Disclaimer: I don't own these characters or Star Wars.
Update: Here we go again.
"WHAT?"
Luke had braced himself for his sister's reply, and there it was. "Yep," he grinned. He and Leia were speaking over the phone later that night; while it was midnight in Naboo, Nevada, it was dawn in Greenland. "Dad's opening an arms dealership disguised as a dry cleaner's, and your brilliant son wants to drop out of school and work there." Luke cursed the phone for not having one of those curly 1980s phone cords that attached to the wall; now was an ultimate curl-your-finger-in-the-cord-to-prevent-stress moment.
"My brilliant son needs a high school diploma." Leia sighed angrily. Luke heard her stomp her feet aggressively in the background. "I sent him to Dad so that Dad could talk some sense into him, but dammit, Luke, he's sending Ben down the wrong road!"
"Dad's problem is that he's bored, and needs a new job. Retirement doesn't suit him," Luke explained. "So he's opening his own business."
"An ARMS DEALERSHIP?"
"It's all political, sis. He's afraid that gun ownership will become illegal in Nevada, so he's resorted to selling them under the table. He's all about the second amendment and putting down everything that your godfather stood for." Duh. Leia should have known that.
"Speaking of the godfather, do we have a confession yet?" Leia too believed that Darth Vader was guilty of the Organas' murders.
"Nope, and we're not likely to get one. What'll I do, Leia? I don't want to see Ben drop out of school to work for Dad, and neither do you."
"Get Dad to compromise on the job thing," Leia suggested. "As long as Ben stays in school and keeps his grades up, he can work evenings and weekends at Anakin's." Leia was all about compromising. She worked at the United Nations, for pete's sake.
"I think this whole thing is stupid," Luke muttered. "By the way, where's Tina? I brought Timmy the Tauntaun all the way down from Alaska to see his buddy, and she's not here."
"Oh, I had Dad ship her to me after the Organas passed. She was a gift to me from them, remember?"
Luke sighed pathetically. "So, unless we pay you a visit, Timmy is never going to see his lady taun again? No plush tauntaun wedding with the bride wearing a veil and the groom piling on stinky cologne made of tauntaun excrement?
"'Fraid not," Leia grinned over the phone.
Damn.
Ben had taken out his piercing as promised, and Luke's father had been right; he really did look better without it. Except now, he had picked up a strange new habit: he had resorted to wearing long, black robes as clothes. With the black hair down to his shoulders, he looked like some kind of minister performing a sacrifice for a Satanic cult.
"What the hell?" Luke had to exclaim aloud in disdain as Ben came down to breakfast the following morning. "What kind of a getup is that, Ben? You start school like that, everyone'll think you're bent on world domination."
"My name is Kylo, and I'm not going to school." Ben/Kylo bit his lip in impatience.
"Yes you are, if you want that job at Anakin's. Your mother's rule."
"You're talking to Mom, aren't you, Uncle Luke?" Ben pointed a spoon at his uncle is accusation.
"Of course I'm talking to your mother! She's my sister!"
"Kiddos!" Darth Vader sailed into the room in the happiest of moods, and for once, Luke was frightened. Never in the history of the Skywalker household had his father been this happy. "Kiddos, today's going to be a great day. Kylo, you and I are going to go meditating, and then we're going to go out to the laundering supply store and purchase dry cleaning equipment for Anakin's. We're going to have to take the droids with us, so they know how to operate the equipment."
"I'm ready!" Kylo announced, pouring himself an entire mixing bowl full of Space-o's.
"Dad, Kylo isn't working at Anakin's unless he's enrolled in school and doing well in school," Luke told his father firmly. "Because, let's face it, he needs a high school diploma."
"Er—well, of course, you're absolutely right, Lukester. We couldn't have a high school dropout working at a Skywalker-owned establishment, no sirree! So I guess we're going to have to make a side trip to the local high school to get Kylo started at school here in Naboo."
Kylo sent a death stare to his Uncle Luke.
"DROIDS!" Meanwhile, Darth began his morning ritual of screaming at everything that wasn't exactly human. "BRING ME MY MORNING COFFEE, OR BE DESTROYED!"
After the grandfather-and-grandson morning meditation session, three humans and three droids piled into Darth's Cadillac Escalade for their trip to the laundering supply store, of which there was one right in Naboo. It included all that one needed to dry clean or set up a dry cleaning business.
It was probably the reason that Darth wanted a dry cleaning establishment to front his arms dealership. The supplies were easy to get.
Darth scared the hell out of the manager, so C3PO took the helm. He explained that they wanted to set up a new dry cleaning business right there in Naboo, and they'd have to purchase some equipment.
The manager, a large bald guy, pawned the group off to one of his employees, and went into his office to pour a glass of cold water on his head. He needed it after seeing Darth Vader walk through his door.
Kylo, who wasn't interested in dry cleaning, sat in a corner and took his laptop out of his backpack. "I'm going to start making a website for Anakin's," he announced to his Uncle Luke.
"Don't forget the Facebook page," Luke advised. "And nothing illegal on the website, where it can be easily traced."
"Yep."
Luke followed his father and the droids throughout the warehouse and began to think. He knew his father better than anybody, and no amount of arm-twisting was going to talk Darth Vader out of opening Anakin's. It didn't matter how angry Luke got, how much Luke would complain it was a bad idea, or how many years of prison time Darth would get for an illegal arms dealership. Darth Vader lived by his own rules.
Luke never thought he'd stoop to this level, but he knew that it was time for him to fight fire with fire.
He'd destroy Anakin's with good old-fashioned sabotage.
"Time to launch Plan Tauntaun," he texted Leia.
"Plan Tauntaun?" Leia texted back a few minutes later.
"Yep. Tauntaun. T.A.U.N.T.A.U.N. Toppling An Unusual Nutcase Through An Unusual Notion. I'm going to destroy Anakin's…anonymously."
"Good luck," Leia texted back. "And keep Ben away from the firearms, will you?"
