(A/N: ((looks around nervously)) Okay, so it took me a little while to update… sorry… We're having problems with our computer at the moment, so I might start writing the next chapter tonight just in case. Lol, for all I know, it might even be up tonight. But probably not… We'll see. Anyway, unlike this one, it should be up soon, unless there are problems that arise that I didn't foresee. I'm not even that busy this coming week… I think that all I have are voice lessons on Tuesday, church tomorrow, and auditions for a theater tomorrow. So that leaves the rest of the time free… :)

Last Time:

"Then, everyone, on your mark!"

Obi-Wan gripped the edges of his seat nervously, his hands shaking.

"Get set,"

He only hoped he didn't pass out…

"GO!"

Chapter Six: X-Wing Racers…Live

Obi-Wan couldn't repress a small yelp as the ship that he was in lurched forward. Qui-Gon cast him an amused look, and he could feel his cheeks grow warm. He opened his mouth to make an excuse, but then realized he didn't have one and shut it again. That was probably a good thing, too, because if he had left it open he might have thrown up…

Suddenly the entire ship tilted on an extreme angle as Qui-Gon maneuvered it through a tight space between buildings. Obi-Wan squeezed his eyes shut; using all of the self-will he had not to cry out. He would survive this without making a fool of himself. He had to.

A few moments later, Obi-Wan's sweating hands began to slide off of the edges of the seat. He desperately grabbed the nearest thing to him to stop himself from falling onto the floor of the ship; the gears that operated the guns. When he did that, however, he accidentally activated them.

Qui-Gon blinked as their ship began to fire at absolutely nothing. He turned to glance at Obi-Wan and, seeing that he was pale and shaking, just grinned and turned back around. He decided to ignore the random gun shots. After doing a few more crazy maneuvers just for the heck of it, he called back to Obi-Wan, "Get those guns ready, we're going after that ship up ahead!"

Obi-Wan changed a small peek at the ship ahead of them. It was a small, flashy looking yellow one, and it was busy shooting the ship ahead of it. Obi-Wan quickly dropped his gaze back down to the gun controls. At least the gun controls weren't spinning…

"When I get in range, start shooting at it!" Qui-Gon ordered. Obi-Wan just nodded dazedly and gripped the controls even harder. A few moments and needless tricky maneuvers later, they were directly behind their target. "Now!" Obi-Wan hastily obeyed Qui-Gon's command, and zoned the guns in on the ship. When everything was lined up, he fired.

The other ship had apparently been paying too much attention on its own shooting to notice. The result was that when Obi-Wan shot at it, it failed to move out of the way. The laser shot hit one of the engines, and the ship immediately began to spiral downwards, out of control.

"Are you sure that they'll be okay?" Obi-Wan asked worriedly, not wanting someone to get critically injured or even killed because of him.

"Of course they will be. Now, we're going to—" But Qui-Gon didn't have time to finish, because their entire ship rocked. He dived for the controllers and quickly jerked out of the line of fire that was coming from the ship behind them. He steered their ship around until it was facing the one that had been shooting and yelled, "Your turn, Obi-Wan!"

The young padawan hastily grabbed the gun controls and began randomly shooting at the ship behind them, while Qui-Gon kept working on dodging the opposing ships laser beams. A few moments later, they were able to crash the other ship. Unfortunately, they lost their guns in the process.

"What are we going to do without our guns?" Obi-Wan exclaimed frantically, "We can't crash another ship, we'll have to forfeit!" He seemed to pause and consider this, "Yep, we'll definitely have to forfeit!" This time he sounded considerably happier.

"Too bad, young padawan. There is no forfeit, remember? It's either crash, or be crashed. Besides, just because we've lost our guns doesn't mean that we can't crash another ship."
"But there are…like…twenty of them!"

"Actually, there were fifteen at the start of this race. We've crashed two, which makes thirteen. If there were other ships that crashed two, that would mean there are about five ships left."

Obi-Wan blinked. "What?"

"Let's just say that there are exactly five ships left. They each crashed two. How many does that make?"

"Um… ten."

"Plus the five that are left?"

Obi-Wan blushed and muttered, "Fifteen."

"Exactly. You got your math lesson for the day after all." Qui-Gon smiled at him. "Now, I suggest we go hide somewhere until the rest of the ships all shoot each other down."

"What? But… but that's cheating!"

"Actually, it isn't. You can't cheat if there aren't any rules." Qui-Gon steered their ship away from the 'race field' and gently landed their ship near the area where they had started. "They'll think we crashed."

Obi-Wan just crossed his arms. "That's still cheating!"

Qui-Gon's eyes sparkled as he said, "Would you rather wait for someone to crash us?" When Obi-Wan didn't respond, he grinned and added, "I didn't think so."

They sat in silence for a while. Obi-Wan was still feeling ill, after all, and was glad to be on the ground…though he would never admit it. When he started to feel better, he decided to make use of the dead time to find out more about the mission that Qui-Gon was going on. So far, all he knew was that it was called the "Estéril project" and that some other Jedi named Wuh'lin wanted to go with him. Not much to go on, there. He decided to start with the name "Estéril" and go from there. To him, it sounded like a star name, or perhaps… a planet name.

"Sir, I've been struggling with my homework, do you think you could help me?"

"Of course I can. What do you need help with, exactly?"

"I need to list two facts about ten planets that were on my list. I did seven of them, but I couldn't even remember the other three planets. I obviously didn't have time to go to the archives," he glowered slightly at Qui-Gon. "Anyway," he paused and tried to recall a name that he remembered hearing a while ago," can you tell me where Vienix is? I don't think I've ever even heard of it."

"You wouldn't have. It's pretty far away, and mostly unpopulated. It's also very small. Is that good enough? There isn't much to say about it."

"Yeah, I think that would work. What about Lenevron?"

"Has a tropical climate, and a rather large crystal mine."

"Okay, all that's left is…Este-rill." He purposely messed up the pronunciation of the name so that Qui-Gon would have less reason to suspect him.

"It's pronounced Estéril," the Jedi began reluctantly. He looked Obi-Wan in the eyes for a moment, but couldn't tell if he was faking or not. "Very well… but let me see this homework when we get back."

Obi-Wan shrugged. "Okay. You can spell check it for me."

"Hmm. Estéril has a desert climate, and…" Qui-Gon suddenly realized he didn't know overly much about it. He couldn't very well use 'has a small army of rebels against the Jedi order on it' as an answer. "And is largely unpopulated."

Obi-Wan nodded. "Who lives there? I would hate to live in a desert."

"I don't know too much about Estéril." Well, it was true…

"Oh."

There was a pause. Qui-Gon suddenly glanced up to see how many ships were left. He looked just in time to see that there were only two ships left up in the air, and that one was crashing. "Time to get back into the race."

"But we have no guns!" Obi-Wan protested. "We won't be able to fight them!"

"There are other ways of crashing a ship besides laser fire, young padawan."

Qui-Gon started the ship back up, and Obi-Wan moaned. "Can't we just… pretend that we crashed? Then it could be all over with right now!"

Qui-Gon looked at him in mock horror. "Why, Obi-Wan, that would be cheating!" He suddenly smiled and flew full throttle up into the air.

Obi-Wan clutched at his seat again, the nausea threatening to overwhelm him again. He forced himself to calm down. After all, it hadn't been too bad last time… he'd survived, right? …But last time they had guns…

Suddenly the com link activated, and Kit's voice filtered through it, "I thought you'd already crashed… what's going on?"

Qui-Gon picked it up and responded. "We decided to lay low for a little while, but we're perfectly fine. We didn't crash at all."

"You're missing your guns."

"Yes… rather inconvenient, but we'll live."

The only grim response to this was, "Maybe."

Obi-Wan gulped and closed his eyes as the other ship began shooting at them. Maybe this was just all a dream, and he was safely back in his bed… He was jerked roughly back into reality when their entire ship shuddered. Qui-Gon hurriedly moved their ship out of range, but the opposing one followed. Again, the entire ship rocked.

Obi-Wan watched open-mouthed as Qui-Gon casually picked up the com link, using only one hand to steer. "Who's your shooter, Kit? They're good."

"Secura."

"You got Aayla into this? She only just passed her trial a few days ago…you'd think she wouldn't want to jeopardize her career yet."

"She's a fast learner."

Qui-Gon grinned, but didn't respond. He was too busy keeping away from their missiles. Obi-Wan's stomach rolled as they went into even worse twists, turns, and sharp jerks then they had done before. After one particularly bad triple spin, he threw up over the side of the ship. After he finished throwing up, he got a good look at the ground—which was a good thousand feet beneath them—and threw up again. He was feeling extremely light-headed…even more so than before. Sometimes he thought that they were spinning when they weren't. After several seconds, he threw up again.

"Obi-Wan, did you learn how to block laser fire with your lightsaber yet?" Qui-Gon asked suddenly. Obi-Wan had to ask him to repeat the question, but then he nodded. "Good… Did you learn how to deflect it yet?" When Obi-Wan nodded a second time, Qui-Gon smiled and abruptly stopped the ship in midair. It was testament to how sick he was that Obi-Wan didn't even throw up. There was nothing left to throw up.

"All right, get out your lightsaber, and when they shoot at us I want you to redirect it at their engines."

"How?"

"I thought you knew how to—"

"Not that… I mean, how do I get into position?"

"You'll have to climb out on top of the ship."

Obi-Wan stared at him, and then shook his head vigorously. "Uh-uh! I can't! No way!"

Qui-Gon just shrugged sadly and smiled. "Then I guess we're going down."

The entire ship wobbled again, and they began to tilt to the side. Obi-Wan glanced out again. It was a long way down. He looked back at Qui-Gon and gave in. "Fine! I'm g-going!"

"Good." Qui-Gon calmly folded his arms across his chest and leaned back. "You'd better hurry."

Obi-Wan scrambled out on top of the ship, trying not to think about how high they were. What if he slipped and—no. He didn't want to imagine that. The world was still spinning slightly, and he was still exceedingly light-headed, but he managed to focus on the beams of light flying towards the ship. To him, it was redirect those beams, or die.

Carefully he shuffled closer to the edge, and activated his lightsaber. He saw the next two beams coming at them in slow motion. Instantly, he did what Yoda had taught them, and let the force take over. All of his fears suddenly went away. All that existed were those two beams coming at them, and the enemy ship that he wanted to hit. He moved his lightsaber into position, and then redirected both beams of light in rapid succession.

He watched in a daze as one beam disabled the guns on one side, and the other took out an engine.

The other ship went down.

Obi-Wan smiled happily—and then suddenly remembered where he was and completely panicked. He scrambled back from the edge, then slipped and fell… luckily, he fell into the ship. Qui-Gon steadied him as he threw up again… not only once, but four times in a row. Maybe there was more to throw up…

When he finished, the world was spinning more than ever. Distantly he heard Qui-Gon congratulating him. "Obi-Wan, we did it!...We won!"

He managed to smile weakly, before everything went black…

(A/N: Aww, poor Obi! I know that that chapter was long and boring (part of the reason why it took so long to write!) but I promise that in the next chapter, Obi-Wan is up to mischief again… Please R and R!)

-Hilary