Chapter Twelve: Great Green Gobs of…
Blob racing. It had to be blob racing.
And not just any kind of blob racing, but giant, nerf-sized blobs fit for carrying full-grown male humans.
It was on one of these giant blobs that Jacen now sat, in a crude saddle-like seat. There were cuffs on either of his wrists with cables that attached onto the squishy bottom appendages that passed for blob arms. His ankles had similar cuffs. Apparently, using these attachments, Jacen was supposed to steer the blob through the obstacle course to the finish line and maneuver the creature in such a way as to not dismember himself.
This was, as it often is, more easily said than done.
Jacen wondered to himself, not for the first time, why he and Tenel Ka shouldn't just blast their way out of there with some Force-aided tricks.
A Jedi always seeks the most peaceful approach, he reminded himself, By choosing this way I won't have to hurt a bunch of people getting out.
He continued to wait patiently for the "go" signal. Instead of a countdown, this race would be started after five quick electronic bleeps and then a horn sound. Jacen concentrated on listening carefully. He was in a large arena sort of building, with thousands of people watching and cheering in the stands. The roar of the crowd was deafening.
He settle deeper into the saddle, testing his movability by hitting his hands against the sides of the starting stall that he now waited in. When the horn sounded the gate in front of him would open and the blob he was riding would wiggle, or whatever way it was that a blob moved, out of the stall into the course.
Jacen really had no clue what the course would involve, but in this race, for once, his Jedi skills gave him a slight advantage. Using his talent with animals, Jacen had already braced the creature for the race, giving him the sense that there would be a food reward at the end of the race and making the blob eager to start.
Perking his ears, Jacen heard the warning beep and readied himself to begin.
Bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, BZZTTTT!!!!
The gate swung open and Jacen made an explosive start, urging his blob forward faster through his chute. He immediately realized that riding a blob wasn't like driving a speeder or a pod-racer, he couldn't just sit, he had to move in a certain way. Jacen got the hang of it almost immediately and sped up, though he couldn't tell if he was ahead because the chute the blob traveled along was too high to see the other contestants.
Jacen's eyes widened as he saw the first challenge. Like giant battle axes, seven blades swung in a pendulum-like motion back and forth across the chute. He couldn't go around them, and he definitely wasn't short enough to get underneath them. Jacen stopped to find away around them. As he watched the deadly weapons swing to and fro, he calculated that he could get through there, but he wouldn't be able to stop or slow down, not for an instant.
Jacen backed up cautiously, and took a deep breath as he looked at the blades, waiting for the closest one to pass the middle…
Then he spurred the blob forward.
WHOOSH!!
He got through as the first blade went up and then came back down behind him, missing by mere millimeters. Leaving no time to breathe, let alone panic, Jacen surged forward, because he was right in the path of the second blade, which would be coming back any second now.
WHOOSH!
Jacen felt the breeze of the axe on his neck as it missed him. The third blade was already coming down.
This time Jacen panicked and pulled so hard on the blob that he rolled straight forward, rolling the blob over top of himself and then being dragged back up and then down again as the blob rolled the rest of the way through the gambit. Jacen felt liked he'd been stepped on by a ronto, and thoroughly embarassed, but he was alive.
He braced himself for the next little surprise and groaned aloud as he saw yet more blades. This time, the weapons were circle-shaped saw blades that sliced through the wood on either side of the chute. One would come on the right, then a second after one on the left, then on the right, and so on.
Jacen swallowed, then plunged ahead.
Stupid blob! Why can't it go faster!
As the blades started coming at him, he dodged to the right, away from the blade coming from the left. Then he jerked his head to the left as the left bladed passed and he met the blade from the right. Right, left, right, left, Jacen swung back and forth in the saddle trying to get the blob to move enough that he wouldn't be beheaded.
Blasted ball of slime! Your mother was a fungus I tell you!
The blob must have sensed his harsh words, because it suddenly slowed down in fatigued defiance.
Ah no! I didn't mean it!
Well, he did, but he couldn't let the blob know that. Still concentrating on avoiding the blades that threatened to amputate his head, Jacen tried sending, bold, courageous thoughts to the blob so it would move him through the death trap.
The effect was like trying to get grape jelly to do push-ups.
Why, why by all that makes a Hutt ugly did it have to be blobs?
Remarkably, the blob finally managed to sludge its way past the second obstacle and Jacen breathed a huge sigh of relief. As the blob slithered around the corner, however, Jacen thought that maybe he hadn't been so lucky after all. It would have been better having your head sliced off than being a pile of slimy goo.
The next obstacle was five hydraulic operated pressers, the kind that used to be implemented for making droid parts in the Clone Wars. Jacen despaired for a moment as to how he would make it past them, but as he urged the blob towards the contraptions, he was reminded of the rolling tumble he'd made back at the pendulum blades. It would have to work, there was no other possible way he could make it past. Jacen spurred the blob to the height of its momentum and speed and braced himself for a squashing as he reached the first presser.
A presser that was soon going to be renamed a squisher in the very immediate future.
Jacen felt the ooze move over him as he slammed head first into the ground. To his great surprise and delight, he was pulled back onto the blob's back as the blob continued rolling forward and the presser missed him completely. Before he could rejoice, the inertia carried him into the ground again. He felt like the outer layer of a giant snowball that was being rolled around in snow to get bigger and make a snowman. He saw the presser coming down towards his face as he was being dragged up onto the blob's back again and cringed, waiting for the inevitable…
And found himself still rolling forward, the sound of the presser hitting the ground behind him so close and loud in his ears he figured he was certainly deaf now. He bit back revulsion as the blob rolled above and over him again, his back being pressed into the duracrete, with loose pebbles and sharp rocks digging into his skin and feeling suffocated as he wanted breath that wasn't there.
One more rotation and he should be past all five pressers…
Jacen gasped in fresh air and clean oxygen as he completed the final turn and then looked wearily ahead to the next challenge.
Giant steel tubes that were wide enough and long enough to have held Jacen rolled from the top of a steep hill at what seemed to be regular intervals. The tubes were just long enough for the width of the tunnel so that there was no hope of going around the rolling obstacles. At the bottom of the hill, there was a gap large enough for the tubes to fall into, but small enough for a blob to ooze across. Jacen exasperated a moment of how on Coruscant he was supposed to get past the tubes if the blob couldn't jump, but when he looked closer, he saw the answer. At measured places along the hill were circles that weren't part of the flooring. Jacen realized that they must be springs to make the leap from one circle to another while avoiding the tubes. A racer could only get to the top if they made sure they were in the air when the tubes rolled under them and that they did this quickly enough that a tube didn't knock them off the spring circle or have a tube beneath him when he was trying to land.
Jacen took a deep breath and then moved onto the first circle, which depressed slightly then catapulted him into the air, sending him over the gap that the tubes fell into and past one of the falling obstacles.
Boing!
Jacen hit the next circle.
Boing!
There was the next one, only four more to go.
Boing!
He'd just about slipped on that one.
Boing!
Blaster bolts, did they grease the circles or something? He kept sliding off as he tried to jump.
Boing!
Jacen's heart, which had been rising in hope as he got closer to his goal, suddenly clenched in sudden proclamation of doom. A tube was approaching right where they had to land.
He clamped his mouth shut to prevent letting out a scream. When he hit the tube, the blob did not splatter into a millions tiny pieces of goo as he had predicted, but caught the obstacle, then fell off and stumbled as ungracefully as it is blobly possible down the slippery slope. The blob stopped unceremoniously when it was immediately involved in a whole new danger, falling into the gap.
Before they could be sucked in entirely, Jacen grabbed a side with his hand and hauled himself up onto the path, sweating profusely with aching muscles and a heaving chest from exertion.
I've got to do more push-ups if I survive this, he thought amusedly to himself.
Jacen had, with the famous Solo luck, grabbed the side without the tubes on it and was able to reassess his tactics. He hauled the weary blob back up into a riding position and looked at the obstacle again.
Timing, it was always about timing. How quickly you started, how fast you achieved it, how you fought, how you reacted, how you played the game.
And contrary to what people said, it did matter whether you win or lose.
Jacen coiled the energy of the blob and waited for just the right second to move onto the first spring. In a motion so fast that only he would be able to detect it, Jacen sprang from each of the six springs and to the top of the hill.
He bent his head awkwardly to rub the perspiration from his forehead and face into his shoulder and continued forward cautiously. He felt a tremor in the Force, as if there were a large amount of life forms near by. The light around him grew darker and darker. Jacen feared he wouldn't be able to see soon, but suddenly two torches flared into bright red flame ahead of him, lighting the next obstacle. At first glance it seemed rather easy. There was a large, black pool of water with a narrow, tiny bridge across. Jacen wanted to swim through the pool, but stretched out his senses to check if it was safe. He instantly recoiled in his mind as he realized what had caused the tremor in the Force, there were hundreds of vicious creatures in that pool. He would have to take the bridge.
It was as easy for the blob as it would have been for Jacen. Because of the constitution of blobs, they tend to spread out more horizontally than vertically. Jacen had to hold his arms up and his legs out so that the blob's goo would not slipped over the sides. The effort was causing a killing, blinding pain in his arms and legs, but he gritted his teeth and kept his arms where they were. It was a good thing too, for when he looked down he saw the what the creatures inhabiting the pool were, clustering against the sides in hopes something would fall that they could attack and rip to shreds. Yala fish are tiny animals but they have a great deal of very sharp, little teeth and the hundreds crowding the pool were enough to eat him and the blob in a matter of seconds. They were waiting, bloodthirsty and deadly attentive, for any chance to feed on them.
Some where near the middle Jacen's arm couldn't take the strain anymore and one of the blob appendages dipped briefly into the water. Instantly, the yala fish attacked, shredding the exposed flesh to pieces and the blob panicked in pain. Jacen struggled to maintain a grip, but the blob was out of control. It sped along the path, dipping more into the water and spasms of agony shook Jacen in the saddle. He lost his grip and slid right off, held on only by the thin straps of the harnesses and his face only centimeters from the surface of the water, where hungry yala fish stared up at him.
Now, Jacen might not have been touching the water, but the problem here was this, yala fish could jump.
Jacen muffled a scream as two jumped out of the water and the first one sunk it's teeth into his shoulder. He yanked himself away from the bite of the second fish, which had been aiming for his nose.
The energy that fresh pain gave him allowed him to pull himself back into the seat, but there was no way that he could unlatch the yala fish, and he would slowly bleed to death, as the saliva of the fish contained enzymes that kept his blood from clotting.
He stretched out with the Force to touch the creatures simple mind. He worked with difficulty to plow past every natural predator instinct the yala fish contained and project the thought that his blood tasted terrible, that it was cold and weak tasting and that there must be something wrong with him.
He held his breath, but the creature did drop off suddenly and landed with a splash back in the water.
Jacen tried to ignore the searing pain in his shoulder, but the sore was so fresh it was like the yala's teeth were still embedded in his skin.
He and the blob made it to the end of the pond and looked suspiciously ahead of the wide, open space before them. At the end of it was the finish line. Jacen knew there had to be more to it than that. Where were the spinning knives, the crushing machinery, the nek battle dogs? His whole body ached from riding the blob and the adrenaline that had coursed through him recently was starting to drain away, leaving him sluggish and weary. His back hurt liked nothing he'd ever experienced before.
He just wanted to finish the stupid race.
All his expectations of the area were filled two seconds later as fire spouted from tiny holes on either side of him. The blob back peddled, not wanting to endure any more torture for the day. The problem was very apparent to Jacen. He couldn't move the blob fast enough to move past the fire. He refused to try to rolling trick again.
He was stuck.
Unless…
Jacen glanced behind him and saw the murky black liquid of the pond and an idea began to form in his mind. He decided it could work.
Using the Force this time took more effort than it had before, he was tired and drained and the greedy, angry emotions of the crowd watching only leeched his energy more. He calmed his mind, remembered Tenel Ka was there for him at the end of the race, a thought which served to invigorate him slightly. As he pictured her face before his eyes, his sore muscles loosened and he sat up straighter, while behind him the entire mass of water from the pond rose ominously. Jacen carefully made sure there were no yala fish within it.
He carried the water till it was directly behind him, then he let go his control of the Force.
The sound of the water hitting the duracrete was like a tidal wave hitting a granite cliff face, booming and majestic. The torrent swirled around him and the blob, carrying Jacen was carried away within it. Fire streams tried to ignite as the water touched their pressure activation pads, but their heat only met the cool liquid and puffs of steam were all that resulted. Jacen side-slipped in the water to avoid the boulders and rocks that suddenly started raining down. (AN: Past the minotaur, faced with the giant. I'm evil. I have no life, basing SW on Greek myths.)
The flood of water was subsiding and Jacen pushed the blob to swim faster, paddling towards the finish line. The creature pushed itself to it's last limit, and struggled miserably onto the duracrete. Jacen didn't feel much better.
As if in vengence at an elusive prey, the obstacle course threw one final slight at him. Just as he crossed the finish line, a rock the size of his head made a solid, sickening sounding contact with his left elbow.
Jacen screamed at the unexpected pain and collasped on the other side of the finish line. He tried to nurse his arm, but the cuffs and cords that attached him to the blob's appendages prevented it. He could only moan in self-pity at the injustice of it all.
His last thought before he passed out from ache and exhaustion was, I'm probably going to need that later.