Bespin was too windy for his taste. Even with a jacket and in the somewhat sheltered enclosure of the starport, the cool air found a way to blow against his skin, leaving goosebumps in its wake. His work usually kept him slightly warmer anyways, but the sensation was still irritating. Try as he might, he simply could not seem to ignore the it, and his concentration faltered.

"Blast it!" A voice drifted down the open ramp of his ship, a small one-to-two-man ship. The voice was discernibly male, young, perhaps late childhood to adolescent as it still rang moderately high in pitch. The voice had a certain sound to it, almost a hoarse whisper, though spoken at a full level.

Down the ramp came a young boy dressed in a Corellian-style jacket and pants. His skin was a tanned brown that matched his wavy hair and clothes. To the uneducated onlooker, he appeared to be barely in his teenage years as to have outgrown the childish look but not yet adopted the more mature features of adulthood. His face and clothes were spotted in places with dark blotches, the same color that seemed to cover most of his hands. In his hands he held a hydrospanner with several attachments on it, a common tool in starship repairs.

Turning to the right, the boy approached a nearby landing strut and gave it a firm kick. A dull clang resounded through the small area of the spaceport, enough to draw the attention of a few passersby. As if to give explanation for his act of aggression, the boy cried, "Stupid machine! Nothing but a bunch of bantha fodder."

The boy hadn't expected anyone to actually say anything to him, although he noticed the onlookers' stares. He had been too busy to care, however; too busy trying to fix his starship. If he couldn't do that, he'd be stuck here until the Force knows when.

If only he hadn't tried that new fuel injector. True, the one his ship possessed was decades old, but at least it had been stable. This new one that he had picked up from a scavenger's shop on Bogden, literally "picked up" and took off with it, had seemed to work much better, but it started showing signs of stress near Naboo. The boy had barely made it to Bespin in one piece, a few minutes earlier and he could have been stuck in deep space on the hyperspace lanes, stranded lightyears from any system.

It was strange that the injector showed any kinds of stress at all, being that it was made for a light freighter, a much larger ship than the boy's simple scout vessel. Unfortunately, unless he could find a replacement part, he wasn't going anywhere for the moment.

The moment, it seemed, that now included a complete stranger pointing out the obvious to him. Turning around, the boy glanced over the the man that had approached him. Glance up was more like it, the man was nearly a foot taller than the boy, and he was dressed in a long trench coat that the boy could have easily been lost in.

"Yeah, well, nothing I do is doing much either. It's just this new part that I got," started the boy. He was about to explain what he was doing, but stopped himself. He couldn't say he had stolen the part, the man would turn him in! "Err, bought, I mean, and it doesn't work anymore. It worked fine for a while, and then it just blew out. I've gotta fix it or I can't leave here." He went on some more, mostly to himself, his voice dropping to nothing more than a mumble except for a few distinct phrases like "fuel injector," "energy capacitor," and "transference of power." Blinking, he looked up again, realizing his head had fallen and his sight dropped to the ground. "Sorry, just talking to myself. But yeah, I can't leave here unless I fix this darned ship. You wouldn't be able to help, would ya?"

He wasn't really expecting it, it was just a plain question. But maybe the man could do something, give him a job to earn money for real parts, or maybe he had happened upon a millionaire with his own ship with a hanger that could transport other ships. Just maybe.

Free money? What could be better than that? It even came without stealing it, free honest money. He could get parts for his ship, and gee, it seemed, maybe even a whole new ship. The Iron Dragon Organization's Navy sounded like it had lots of ships just sitting around, waiting for someone to fly it. Something better, perhaps, than a decades-old rusted scout ship with barely enough weapons to fend off asteroids.

The boy's expression grew brighter. His face seemed to light up, despite the dark blotches of grease that spotted his visage. A smile warmed his face and matched his cheery eyes. "That sounds great, Mister," the boy said,. A small phrase of antiquity snuck into his speech. Something he'd heard on an old holovid, perhaps. Shrugging it off, he looked up at the man and said, "So, where's your ship?"