Cheater's Guide to Losing

32 BBY

Tatooine

There's a saying the Hutts have that a rumor spread is as good as a truth told.

Today was a big day for me. For all of Tatooine, really. The Boonta Eve Classic. The yearly podracing clash between ten-time champion Sebulba and a bunch of fake-looking nobodies. No doubt you've heard of it. No doubt you've heard of me. No doubt we both already know how this story ends. Hell, I was already anticipating the celebratory round with the Twi'lek masseuses halfway through the first lap. It's the best. I'm the best.

Except, this time I wasn't. Not even close. Not when I blow an engine turbine to some slave boy on the final lap of the biggest race of my entire career.

Now all the rumors from my days as a slavehand on Malastare really are coming back. Now the sponsors are saying that I'm finished, that Sebulba's a dirty cheat that's finally been found out. A slimy, hunchbacked Dug that hasn't worked an honest day in his life. That I've suffered a loss I can't possibly come back from.

One chink in the armor was all it took. Knocked down one peg lower and suddenly I'm not the golden ticket anymore. Not the king to rival the Hutts.

The Boonta Eve Classic was my crowning achievement, my yearly declaration of dominance. Losing it didn't just mean losing a race, it meant losing my sponsors, losing my racer, losing my only means of livelihood. Everything I've worked for, gone in an instant, in a ball of flames. Gone in one bad race.

And all of it, at the hands of a boy. One human boy. One boy who could not logically possess the reflexes to survive the desert's circuit, let alone acquire the means to build a podracer. And yet somehow, despite it all, he had. Somehow he had built the pod, somehow he had won the race.

And so the Dug that never lost, now remained defeated. He sat in a house soon set for foreclosure. No more entourage of gangsters and gamblers, no more sponsors, no more Twi'lek masseuses. No more podracing. Only hate, anger, and a bottle of whiskey I had stolen from the Hutt's cellar before they had forced me out.

What do you do when the only thing that's ever given you meaning has been forcibly taken away?

You take it back.

Sitting here now, alone in my quarters, I stew on that fact. It doesn't take me long to remember the blaster pistol Watto lent me months ago. The one he had given me after a couple of mercenaries roughed me up and told me to throw the next race. In a roundabout way, I suppose they got what they were after.

The pistol was locked in a drawer directly across from me, tossed away absentmindedly when I had still been the king of the world and the threat of losing hadn't even registered as a thought. The answer was sitting right there, ready to be taken.

All it took to drive me forward was remembering the indignation I had felt when Skywalker beat me, when he frakked my reputation and damaged my 'racer beyond repair.

And yet, as I stood with my hand above my weapon, I found myself hesitating. I had cheated in races before, cheated plenty, but this... this felt a step too far.

But then, that wasn't Sebulba the champion talking. That was someone else, someone lesser.

There was only one way to make sure the boy couldn't beat me again, that he never beat anyone again. One way to stop all the rumors dead in their tracks.

I hadn't been to the slave quarters for some time. Not since I won my first race fair and square, got my first sponsor. Got myself as far away from slavery on Malastare as humanly possible.

When you've finally had a taste of freedom, coming back to a place like this feels all the more foreboding. A glimpse at what you came from, but also of what is always potentially coming. In a month's time I wouldn't be able to pay my rent, soon enough I would be huddled in one of these same desert hovels yearning for better days. Yearning for something I had already rightfully earned.

There were whispers all around me as I hobbled forward, slave eyes poking out beneath windows and ragged curtains.

I'm unconcerned by the gaping looks of the servants and farmhands. My gaze remains ever forward, pinned to the boy's shack at the end of the street. The pistol remains gripped tightly in one hand, a bottle of whiskey in the other.

As I arrive a bearded outsider remains standing at its door, garbed in long robes. He is lost in thought, eyes fixed high above at the swirl of moon and stars filling the night's sky.

Even beneath the haze of alcohol my gaze furrows in recognition. This was the man that had empowered Skywalker, that had came from far offworld and backed him in that forsaken race. He was the one responsible for my misfortune.

As I stand there seething the elder's gaze finally travels down to meet me, hands resting peacefully at his back. "I thought you might come, friend."

"I am no friend of yours," I hiss back in Dug, doubtful the man will recognize the language.

His eyes travel knowingly to the blaster in my hand, as if he had been expecting me all along. "That doesn't mean you must come as an enemy either. You still have a chance to turn back, Sebulba. There would be no shame in sleeping this one off. Better to make your own choices than to listen to the bottle of liquor in your hand."

"I don't need sleep," words slurring unconvincingly, pistol raising to the man's chest. "I've come for the boy."

The man's face grows more stern, but still he does not move. "Then you will leave disappointed. I will be taking Anakin far from here in a day's time, off to start a new life."

My fingers quiver around the pistol now. All I could think about was storming inside, squeezing the trigger enough times to splatter blood over the walls.

"You will go far away from here," the man states calmly. "You will not come back to this place."

Still I do not move, still the blaster remains.

"I do not wish to fight you, Sebulba."

"Then you're as dead as the boy will be!"

One sweeping movement later, and the standoff was over. My lunge forward had been greeted with a fist to the chest, yanking me to the ground headfirst.

We remain there for a few breathless moments, my face in the dirt, his hand restraining the pistol, grip threatening to break my wrist.

"You should not have done that."

"What else could I have done?" I finally cry, squelching in sand, fists slamming against his boots drunkenly. "What does someone like me do when they've lost it all? When all the doubters and rumors have been proven right?"

Another pause, this one more sympathetic in outlook.

"You resolve to do the hardest thing of all," the man finally answers with a sigh, slowly pulling me back up from the ground. "You start again. You prove the rumors wrong."

"With hardly any money? Without a racer to call my own?"

Now the man's eyes travel the length of the courtyard, settling on a run-down vessel just visible off in the distance. "Perhaps with a champion podracer that the former slave will no longer be needing..."

By the time his eyes travel back to meet mine there's a smile to accompany them. "At a reasonable price, of course."

End