Chapter 12

Disclaimer: No. Not really, no. (I can't believe I'm quoting Jar Jar, what the hell is wrong with me?)

oOo

Qui-Gon let his gaze wander. They were still somewhere near the market place where Anakin had saved Jar Jar from his demise, which in his opinion could not be timely enough. The Jedi Master inhaled deeply, and after recovering from the ensuing coughing fit because of all the sand that was in the air by now, he focused on the Living Force. He could feel his apprentice a few miles away. Obi-Wan seemed to feel uncomfortable, his presence in the Force tense and concerned. Qui-Gon thought that the young man worried too much. Personally, the Jedi Master was thoroughly enjoying himself right now. He didn't feel worried in the least, and the Force was confirming his belief that he had just found the Chosen One. Qui-Gon resolved then and there that nothing and no one – the emphasis being on 'no one' as in Obi-Wan – would stop him from taking the boy to be trained as a Jedi, and if he had to battle a hundred possessive wizards for Anakin.

His train of thought and communication with the Force was disrupted by the newest pathetic life-form he had picked up: "Here, you'll like these pallies," Anakin said.

When Qui-Gon didn't react instantly, Anakin started poking him. "Here!" he insisted. Still, Qui-Gon seemed to be far away, thinking about how he could convince the Council to accept Anakin for training.

"HEY, I said HERE!" Anakin started jumping up to wave his hands in front of Qui-Gon's face, or at least he tried to, reaching only up to the Jedi Master's chest.

As Qui-Gon still didn't react, Padmé soon had quite enough: "Would you please take these stupid pallies to shut the brat up? If he shouts 'HERE' one more time, I think I'll strangle him or something."

That seemed to get at least Anakin's attention: "What, YOU want to strangle ME? I think you got that all wrong. I will strangle YOU! But not yet, I guess, as that completely wouldn't fit my image of the nice and selfless and innocent child. No, I'll wait with that till I'm grown up, then I can blame it on Obi-Wan's training or something and nobody will think bad of my mom because she didn't teach me proper manners. But you'll see, if you aren't the loyal and loving wife I expect you to be, you'll find yourself in big poodoo up to your neck. Not above the neck, though, because I wouldn't want to touch your neck to strangle you if it was smeared with poodoo, and I'm not supposed to know about Force chokes yet."

He raged on for quite some time, but Padmé didn't listen any more to his rant. She had completely zoned out when Obi-Wan was mentioned, not even surprised that Anakin seemed to know the Padawan already. She was lost in an alternate universe of Obidala-fantasies, completely oblivious to the real world around her.

Seeing that Padmé wasn't listening to him anymore, Anakin made a last attempt to get the Jedi Master's attention. He screamed "HERE!" one last time and practically punched Qui-Gon in the stomach.

"Ooof!" Qui-Gon said and then looked down on Anakin, finally resurfacing from his daydreams. "Hey, what was that for?"

"Would you please take these pallies now and put them away so the plot can continue?" he said, pressing them in Qui-Gon's hands. "Didn't your mom tell you to always eat your vegetables? You are so tall, surely your mom made you eat lots of healthy stuff. My mom always tells me that I will grow really tall and strong if I eat my vegetables. But I guess you don't need to grow anymore, you're already as tall as or even taller than anyone I know."

The Jedi looked down on the prattling child. "Thank you."

He finally accepted the pallies absentmindedly, putting them away so that everyone with only half an eye could spot the lightsaber dangling from his belt. Subtlety was not one of his greatest talents, it seemed.

Suddenly, the old woman in the tiny rickety stall spoke up: "Oh, my bones are aching. Storm's coming up, Ani. You better get home quick."

Turning away from the old woman, Anakin said: "Don't heed her, she's always predicting stuff and it hasn't turned out true so far. Not once. Always keeps going on about sandstorms, foretells the gender of children soon to be born, that kind of things. She's like the local witch. Her favourite prophecy is one about me ruling half the Galaxy. She's totally nuts. Of course I will someday rule the Galaxy, but naturally not only half of it. Never would my boundless lust for power allow me to stop at the half when I can have the whole thing. But I can safely say that because I know how great I am. She, on the other hand, says it without any kind of background knowledge on my fabulous talents, which makes the whole premonition completely implausible. She can't properly foretell my fate if she doesn't know how truly powerful and gifted I am. But enough of that, I don't want to spoil everyone's surprise at my suddenly turning to the Dark Side and simultaneously into the ruler of my new Empire. There's a sandstorm coming. Do you have shelter?"

Completely caught off guard by the boy's unexpected chatter, Qui-Gon blinked a few times. "Huh? What? Uh, shelter? Sure we have shelter. Do you want some?" he asked, grabbing a nutrition bar from his utility belt and offering it to Anakin. The child's little speech had left him reeling. What had he been talking about? Empire? Dark Side? Sand storm? Huh?

Padmé, on the other hand, was still in her Obi-Wan-induced stupor, and so didn't catch a word of what was said, and Jar Jar had never been the brightest light to start with.

Impatiently, Anakin waved the nutrition bar away. "No, I mean do you have shelter? Like, where you can hide from the storm?"

Finally retrieving his wits, Qui-Gon answered: "We'll head back to our ship."

"Is it far?"

At that point, Padmé returned to reality at last: "It's on the outskirts."

Qui-Gon thought she had just said that because she was so fond of skirts.

"You'll never reach the outskirts in time. Sandstorms are very, very dangerous." From his tone of voice it was clear that Anakin was repeating a sentence that someone – probably his mother – reiterated all the time to get him to remember why the perils of a sandstorm were best avoided.

Spontaneously, Anakin offered: "Come on, I'll take you to my place!"

Wondering what kind of little boy would invite over strangers he had met just minutes before and in a notoriously dangerous city at that, Padmé, Qui-Gon and Jar Jar followed Anakin to 'his place'.

As if the weather wanted to proof Anakin (or the old woman) right, the wind was quickly picking up speed, and along it also picked up lots of sand. What had been a gentle, if rather too warm breeze just a few moments ago was now strong enough to make the sand dance around them. Soon, they held their arms in front of their face protectively.

Anakin was grumbling: "I hate sand. It's coarse and it gets everywhere. It's in my hair, my ears, my eyes, my nose, my pants, between my toes and my teeth. Stupid sand! Maybe I will kill sand, too, when I'm the big black and evil Sith Lord."

Due to the storm, though, no one paid much attention to him. They were all busy shielding their eyes from the sand and trying to inhale as little of it as possible.

Soon, they arrived in front of a door. Anakin pushed a button, and they stepped in a small apartment. It was simple with rough stone walls and a few things that presumably belonged to Anakin littered the floor. There was a small model spaceship, an old Gameboy (one of these huge grey ones that had been the latest technology in portable entertainment about a century ago) and a few action figures.

Anakin was especially proud of these action figures. He had gotten most of them from particularly fanatic fans who came to Tatooine regularly. Some of them had taken a liking to him and had given him the little plastic puppets. Now Anakin had a tiny plastic Mace Windu who clutched a tiny plastic lilac lightsaber in one hand, a tiny plastic Obi-Wan Kenobi sporting a funny-looking beard, a slightly lopsided grin and a discoloured lightsaber (but at least the fan who had bought it had gotten a reasonable discount because of the imperfections), an even tinier plastic Yoda who looked even more wrinkly and ugly as he did in real life, and a life-sized plushy Wookie that went by the name of Chewie.

In his bedroom, there was also the half-finished result of Anakin's try at the 'EasyToDo Build your own C-3PO' kit. He had given up on that after installing the vocabulator and finding that this protocol droid was probably the most annoying thing in the entire galaxy – even more annoying than the tiny plastic Jar Jar figure that talked if you pulled on a string attached to its back.

On a place of honour on top of the shelf, next to the tiny plastic Sidious that would cackle evilly ever so often if swiched on, there sat Anakin's most treasured possession: A one foot tall Darth Vader - complete with moveable limbs and a blood-red lightsaber - that emitted the trademark scary breathing sound and could even say "Luke, I am your father!" and "What is thy bidding, my Master?" in his amazing voice. Anakin polished it every day before he went to bed, so that it was always shiny despite the sand and dust that was ubiquitous on Tatooine.

But today Anakin completely ignored all of his prized possessions, because he had found someone who looked exactly like his tiny plastic Qui-Gon Jinn, except that the real one was a lot taller and didn't continually lose his hair as the tiny plastic one did all the time. Quickly shoving the mess in a corner where it wouldn't bother anyone, Anakin walked into the apartment he shared with his mother.

"Mom! Mom, I'm home!" he shouted to announce his presence.

While Jar Jar made a remark about the cosiness of their home, a careworn but friendly-looking woman entered from the kitchen. Upon spotting the strangers standing in the middle of her living room her eyes widened in shock. She quickly turned around to grab a kitchen knife and pointed it at these unexpected guests.

She still remembered all too well the last time her son had brought complete strangers along. They had not been exactly evil (though the chances were that any random stranger you met in Mos Espa was not the law-abiding and benevolent kind of guy) but they had eaten the supplies that usually lasted the little family a week in less than two days, and they had left the apartment a complete mess. No, she didn't want any more of this.

Pointing the slightly wavering tip of her kitchen knife at the invaders of her home, she was about to say so when Anakin exclaimed indignantly: "These are my friends, mom." Then he started pleading: "Can I keep them? Please? I found them out on the street, they don't belong to anyone else, I made sure of that. I will look after them and feed them and clean them and everything. You wouldn't have to do anything. You wouldn't even notice they were there! Please, mom! See, the big one already accepts food from me. I will have them tamed and accustomed to the sanitary rules in no time. I've always wanted a dog, but since I can't have one (what's a dog, anyway?) can I please keep these random strangers? Please? Please please please please please?"

Still wary of these strange people her son had dragged into their apartment, Shmi took a second look at them. Well, the girl certainly didn't look all too threatening, more like a thoroughly spoiled teenager. By the looks of her, she was probably daddy's little princess, even though she was for some resason trying to hide it, but her manicured fingernails, the perfectly white (probably bleached) teeth and the extensions in her hair gave her away, anyway.

The ungainly alien didn't seem able to do anything right, so he definitely was a threat to the state of semi-cleanliness she had managed to install in her apartment since her son had left that morning. Besides, he looked like he was the most annoying creature in this half of the Galaxy, with the probable exception of that disaster of a droid her son had tried to build.

That left the extremely tall man with the long hair. She eyed him guardedly. He looked like he could turn her whole world around, take Anakin with him to a supposedly better life and make her end up both the wife of some moisture farmer and dying a tragic death just to give another excuse for her son's going to the Dark Side.

As if he somehow knew that her thoughts were on him, the man nodded slightly and introduced himself: "I'm Qui-Gon Jinn."

Already losing interest in the complicated part of getting his mother to accept that his new friends would spend the night here, Anakin told Padmé: "I'm building a droid. You wanna see?" he asked, remembering the half-finished droid he had built from the kit the fan had given him. The pilots he had overheard in the cantina had also been quite emphatic that women just loved any kinds of mechanics. He also remembered hearing them say that that the only thing that beat mechanics were Jedi, though impersonating one of those could lead to too much trouble to bother doing it.

Padmé was not reacting to Anakin's offer.

Meanwhile, Qui-Gon tried to seem as non-threatening as possible: "Your son was kind enough to offer us shelter," he explained their presence.

Cutting off any reply from his mother before she could possibly throw them out again, Anakin grabbed Padmé's hand, pulling her after him: "Come on, I'll show you 3PO!" he said, not waiting for an answer before he dragged a rather speechless Padmé after him.

Shmi was just as speechless, if not more so. She hadn't even managed to say anything yet, and now she was jumping out of the way as her son pressed past her, followed more or less involuntarily by the girl and a small beeping droid she hadn't even discovered yet.

With a sigh, she wondered why her son always seemed to act before he thought, or if he ever thought at all...

oOo

Edited on 2nd January, 2011