afraid you were captured, or worse, killed!”

“No, when we got away and found out about the tracker, we split up and I came back here. There’s no one after me that I know of.”

“Well, that is a saving grace, then. We should get you far away from here, dear one,” Faldore said, pulling Mileena along to her bedroom. “Perhaps we could send you away to some of your friends on the Aulin system.” Maidservants pulled bags from closets and began filling them with beautiful dresses. “I believe they are in the height of summer right now and the beaches are…”

Mileena stood next to the servant and shook her head. “No, Faldore, I’m needed here. If I run away, there will be no one to keep Thenar and his host of bounty hunters off my father’s trail.”

“Are you sure that is wise, Mileena? What if the hunters come after you next?”

Mileena was digging through a drawer that had not been touched by the servants. Inside were older clothes, items that were worn or too small, all these thrown aside until all that remained was a full-body leather suit. She coughed loudly and Faldore turned his back to her while she changed. It took her a few moments to cram herself into the snug costume.

“So,” she said as Faldore turned to face her again, “how do I look?”

The servant frowned. “To be honest, like a harlot. If you’re going to try on old costumes, why not your princess costume from a few months back?” Faldore began to search through the piles of clothes the maidservants had pulled out before Mileena pulled him away.

“No, old friend,” she replied, “I’m going to be hiding in the place they’ll least expect me and the place that I can do the most good for my father and Aaron.” She pulled a dark colored scarf from the pile and wrapped it around her head and mouth, obscuring everything but her eyes. “In plain sight,” she remarked in an accent that made her seem like she was having a little trouble with the normal pronunciations of normal speech.

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And so starts the exciting adventures of Mileena, the fake bounty hunter! Where should she go first? How should she proceed in her new persona as huntress? Should she go straight up to Thenar and demand the bounty be dropped or should she follow the rest of the hunters and lead them on false trails in order to lead them away from the “prize”?

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