So... Jango lead Vin out of town. A quarter of a mile away, Vin noticed six men on the horizon. Could it be? Could he dare to hope? Could it possibly be his six, good, honest, would-do-anything-for-each-other friends? Or was it a mirage brought on by the four shots of whiskey he'd had for breakfast? He belched, long and loud, and then looked over sheepishly when Fett gave him a 'look'.

"Looks like trouble," the bounty hunter's voice rumbled.

Vin narrowed his eyes at him. "You'll never get away with this, Feet."

"It's Fett."

"Oh." Vin looked sideways. Looking back, his eyes narrowed into tight little slits that he could never hope to see anything out of. "You'll never get away with this, Fett." He pursed his lips. "And, if you're wondering why I put asterisks around some of my words, it's because I'm trying to emphasize them. You know, like Chandler on Friends." He looked haughtily up at the bounty hunter. Then, he shook his head. "Sometimes, I get a funny look, though, when I have to stop every few minutes to say the word asterisk. 'You'll asterisk never asterisk get away with this.' " He shook his head. "See? It just sort of ruins my hard-ass intimidation tactic in a tough situation."

Fett just stared at him.

"Nevermind," Vin said as he brought his head down, like a turtle going into its shell. He looked at the bounty hunter from inside his shirt collar.

Feet, I mean, Fett shook his head and looked back at the men on the horizon.

Nope, Vin thought, not a mirage.

"Looks like you'll be loosing, I mean, losing some friends today," Fett told him, his voice gravelly.

Vin glared at him, one eye twitching. "You can't have a gravelly voice, Fett. Because my voice is gravelly. And if more than two people in the same scene have gravelly voices, then it just sounds like we all need to clear our throats."

Fett shook his head as he spurred his horse in the direction of the six riders.

When they got up to them, Fett stopped the horses and put his hand on his firearm.

Vin smiled happily at his friends, his partners, his brothers, his coworkers. (Did he just call me a cow orker, JD?) He hoped that the bloodshed that was apparently about to take place would be held down to a minimum. Maybe just some flesh wounds, or bullets that went 'clean through'. (I mean, you know, there's nothing important in there, right? Just arteries and organs and flesh and, I don't know, stuff.) And if they had to loose, LOSE, someone, then, maybe it could be JD. 'Cause, sometimes, you have to face it, he could be really, really annoying. Or, maybe Buck, 'cause, damn, he danced like a chicken in Wagon Train, and it was really hard to watch. Or maybe it could be...

"Surprise!" all the men yelled, scaring Vin and almost toppling him from his horse. He looked up and all his friends were smiling at him. (Or they could be grinning madly, that would work too.) Okay, all his friends were grinning madly at him.

"Ah..." Vin looked from his friends to the bounty hunter and then back. "Ahh?"

Chris rode over, clapping Vin on the back and then untying his hands from the saddle horn. "Did we surprise ya, pard?" he asked, his voice merry. (No. Wait. That would never happen.) "Did we surprise ya, pard?" he hissed.

Vin stared as his best friend.

"We got'cha, didn't we, Vin?" JD crowed happily.

"Ah..." Vin looked at JD. "But...?" he looked at Fett and then back at Chris. "Who?"

Chris shook his head. "Who do you think it is, Vin?" He grinned. "I mean, it's not like an otherworldly bounty hunter from the future, wearing clothes that were way too hard to try to describe in the above story, would just show up here, you know? Ha ha. Uh... Ahem," he cleared his throat.

"See, Vin," Buck kneed his horse over to him. "We had this extra 'Jango Fett' Halloween costume in the back room of the saloon, and we were all sitting around this morning, thinking how could we get Vin? And, POW, it just came to us."

"Ah..." Vin looked at him. "So, who's in the suit?" he glanced at 'Fett' and then back.

"Who do you think, Vin?"

"Um... Billy?"

JD snorted. "Yeah, right! If Billy were like 6'2 and had a deep, gravelly voice. Duuh!"

Vin pulled out his mare's leg and shot JD.

JD toppled backwards off his horse, landing hard on the ground. "Ouch!" he wined, (oops) whined.

"Guess again," Chris sing-songed.

"Ah..." Vin looked Fett up and down. "Mary?"

Chris snorted with laughter.

Ezra fell off his horse, he was laughing so hard. "Mary! Ha! Mr. Tanner, you- OUCH!"

Vin smirked as he blew across the top of his smoking mare's leg.

"Is it Judge Travis?" Vin asked, looking at Fett hard.

"No, he's off doing one of his Brown and Croupin ads."

"Oh."

"Conklin?"

"No."

"Mrs. Potter?"

"No."

"That drunk guy from the saloon?"

"No."

"So, who is it?"

"We don't know."

"You don't know?"

"No. We don't know."

"And I was supposed to guess that?"

Chris shrugged sheepishly.

"We just paid a drifter a dollar to dress up in the suit and pretend that he was Fett."

"Oh."

Jango Fett slowly took his helmet off.

The seven lawmen stared at him.

"So, stranger," Josiah asked, "what's your name?"

"Kurt Warner," he answered.

"Kurt Warner!" All of the men, except for JD, exclaimed simultaneously.

"Yeah, it's me." He shrugged. "You probably didn't recognize me. I shaved."

"So, Kurt, what brings you to the Old West?" Nathan asked.

"I'm meeting Joe Namath in Eagle Bend," Warner answered.

"No, I mean, what brings you to the Old West?"

"Oh. Well..." Kurt shrugged again. "I figured, I couldn't get hurt any worse here than I do out on the field."

The men all nodded understandingly.

"Kurt Warner!" JD exclaimed.

"We're past that part, JD."

"Oh."

"Well, come on. Let's get back to town. We have a party to get to and all."

The eight men started back to Four Corners, happy and content in the fact that this story was much more uplifting than the last.

The End