A few people on patientalien's and my collective LiveJournal friends lists have written Kitster!fic in the recent past, and we decided to jump on the bandwagon. For us, adult!Kitster is very much Kumar from the "White Castle" movie. Just a forewarning.
Summary: On a routine and irritating service call, Anakin unexpectedly catches up with an old friend. Set during "The Clone Wars". Rated PG.
Your Call is Important to Us
The very reason for having to make the call annoyed him. He was Anakin Skywalker, General of the prestigious 501st, finely honed tool of the Republic, Hero with No Fear. What he was being asked to do was beneath him. It was insulting.
The tinny recorded voice only served to prolong Anakin's torment. "Hello, and thank you for calling APAC Electronics," it said in slow, laboriously over-pronounced Basic. Anakin groaned and settled further into the lumpy couch, his heavy, booted feet propped on the caf table. Obi-Wan hated when he did that, but then, Obi-Wan wasn't there. In point of fact, Obi-Wan had steadfastly refused to help him out with this annoying little undertaking, so ... kark Obi-Wan.
If Anakin's private comm-link had been having hardware trouble (which it frequently did, thrown around in a war zone as it often was), it would have been easy. A few minutes with a servodriver and everything would be fine. As it was, the kriffing thing wouldn't send or received comms - something that, as a military leader, Anakin kind of needed it to do. After dismantling and reassembling it several times, the Council had told him to stop voiding the warranty and just call the customer service help line.
Anakin had assumed barking "Jedi business" at the automated answering system would get him through to a flesh and blood being (or at least a semi-sentient 'droid), but that was not the case. He'd been on hold for what he figured had been about forty standard minutes before a heavily-accented voice said "Thank you for calling APAC Electronics, can I please get your customer ID number?"
Anakin blinked. "Uh," he said, realizing Windu had neglected to give him that vital piece of information. He stared dumbly at the device in his flesh hand, willing it to do his bidding, but it merely sat ingratiatingly in his palm. "I'm a ... Jedi," he muttered, hoping still that this would bypass the rigmarole that normal customers had to endure. After all, he was anything but. He was downright special.
"Customer ID?" The voice on the other end sounded slightly more irritated as she repeated her query.
Anakin growled. "I don't have it," he sniped. He waved his hand in front of the mouthpiece. "You don't need my customer ID."
The mind trick didn't work. "I need a customer ID in order to look up your account, Sir," the voice said nasally, and Anakin could tell he was scant seconds away from being hung up on.
"Okay, okay, look. My uh, employer has the customer ID. They didn't give it to me. Can't you look it up by name or organization or something?" Idly, he wondered why he hadn't conned Ahsoka into doing this for him. Then he remembered that he'd also broken HER standard-issue phone in a rush to talk to Padme, only to have it conk out on him in the Outer Rim, and that she'd made good on her promise to give him the cold shoulder until he replaced it. Once more, Anakin cursed Obi-Wan for not doing everything for him like when Anakin was a Padawan. The nerve of him.
"Organization ID?" the voice droned and Anakin let out a sharp breath, wondering how far a Force-choke could reach across space. Not far enough, probably, he concluded after a long moment. What good was phenomenal cosmic power if he couldn't use it to speed up stupid ordeals like this one?
Taking a deep breath and clenching his gloved fist he ground out, "The Jedi Order, I'm sure you've heard of us."
He could almost hear the being on the other end of the comm rolling her eyes. "Authorization code?" she droned.
"What?" Anakin growled. His patience, never his strongest asset in the best of circumstances, was steadily growing thinner. "I don't *have* an authorization code. I just *told* you that!" He was sorely tempted to bribe Ahsoka with the prospect of new boots in order to get her to sit through this bantha hork. Then he decided he wanted to impress Obi-Wan with how resourceful and, well, patient he was, and settled down slightly.
"No need to get hostile, Sir," the voice chastised, and Anakin scowled. The customer service rep hadn't even *begun* to experience how hostile Anakin could be, he thought darkly. "Name, please?"
Anakin let out a breath. Now they were getting somewhere. Being famous had to have some perks, didn't it? "Anakin Skywalker." Now they would be getting somewhere. Once the rep realized who she'd been insulting, she'd be falling all over herself getting his - and Ahsoka's - service reinstated. Maybe he'd get a couple of freebies out of the deal, since she would obviously be embarrassed to have been harassing a hero of the Republic.
"You are not listed as an authorized user of this account," the voice informed him, cutting off his self-congratulatory musing.
"Are you kriffing serious?" Anakin growled.
"No need to get hostile, Sir," the voice repeated, and Anakin considered hanging up and stealing Obi-Wan's comlink for the duration of the war.
"I just, there has to be some way you can help me," Anakin said stubbornly, barely-controlled rage at the inconvenience making the phone shake in his hand. He changed the tenor of his voice a little: "I'm sure you've heard of me. General Skywalker of the 501st? Hero with no fear? Champion of the Republic?" 'Your messiah', he added silently, waiting for the person on the other end to acknowledge his awesomeness and bow down appropriately.
Instead, said person simply made a small clucking noise in the back of their throat; it sounded phlegmatic and irritated. "Sir, without any security clearance, I am unable to let you proceed further," they said, accent thicker than ever.
"Fine," Anakin snapped. He ran his servo-hand through his mop of dirty blonde (and simply dirty) hair. "Then find me someone who can," he intoned dangerously.
"Sir?"
Anakin bared his teeth. "Get. Me. A. Manager," he demanded.
The agent seemed to attempt to save face. "Sir, they will also not be able to help you if you do not have proper crede-"
"JUST GET ME A MANAGER!" Anakin roared, wondering if he could Force-choke someone via comm connection.
Silence. "One moment, Sir." There was a clicking noise, and then more silence, and Anakin knew he'd been put on hold. He pictured the agent squawking about his incompetence to some middle manager, and felt even more annoyed. It really would almost be worth groveling to Ahsoka to get back in her good graces, and to make her go through this instead of him. But no, Ahsoka got a shiny new commlink free of any aggravation from the Council, simply by pointing and shouting, "He dropped it in the latrine after running up the minutes!", and Anakin got to sit on hold. Life was officially balls. 'Padme', he thought. 'I'm doing this for Padme'. As if on cue, the idea of being left to moon over his wife simply too pleasant, he was soon reconnected with a live person.
"Thank you for calling APAC Electronics, how can I help you?" the man droned in thickly-accented Basic. Anakin clenched his fist so hard the electrodrivers squealed painful feedback up his arm.
"I need to get my comm working," Anakin ground out through clenched teeth. "I don't have an access code. I don't have an authorization ID. I am a member of the Jedi Order, and this is a government-issued comm I need to get working again." He didn't mention that this was the comm he used most frequently to contact Padme, given its ability to encrypt data transmissions.
"Name please." Anakin closed his eyes.
"Anakin Skywalker." Maybe if he said it enough times, it would get through their thick skulls that they were talking to a celebrity. For kriff's sake! He was sure they tripped all over themselves if some stupid holofilm skank called with a problem.
The man on the other end hesitated a fraction of a second. "Skywalker, huh?" he replied.
Anakin glowered. Were these people retarded? "Yes," he practically yelled, "Skywalker. Anakin Skywalker. A-N-A-"
"Oh man, Anakin!" Suddenly, the man's voice did not have a trace of its previous accent. Anakin boggled, saying nothing. "It - it's me," the voice said, again in perfect Basic. "Kitster. You know ... from Tatooine."
Memories floated unbidden into Anakin's thoughts. Kitster was one of a handful of childhood friends, people who'd made his life as a slave slightly more bearable. Gone were the days when Kitster would help him sneak out from under Watto's tiny wings momentarily to go search for spare mechanical parts in the downtown junk heaps, but Anakin still remembered them from time-to-time, and was always grateful. Still, Jedi dogma mandated that he leave his old life entirely behind; so while it would have been nice to keep in touch with the people who had helped him stay alive - a pang went through his heart as he thought of Shmi - that he was talking to Kitster now was merely fortunate happenstance, the only kind of occurrence the Council would have approved of.
"How've you been, man?" It was still odd to think about Kitster at present. Truth be told, Anakin found himself a bit at a loss for words. "Anakin?" the man on the other end queried.
"Sorry," Anakin said, shaking his head. He cleared his throat. "I'm ... well, I'm a Jedi now."
"Yeah, I get the Holonet," Kitster said, and it sounded like he was grinning. Kitster had always had an easy-going personality, even as a little kid. In a lot of ways, Anakin's former Jedi pal, Tru Veld had reminded him of Kitster, even-tempered yet fun-loving, always ready for an adventure, but never initiating it. "So what can I do you for?"
"It's this commlink," Anakin offered for the umpteenth time, though it didn't bother him nearly so much to repeat the information anymore. "It's, uh, broken. I think. I can't get it to send or receive calls."
"Hmmm," Kitster mused, and Anakin could practically picture his mischievous face. "You're probably not in the system as you ..." he murmured, and Anakin could hear keys clacking. "A-ha," Kitster exclaimed only seconds later. "Here it is. Oooh."
"What?" Anakin blinked, not liking the wincing sound in his old friend's voice.
"Well," Kitster began diplomatically, "It doesn't seem like the comm is broken, per se. It's online in our system. But, well, you did realize when it was requisitioned that you had to pay the bill, right?"
Anakin blinked. "I, uh, I thought the Council took care of that," he said, suddenly feeling very stupid in the realization he had no idea how things like comm link service plans or utilities worked. Despite the hardships of slavery, and the trials of being a Jedi, his basic needs had always been more or less taken care of with little indication as to the how. Surely Watto had paid Shmi's electric bill, and surely the Jedi Council made sure to get their water payments in on time. Anakin was suddenly, unwantedly, struck by how little he really knew about life in the galaxy.
"They do with your primary comm," Kitster explained after a moment. "But this is a secondary account you set up outside the purview of the Jedi, and it seems to get a lot more usage than the account set up for you by the Council." To his credit, Kitster didn't sound at all smug or condescending. Well, maybe a little.
"But I need this one," Anakin insisted. "This one carries heavier encryption keys than the other one, and my Padawan is on this account." He rubbed his hands against his knees and tried, "Could you turn it back on until I get the credits together?" If the comm was turned on, he could call Padme and borrow the funds needed, since he'd set up the account primarily for talking to her anyway.
Kitster seemed to be ruminating on his words. "Tell you what," he offered, "I'll put a note on the account so it won't charge anymore late fees until you can get the bill paid. After that, you're gonna have to keep up with the regular payments, though." More clacking was overheard, and then he rattled off a number that made Anakin swallow, hard. He'd borrowed money from Padme before, but hated doing so - for one thing, because he couldn't take care of matters requiring her funds himself, and for another, because she always had a mynock million questions about exactly what he was using the money for.
"So that's cool," Anakin intoned. "But I don't suppose you can turn it on now while you're waiting for payment?"
"'Fraid not, my friend," Kitster offered simply.
"Ah." Anakin counted his losses and moved on. "So are you still on Tatooine?" he asked casually. "I mean, is this call being routed to Tatooine?"
Kitster gave a small laugh. "I'm not at liberty to answer that," he said honestly, and a little warily. Idly, Anakin wondered if Kitster had ever heard about his mom being kidnapped or the Tusken slaughter - he decided against asking after it, however. It wasn't the place. "But I'm not a slave anymore," the other man volunteered, still cheerful. "I mean, obviously. I saved some of those credits you gave me to buy a book on etiquette. I used it to win my freedom. It took a while, but I'm pretty comfortable, now."
"That's great," Anakin enthused warmly, and meant it. By comparison, his own ability to simply be plucked out of slavery and whisked away to a new life as a Jedi seemed a tad shallow. Unbidden, feelings of jealousy shot through him. Kitster's job seemed a little dogmatic, but it didn't sound like he had to report to anything like the Council. He went to work, came home, decompressed. Anakin couldn't remember the last time he'd been able to do that.
Fighting back his disappointment, Anakin found that he had more to ask. "So ... what's with the accent?" he queried. "I was seriously ready to throw something across the room."
Kitster outright laughed at this. "Yeah, sorry about that. It, we just do it to mess with people," he balked. "Gets annoying assholes off the phone faster."
Anakin grinned at this. "Or so you thought."
"Yeah," Kitster said in a similar affectation. "You're a really persistent, annoying asshole."
"Are you even supposed to say 'asshole' as a corporate agent?"
Kitster's voice dropped an octave. "I won't tell if you won't," he said conspiratorially, and then laughed. "Nah, it's all good. They'd never find someone willing to work overnights if they got rid of me. They know that."
By the end of the conversation, Anakin had convinced Kitster to backpedal all of the late fees, after confessing small bits of information about the nature of his relationship with Padme, and trading jokes about "women, huh?" (Kitster, it seemed, also had a girl on the side.) At the end, all that was left were a couple of exceedingly more manageable, if still late bills, which Anakin promised he would get (Padme's) money for in the next week or so. Once business was squared away, they reached an impasse.
"So ... so I'm really glad you're doing so well," Anakin offered, another swell of emotion cresting inside of him. He swallowed. "Like, really glad, Kitster."
Kitster's voice was light, but Anakin could tell he was struggling a little himself. "Ain't no thing," he offered. "I mean, just give me a call the next time you flush your apprentice's comm down the 'fresher, you know?"
Anakin laughed. "Count on it," he promised.