Chapter 13

Disclaimer: I sure hope that I don't resemble George Lucas so much as be able to pass as him!

oOo

In the living room, Shmi still stood pressed to the wall, staring incredulously at the huge bearded man who looked at her as if he was expecting her to start screaming any moment. And she was sorely tempted to do just that: Scream at the top of her lungs until either her voice or the strangers left. But just as she was taking a deep breath and tried to decide whether she should go for an elongated and piercing "Aaaaahhhhhh!" or put all the dirty language she had picked up over the years to good use, she suddenly felt a great blanket of calmness silence all her thoughts. This Qui-Gon Jinn person was staring at her intently, his hand still raised in front of his chest.

Qui-Gon slowly felt worried. Maybe he had overdone it once again. Since he had used the mind trick on Anakin's mother to ensure that he and his companions could stay in the small apartment, she had done nothing but stare at him blankly. Deciding that three minutes was definitely too long to recuperate from any mind trick, no matter how unintentionally overwhelming, he snapped her out of it.

"Hey! Are you all right?" he asked, slightly shaking her as he didn't get an answer immediately.

That seemed to do the trick: Shmi started, then with a glance at the kitchen knife clutched in her hand mumbled something about cooking dinner and retreated to the kitchen. All of a once, this guy in her living room seemed to be the nicest man on Tatooine and she would be honoured to have him and all of his companions as guests for as long as they wanted to stay.

oOo

In a small storage room, Anakin uncovered the unfinished form of his droid project.

"Isn't he great?" he boasted. Then he explained: "He's not finished yet." To Anakin, that seemed quite obvious, but he didn't know how knowledgeable Padmé was concerning droids, and he didn't want to seem incompetent in front of her because his droid looked ugly.

It was quite obvious that Padmé had no clue about droids, because she said: "He's wonderful."

Anakin was about to burst with pride at the praise from his beloved Padmé.

"You really like him?" he asked, both incredulous and immensely pleased. "He's a protocol droid to help Mom, though I have no idea what he could help her with. She doesn't do any protocol that she might need help with. But watch!"

Anakin pressed the activation switch on C-3PO's collarbone. The droid came to life and immediately started sputtering indignantly. "Where is everybody?"

One of his photo receptors was not where it should be, and the right eye socket was empty. The other eye was obviously just for show because evidently the droid couldn't see with it.

Anakin snatched up the missing eye with his right hand, and then transferred it to his left hand to plug it into 3PO's head. In the blink of an eye, though, it was no longer his left but his right hand that was raised to reattached the sensor.

Padmé blinked a few times. How had Anakin done that?

Disbelievingly, she stared at the creepy little boy who seemingly could switch his hands with light speed. Before she could ponder the matter any longer, though, 3PO started talking.

"Oh, hello. I am C-3PO, human cyborg relations. How might I serve you?"

Padmé was delighted by this polite droid. Her handmaidens never were as respectful and soft-spoken as that droid. "He's perfect," she said. Perfect for dealing with politicians and serving drinks at boring social gatherings.

If droids could blush, 3PO certainly would have at that moment. "Oh, perfect," he repeated softly.

Anakin was elated at receiving such praise. Finally someone recognized his incredible talents! It was long past time that someone saw how he excelled at everything he did and that he finally got all the admiration he clearly deserved. Soon not even the Council could ignore his incredible talents any longer, and then they would have to make him a Master. He was ready to be one! It wasn't fair that he was still denied the rank of Master when he surpassed everyone else his age and even most of the older Jedi! It was all Obi-Wan's fault! He was holding Anakin back because he was jealous!

Blinking confusedly, Anakin wondered where that thought had come from. Chasing it away with a slight shake of his head, he once again turned his thought to Padmé, the strange annoyance he had felt just seconds before completely forgotten.

With a glint in his eyes that was beyond mere smugness and conceit, he boasted: "When the storm is over, I'll show you my racer. I'm building a Podracer."

It seemed that Padmé was not familiar with all this technical stuff, as she failed to be sufficiently impressed. No more of the admiring exclamations Anakin had expected came forth; instead Padmé gave him a quizzical look.

I was plain as day that she had no idea what podracing was all about.

He let the subject drop. It was no use; obviously Padmé was a bit technologically challenged.

Meanwhile, C-3PO had gotten up and was tottering towards R2. Turned out he wasn't as perfect as Padmé had said earlier: his left foot was half a centimeter shorter than his right one, which gave the droid a slow and noticeably limping gait. At least, its internal sensors for determining the solidity of the floor seemed to be working, even though the conclusions the droid's cerebral computer drew from the readout was not: ""I don't think this floor is entirely stable," C-3PO complained. But now that he had his functioning eye in his head, he spotted R2 who sat in a corner, happily mocking the prissy protocol droid.

"Hello. I don't believe we have been introduced," C-3PO said.

R2 gave a series of whistles and beeps that might have meant "Nice to meet you" or "Stay away from me! You'll only try to stop me from bringing a very important message to a certain General Kenobi in a few years' time. Obi-Wan Kenobi, you are our only hope!"

Since no one has ever heard of prescient droids, however, it is quite safe to assume that it was not the second option. But knowing C-3PO, it probably wasn't the first option, either, though C-3PO's answer was: "R2-D2. A pleasure to meet you. I am C-3PO, human cyborg relations."

R2 gave another set of beeps, swiveling his visual receptor around so as to give 3PO an indecent scrutiny.

"I beg your pardon, but what do you mean, 'naked'?" the protocol droid – who of course could decipher all the whistles and beeps and then had to answer in a way that would give all those who couldn't an idea of what had been said (well, beeped more likely) - inquired, sounding slightly miffed that this tiny astromech droid had the impertinence to make such a remark.

As expected, the answer was another whistle that definitely sounded amused this time.

C-3PO sounded horrified. "My parts are showing? My goodness! I can't run around naked, with my parts showing. At least give me a towel or something for some decency. There is a child watching, for goodness' sake! We don't want to traumatize him for the rest of his life."

Looking slightly puzzled, Anakin powered the rambling droid down again. He couldn't see C-3PO's problem. What was there to see that Anakin hadn't put there? It was all wires, after all, nothing spectacular. And certainly nothing that would traumatize any children who didn't have an inexplicable phobia of wires. For a second, Anakin wondered if he had already been traumatized (whatever that meant, he had no idea) and would now turn out the Galaxy's most screwed-up person, but then he decided that his mom and Padmé had also seen 3PO in his current state of un-coveredness, and neither had succumbed to mysterious fits or outward signs of this strange trauma-thing yet. Shrugging, Anakin decided that he would simply remove the unit in his droid's electronic brain that was responsible for modesty.

With an apologetic smile to Padmé, he dragged her off to show her the rest of the tiny apartment.

oOo

Back somewhere in the middle of the desert, aboard the Nubian ship, Obi-Wan tried to look as small and insignificant as a young man with an unusual hairdo, strange clothes and rather good looks could in a room filled with girls, Hanké (Obi-Wan's common sense refused to count this one as one of the handmaidens) and the inevitable Captain Panaka. They had just come in, Obi-Wan's attempt to evade the other people on the ship being rendered futile when someone from Naboo had contacted them and the current Queen had sent out Panaka to fetch him.

So now the Padawan was standing in the middle of the throne room and waited. So far, no one had said or done anything, and Obi-Wan had a hard time refraining from shifting uncomfortably. All the concealed and occasionally also very obvious stares everyone was giving him made him feel distinctly uneasy. It seemed his plan to stay in the background didn't work at all.

After a few more moments of silent and (in some cases) open-mouthed staring, Captain Panaka audibly cleared his throat. Still, nothing happened. The Captain then gestured for the Jedi Padawan who did his best to disappear in that wide brown robe of his to speak, sure that at least the females in this room would give him their undivided attention.

Obi-Wan still looked slightly uncomfortable, but none of that unease could be detected in his voice when he addressed the Queen with a polite bow:

"Your Highness, how may I be of service?" Although it was a perfectly acceptable way to address any royal, Obi-Wan wanted to kick himself as soon as he had said these words. The Queen's eyes had gone wide and her stare had taken on a quality that Obi-Wan couldn't quite define but was certainly not comfortable with.

What came to his rescue was a rather fortunate if somewhat inadvertent coincidence. Just as the girl who had the privilege of sitting on the throne today was about to open her mouth to take advantage of Obi-Wan's generous if unintentional offer, the Padawan was hit by a massive Force suggestion coming from his Master. It took him a moment to block out that almost overwhelming mind trick. It seemed Qui-Gon was once again being overly liberal with the force he put behind his arguments – pun certainly intended. Still recovering a bit from the considerable surge of power Qui-Gon had put behind that particular suggestion, Obi-Wan was pretty sure that if the strength of this mind trick was anything to judge by, half the planet's weaker-minded populace would be under his Master's charm for the next week or so.

For a moment, the Padawan wondered what could require so much forceful convincing and whether his Master would ever appreciate how useful a bit of subtlety could be from time to time. Maybe his Master was trying out his mind tricks on Toydarians… again. It had always irked Qui-Gon that on their mission to Toydaria, he never had any success with his preferred method of persuading others.

The handmaidens also didn't remain unaffected. Whatever the Queen was about to say, the thought was completely erased. Instead, she started to insist that of course Qui-Gon would be welcome to stay as long as he wanted and would be served a proper dinner, a statement that was cheerily applauded by all the other people present in the throne room of the cruiser.

Obi-Wan thanked the Force and his Master for the timely rescue.

Finally, Captain Panaka had enough. "So who called? I was told that we received a message from home. Who called? What did they say?"

Startled, the Queen looked up. "Uh, er, what? Oh, yeah. The message. This is what we received a few minutes ago. We didn't dare pick up, so we only have the recording on the answering machine."

She pressed a button and a tinny voice announced: "You have one new message." After a loud beeeeep, a bluish hologram of the old politician they met on Naboo flickered to life in the centre of the room.

Sio Bibble looked around nervously before he said: "Hello? Anyone there? If anyone hears this, would you please answer the call? Oh, I hate these answering machines! Anyway, I called because the Neimoidians forced me so they can pinpoint your location in case you answer."

Someone else interrupted his little speech then, but he was outside the radius of the comm link so it couldn't be determined what was being said.

The elderly politician looked flustered. "What? Oh, I shouldn't have told them that? Sorry. Won't happen again. So where was I? Ah yes. The situation here is disastrous. Everyone was brought to camps where they have to do all the activities the Trade Federation guys claim are usually done in camps. In some of the camps, they take you to lakes to go canoeing, some go climbing in the mountains. A few especially unlucky ones got assigned to a camp designed to make you lose weight. Officially, they call all that 'fun activities', but I can't find any fun in roasting marshmallows over campfires – yes, they even have campfires, isn't it terrible? But that's not the worst by far! Your Highness, if you are listening to this you might want to sit down now."

Here, he made a dramatic pause. Obi-Wan wondered what could have happened to shock the poor man so badly. As a Jedi, he was no stranger to the atrocities of war and had witnessed more violence and oppression than he cared for. But what came next shocked even him, though for slightly different reasons than the politician had implied.

After a weary sigh that eloquently summed up the horrors the old man had been through in the last few days, Sio Bibble continued: "They found the royal wardrobe. It's a disaster! These slimy Neimoidians are ravaging all of your clothes! They are actually trying them on. They completely stretched that lovely pink one to a shape that would fit one of their kind, but never a gorgeous young woman as your Highness! The purple dress you wore for the party on Alderaan has a tear, and they stepped on the hem of the silvery one you got for your birthday, completely ruining it. And you don't even want to know what they did to your favourite white robe that matches Your Highness' complexion so well. And not only that! They also ruin any shoes and stilettos and pumps and delicate sandals they can find! You won't have a matching pair of shoes for any dresses that might survive this tragedy. It's horrible to watch them kill all these pretty dresses. The death toll is catastrophic. We must bow to their wishes. You must contact me!" he insisted. The urgency in his voice and the terror in his eyes spoke volumes of his emotional state after having to witness the death of so many clothes.

Before the hologram could even flicker out properly, Obi-Wan was already on his feet, strolling towards the door. He needed to get out here as fast as possible before the Queen recovered from her shock and started mourning the part of her wardrobe they had been forced to leave behind on Naboo. Besides, he didn't think he could take any more of this lunacy. He hadn't decided yet if Sio Bibble had meant all he had said literally or if he had used some kind of code to give them an idea of the situation on Naboo and if these "dresses" were in reality citizens of the usually peaceful planet.

But whatever it was, Obi-Wan figured that if he was fast enough, no one would stop him from leaving the throne room so he could escape to the cockpit once more.

Just to be on the safe side, Obi-Wan once again turned to the dumbstruck girl sitting on the throne. She was clearly shaken by the news.

"It's a trick," he said, in case everyone had such a short attention span that by the end of the message they had already forgotten about the beginning. "Send no reply." As an afterthought, he added: "Send no transmissions of any kind."

Then, turning around, he left the room as long as everyone still tried to recover their voice after the upsetting news.

oOo

Edited on 2nd January, 2011