(25BBY Anakin is 19) (.1 NCs = 10$)

-Chapter 1-

A/N: In lieu of a beta reader, I update my old chapters as I find mistakes. This way I do not have to keep you away from much deserved updates, and still end up with a polished story. IF you notice major grammar or spelling mistakes or plot holes on chapters more than five from the most recent chapter, feel free to PM me and I will do my best to clarify!

The sun beat treacherously down on Anakin Skywalker's neck. As he was flashing by, he looked up at the cliff faces of a canyon carving a jagged scar through the eastern wastes of Tatooine. The great rock formation was weathered and had its own smaller gashes displaying all of the times ancient deluges had created rivers of life that battered the wall. 'It's a pity that the skies aren't nearly as keen to rain these days,' Anakin thought with a forlorn look at the evidence of Tatooine's supposed immense wealth off water. 'It had to have gone somewhere, right?'

For the past few weeks, Anakin had been feeling a pull to the wastes and was forced to either abandon his estate just overlooking Mos Espa to trawl through the endless interconnecting canyons in the wastes or suffer through the echoing voices telling him to do so louder and louder. 'I am seventeen, for water's sake,' Anakin said to himself 'I should be able to do what I want.' Unfortunately, said voices obviously had other designs on his time.

Earlier that day, Anakin had decided to take his podracer to check the feeling out. In the past, his feelings had been helpful and today the urge was just too great to resist. Several groups of Tuskens had concluded that taking potshots at him would be fun as he flew past their hiding spots, but they couldn't track his podracer at the speed it flew. He thought back to his first podracer, It was considered fast by current standards, but those standards had been there for hundreds of years and he didn't think technology was supposed to stagnate for so long. "Old idiots doing old idiot things the old idiot way," he remembered saying to himself. This racer topped out at around triple what his first one did. Now that he had the money and facilities, he could focus on design and efficiency, instead of spending his free time trying to scavenge parts that he might or might not be able to use to an unknown degree of success. No way were the Tuskens getting a hit in on him in this baby.

A glint shone off the canyon wall and Anakin cut the engine and slammed the brakes on, swiftly coming to a stop. This was it, he felt it. He jumped out of his racer, taking his vibrosword and a blaster rifle just in case. The wastes were treacherous, sand people often camped in these canyons because of the shade they provided and now that he was off his podracer they would be shooting at a much more stationary target. 'It doesn't feel as if there are people about though,' he thought. Anakin walked over to the cliff wall and began searching for what could have given off the shine. For the most part the wall looked exactly as it was supposed to. Like light reddish sandstone. He walked up the wall farther, farther away from his transportation form than most people would ever dare to in such a treacherous area of the planet and ran his hand along it. Finally his hand brushed past a section that was most decidedly NOT sandstone. The 'rock' felt cool to the touch, even under the hot rays of the sun, quite abnormal for this planet during the daytime, even without direct sunlight. Anakin pulled out his vibrosword and smashed it into the wall, expecting it to cut a deep slash as it was wont to do through the sandstone as if it were butter. *CLANG* The sword hit hard metal and let the whole canyon know it did so while it was at it. 'Shit! I have to get out of here, if there are tuskens within a mile or two, they will be on me in minutes!' Anakin reluctantly left the door alone and returned to his Podracer, but not before marking the location on his map to check out again at a later time after activity had died down some. He dashed to his racer and rushed out of there, he was a pretty good fighter but it wasn't like he could kill a whole village of tusken raiders.

Anakin was a renowned podracer, having an abnormally high win percentage. Even when he didn't win, he had never wrecked a podracer, telling whoever asked that it was 'bad form' and would bring down people's opinion of his skill. He had raced competitively since he was young when he had won his freedom from his owner Watto in a podrace. Unfortunately, Watto, in his anger, had killed his mother Shmi, who was another slave owned by the grubby Toydarian. Anakin was devastated and swore revenge. It didn't take long to collect vengeance and within the month, Anakin had made his first kill at the tender age of seven. He could have paid someone to do it, but that was personal and Anakin wanted that blood to be on his hands, not some hopped up thug with a blaster. He sliced Watto's wings off, dragged him through the streets in front of hundreds of onlookers and out of town then dropped him off a high cliff wall before loading the corpse with blaster bolts. That damn Toydarian deserved it without a doubt and would have done it again and again, but he doubted his mother would have enjoyed watching it, even knowing Watto would have done what he did. Sometimes she was so soft. He was never fingered by the authorities as they were, That says a lot about what kind of friends Watto had. They were probably cheering in the back of the crowd while divvying up Watto's business.

The Skywalker Estate was empty tonight. Usually on weekends, Anakin held extravagant parties for the upper crust of Tatooine. Crime lords, Investors and other wealthy and influential people and their guests were all welcomed gladly. It was good PR, his managers had said. Gives the people who bet on you and whom you make money for and with a chance to get to know you. If the right guests show up, you can get pulled into invite-only circuits on and off-world. Of all the gambling sports, podracing was number one due to all the variables. Hundreds of worlds had podracing circuits of varying affluence. He had raced in five or six different ones and all were on Tatooine. It would be amazing for his career if he got to go to one offworld where the stakes were higher and the other racers more skilled. Anakin had thrown off slavery and with it any grudges gained during that time for perceived wrongs. If he hadn't he would drown in it as half of the free people on tatooine owned slaves, not to mention that they were the ones with all the money.

Anakin's estate was huge and had several buildings inside a high wall with auto turrets that fired a range of projectiles, from stinging bolts through stun bolts all the way up to disintegrators, depending on the level they were armed at into anything that moved without a locator pass. They could be armed or disarmed from a distance. He had a small army of custom battle droids patrolling the grounds. To show off his wealth, real grass adorned his lawns and several fountains could be seen trickling away.

Anakin flew his podracer at reduced speed into his hangar and shut it down, this time turning off the repulsors as well and letting it come to rest on a stand coming up from the ferrocrete floor. He walked over to a desk in the corner and poke a blinking light that signaled a message was waiting for him. No sooner than the message had started, an incoming transmission came in from one of Jabba's bookies.

"Hello? Baron Skywalker? Ah there you are! Are you participating in the race next week? The Harvest Modus?" The jovial Snivvian asked him.

"Sorry Jeskl, something came up and I'll be busy for quite a while." Anakin replied, slightly unhappy. He hated disappointing Jeskl The guy was just radiating happiness all the time and when it left him, he could feel the loss like a hammer smashing his heart to pieces. It's not that they were close it's just that Jeskl's happiness was so intense that the absence of it left a huge void where it should have been. Nobody could be happy around Jeskl if he wasn't. A perfect trait for his line of work, Anakin supposed.

"It's alright Skywalker, these things happen." He said before hanging up.

"What a guy." Thought Anakin. "Oh! The other message!"

Anakin pressed play and the other message started where it left off, which is to say at the beginning. "Greetings Baron Skywalker, My name is Sheev Palpatine, Chancellor of the Republic Senate. I have been a fan of yours for a very long time and would like to invite you to race in a circuit that I have a large share in. The Coruscant Maze is one of the most opulent venues for podracing in the galaxy. You won't find the usual scum of the galaxy jeering the racers that you are likely used to dealing with on Tatooine, here only the most influential of Senators and wealthy business officials come on an invite-only basis. I await your call at your earliest convenience." The hologram fizzled out along with a long held breath from Anakin. 'This is big!' He thought to himself in elation. Anakin pressed redial and sat down to wait for Palpatine to activate up the line.

Palpatine was putting the finishing touches on a document that he was going to run by the Senate later that evening when his communicator blared, indicating an incoming message. He sighed before composing himself and answering it with the best smile he could manage. "Hello, Palpatine here." He said. The man in the image was young, perhaps not even an adult yet, but that's irrelevant. "Ah, Chancellor. This is Skywalker. I am responding to your invitation to the Coruscant Maze. I would be happy to win the thing for you. Should be no problem." He said with such confidence that Palpatine found himself unable to doubt his words. "Great I'll send a ship in time for the next one, It's in six months so you have ample time to prepare. I just need the publicity in all honesty, you can keep all of your winnings. Included in the deal is repeat appearances at your discretion. It's a yearly event you know." Palpatine hung up, dealing with celebrities was always a trying experience for him as their agendas were even more convoluted than politicians.

'What a nice guy,' thought Anakin a bit sarcastically after Palpatine hung up. Well he wasn't in the market for friendship. Fame and Friendship are totally different things. 'In any case I'd better have a masterpiece of a racer ready for the event. It would look terrible if I lost now.' Anakin looked around taking in his immediate surroundings.

His subterranean warehouse like garage was full of pod racers he had built himself and easily over a hundred thousand Nova Crystals worth of top of the line racer parts. He had everything from custom engine blocks he had put together himself to thousands of individual types of screws sorted by manufacturer, type and size. It was separated into two distinct sections. There was 'part storage', with the shelves and racks separating things in an organized manner. A computer kept track of the inventory and there were many droids mulling around that he could query for parts, or simply grab a datapad and fetch them himself. On the other side he had dozens of racers on raised platforms in various states of completion that were being worked on by droids he had built himself. Of course he would be looking over all of their work afterwards, Droids can be near perfect but in Anakin only trusted himself when it came to his racers final inspection. He had a list of mistakes he had found and fixed engraved into the wall of his workshop and made sure to fix the droids that made mistakes so they were more effective in the future. Many of them could have had fatal consequences. A gradual ramp upwards led to the surface fairly close to the inside his compound entrance. Another tunnel was tucked away into the back corner led down into darkness letting out at the base of a cliff a mile away. The second was very heavily concealed and had a ten foot thick metal door that was raised magnetically when he needed to pass through. Anakin hadn't seen a more secure door design. You'd be better off going through the front door of his compound than trying to enter with that entrance. If you knew it existed that is. He had dug it himself in the span of two months with a few droids, making sure to wipe their memory and had not told a soul of its existence. The perfect bolt hole if he had ever seen one, not to mention a discrete entrance and exit to his lair.