A/N: This story was written for a Dare Challenge in another site. The result follows and you can see what my dare was at the end of it. You decide if I succeeded or not.
Prancing Bantha Blues
Some days Luke Skywalker wondered if he had been wrong and what he had heard as Ben Kenobi's voice talking to him in the middle of a typical Hoth blizzard had been really a hallucination. Or, in the remote case that he in fact had received a message from a deceased Jedi Master, if he had received said message correctly. Or in a complete way. Maybe what Ben had wanted to say was really something like: Luke, you must NOT go to the Dagobah system. You will NOT learn from Yoda...
Because Yoda was crazy. Or maybe he was the crazy one for staying with him.
Of course Yoda was curious about his food and how he had gotten so big on ration bars. Some days Luke wondered, aside the previous considerations about his own sanity, if food was the only thing Yoda cared about anymore.
"Luke!" The little green Jedi interrupted his musings, poking him in the ribs with his gimmer stick. "Stop daydreaming, you must. Asking for service, table four is. Hurry up!"
As the young Rebel dodged through the dozen of tables scattered in front lawn of The Prancing Bantha several customers from at least three different species shouted his requests at him. Thanks the Force – literally – he was able to translate what the beings wanted and filed it in his mind to transfer the orders to the kitchen later. It also helped him anticipate the intentions of the couple of Twilek girls in table seven and save his rear end from being pinched.
As he loaded his tray with three orders of roasted swamp rat with smashed tubers on the side for the Devaronians in table six and a second tray with assorted beverages for the group of Ithorians that were awaiting for their gaggli to be ready Luke remembered the day he had met the Jedi Master.
After crashing and half-burying his X-wing in the nearby swamp his hope had flickered briefly when the little green stranger had say that he knew Yoda and he could guide him to his dwelling. But he had insisted that they must eat first, so he was not that surprised when the eatery appeared to be their destination.
Instead of sitting at a table or the bar, the little creature went behind the counter and stepped into the kitchen. A Ugnaught busied himself around a cooking fire mixing something inside a steaming pot with a big wooden spoon. His guide almost fell into the pot sniffing the contents and then rushed, picked a can from a shelf and added some dried herbs to it.
A few moments later Luke was sitting on a small stool in front of a bowl of soup that smelled better than anything he had tasted in his life. "Eat!" The mysterious midget ordered.
"But I need to find Yoda..."
"Patience... It's the Jedi's time to eat too..."
He was not sure what happened next. Maybe the strange soup had some hallucinogen in it but he could have sworn he heard Ben again, arguing with the stranger.
"I cannot teach him, the boy has not patience," the annoying toad-like creature sentenced at last. He will learn patience, the ghostly voice of Kenobi argued back. Or maybe he said he won't? It was difficult to tell in the noisy kitchen. A second Ugnaught had joined the first and they were arguing between them in their own language. What did this all mean? Maybe the guy with the pointy ears was a ventriloquist and everything was an elaborated trick...
The second Ugnaught went out through the back door and came back bringing in a plate with a huge piece of grilled... something on it. He presented it to the muttering green creature. He turned his attention back to his soup – he was rather hungry after all - but to his horror, the next thing he heard was the familiar snap-hiss of a lightsaber.
Reflexively, he jumped back, knocking over the stool and igniting his own saber. The Master Chef - or Jedi Master? - ignored him and proceeded to chop expertly the grilled meat in smaller portions with his green laser blade.
"The juices inside, it keeps. It adds some flavor too," he explained to the astonished human youth.
"Yo-yoda?" Luke stuttered.
And that was how he became Yoda's apprentice. Of what, that was still to be seen.
As far as he knew, being a waiter in a grill diner in a swamp planet, and an uncharted one at that, was not the quickest way to become a Jedi. But his X-wing was still under the murky water and he had not been able to convince any of the customers to take him out of Dagobah.
For some of them eating at The Prancing Bantha seemed to be some kind of religious experience, a sort of sacred pilgrimage, and reacted with horror when he expressed his desire to leave Yoda's company.
Others, evidently, had no desire of adding another crewmember with which bounties would have been needed to be shared with and he hesitated to use Han's name just in case one of the customers happened to be one of the bounty hunters after him. He was almost sure the Jedi of old would not have approved of him joining a party to hunt his best friend.
It was by the time he reached this conclusion that he had this weird dream where Ben told him that he should trust Yoda and his strange methods, that he was the only Master that could teach him. So he surrendered and committed himself to long hours of dodging small tables and clients who wanted to get fresh with him.
All in all, at least the business was a success. There was always people waiting for them to open in the evenings and the only slow days were the rainy ones. The customers came from every corner of the Galaxy, the word that Yoda made the best grilled meat in the Known Regions spreading slow but steadily.
He learned to balance one fully loaded tray on each hand and another on his head with the aid of the Force. He learned to read what the customers really wanted – not what they said they wanted – in a matter of seconds. He seated during long and annoying sessions where Yoda would lecture him about what seasoning was the right one for what meat, about the different cooking method for each one, their advantages and disadvantages. He would babble for hours about which ingredients were more palatable for each sentient, which were poisonous and which had other side effects. He could talk about maggots, specially, for days without end. Luke got used to nap with his eyes open in those opportunities.
If there was something that Yoda could say in Luke's favor was that the boy was a quick learner. Not a very patient one, but quick, that he was. He was even considering accepting Ugnar's offer and take a three-day leave to go try the moisturizing mud-baths the Ugnaught clan head run on the other side of the planet.
Luke could not believe it when Yoda told him he was going away for a few days and leaving him in charge. He did not think until this point that the aged Jedi Master trusted him for anything more complicated than cleaning the dirty dishes. He would make him proud.
"Ask Ugnar, if in doubt," Yoda reminded him while saying goodbye.
Day one and day two went without incidents – nothing major, at least. There was a little ruckus when Luke mistook Ugnar's pet droppings for dried Corellian berries but the Bothans that particular sauce was served to did not notice. In fact, they asked for more.
Then the stranger appeared. A tall human with grayish hair and a few expensive rings on his fingers. When Luke asked politely for his name, he said he was Burdi Torian, from Coruscant, a leisure traveler.
Luke did not believe him for a minute. Not in vain he had been three years with the Alliance. There he had learned a few things. How to recognize an Imperial agent from a kilometer away, for instance. And the Force was telling him that this person hid something, something important. And that he was there with a specific objective.
He could not let him do any harm to Yoda. The old creature was annoying and more than a little crazy but he had grown to like him and respected him for what he had once been: the head of the Jedi Council. He had probably gone mad with grief after the Jedi were hunted down like animals and slaughtered during the Purges. The poor little guy deserved to live the rest of his days in peace even if that meant to support this running-a-grill whim of his.
When he surprised this Burdi guy sneaking into the kitchen and asking all kind of questions about Yoda to the Ugnaught workers he made up his mind. He directed him back to his table, promising him to deliver at once the best grilled meat he would ever taste in his life and then he slipped into the Jedi Master's alcove and searched for his stash of special spices and rare ingredients.
Yoda inspected the body disheartened.
"Know who this was, do you?" He asked Luke.
"He said his name was Burdi Torian, but I didn't believe him for a minute," the youth answered.
"Burdi Torian was Coruscant's most famous restaurant critic, young one!" The green Master spoke angrily. "My passport into the Emperor's entourage, he was! Lure Palpatine to come out here to defeat him, I could have!"
"I can't believe it!" Luke whispered, realizing that poisoning the critic had been a big mistake.
"That's why you failed!" Yoda sentenced. "Now, back to traditional training, we must resource," he muttered, while he closed down The Prancing Bantha forever and dismissed the Ugnaughts. "Once in nine hundred years an original idea I get and young Skywalker ruins it... Typical!"
He brought Luke his backpack and instructed him to wear it, then slipped himself in. "Start running, now!" He ordered.
Luke started what would be the first of many long, challenging, tiring training sessions. And there were no tips waiting at the end of it.
THE END
My Dare: While on Dagobah, Yoda opens a swamp grill diner in order to keep busy. The diner becomes a Galaxy wide success. Write a story where a critic from the Imperial press arrives to review the diner. This can be serious or downright silly as you would like it to be. Extra kudos will go if Yoda kills the critic (accidentaly or on purpose)