Chapter 15

Disclaimer: Christmas is over, and still nothing belongs to me. I guess I wasn't a good girl, then… Oh, and I don't own Chuck Norris ;-)

oOo

Excellent!

That was the feeling that had frequently been revisiting Palpatine's conscious thoughts for the whole day. And he had every right to feel that way, since excellent excellently described the way his plans were coming to fruition. Ever since he had killed his late Master Darth Plagueis, he had worked towards his ultimate goals - yes, plural, that's right. Not only would he be the legal ruler of the Galaxy's more important parts in just a few days, he had also finally found the courage to send a copy of the book he had written to a publisher and had high hopes that it would be accepted and printed soon.

Palpatine had been working on that piece of ingenuity for a long time, but even after re-editing and changing it he had not felt courageous enough to expose it to the harsh opinion of the public (soon to be his subjects, but they didn't' know that, after all). The thing he had agonized about the most was the title of his book, because he was acutely aware of the fact that the title was the thing that would have to draw a client's attention to one single book amidst thousands of others arranged on a bookshelf if it was to have any success. So he had mulled over 'All hail me – the Future Ruler of the Galaxy' and 'How to Become the Most Powerful Being Ever', but then he had finally settled on 'Darth Sidious' Ten Step Guide to Galactic Dominion'. He thought it sounded pretty spiffy.

With that kind of title, he would not only attract the attention of the right readers, but simultaneously ensure that no Jedi would ever dare touch it for fear of the Dark Side – or, failing that, for fear of a certain small green Jedi Master who would whack everyone insensitive with that infamous walking stick of his if he so much as imagined that the suspect had even looked at it an amount of time that surpassed the infinitesimal time slot that had been deemed safe to look at such a vile thing as a book by any Dark Side user.

Palpatine strolled down the large, gloomy corridors of his Sith lair. He had donned the overly large, even-blacker-than-the-void-of-space robe because it gave him such a pleasantly menacing air when it was billowing and flapping behind him as he walked.

Beside him walked his apprentice, Darth Maul, also wrapped in a huge black cloak, which only heightened the red stripes on the Zabrak's face and the eerie yellow glow in his eyes.

Once again, Palpatine marvelled at the way everything was working out for him. "Excellent, excellent," he murmured, his voice dripping with equal parts satisfaction and venom.

"My Master?" Darth Maul inquired respectfully, pleased that his Master sounded so complacent but curious as to the reason for Sidious' good mood.

"You still have much to learn, my apprentice. Your voice has to sound a lot raspier and darker if you want to become a proper Sith Lord. Now try again."

"Yes, my Master." Darth Maul cleared his throat and then repeated "My Master?" straining to sound as sithly as possible.

"Yes, that was much better." Sidious smiled evilly, completely ignoring the implied question his apprentice had asked. He certainly had no intention of telling Darth Maul about his plans, especially since they included replacing his current menacing and truly evil-looking apprentice with a small, bright-eyed child with a brilliant smile who looked about as non-threatening as they come but whom he would in time turn into the darkest, most evil creature imaginable.

So instead, Sidious said: "Ah, I see you've been working on your sithly voice. You've become much better. Soon, you will be ready to face the Jedi. But you are not sufficiently prepared yet. Let me hear your sinister maniacal laugh again."

Once again Darth Maul obediently cleared his throat, set his striped features into his best dark glower, cleared his throat again, slightly nervous this time, and then let lose a loud "bwahahahaha". He even remembered to do the correct gestures this time (one hand balled to a fist, the other claw-like and shaking to the rhythm of the laughter).

Still, Sidious pursed his lips disapprovingly and shook his head to express his displeasure.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk. You should have paid more attention to your old (but still good-looking and very virile) Master. The correct expression for evil and maniacal laughter is 'mwahahahaha', of course. What you did was more the gloating kind. You may employ this one if you manage to first stab a Jedi Master and then throw his apprentice into a bottomless pit. Just make sure to be careful when you do that because it might turn out that the apprentice will hang on to some kind of protrusion in the wall of the pit and will try to use his fallen Master's lightsaber to cut you into pieces after jumping out of the pit. It would be a pity to lose you on you first proper mission after I spent so many years training you to become a mediocre Sith. Sure, you look like a real bad guy, but to be defeated by some pathetic Padawan would just be the height of shame, and I think even mediocre is too good a word to use for someone as incompetent as that. Ah, the disgrace! To be cut down by such a weak little Jedi whelp! Should this happen, it would be better you die instantly because you couldn't live with the shame – I would make sure of that."

"None of these Jedi weaklings will ever be able to defeat me, my Master. They shall face the awesome power of the Dark Side and perish! The Sith shall return and have their revenge. We have been patient for many years, working concealed, in the dark, to sow the seeds of mistrust and corruption. And in the end we shall have unlimited power!" Darth Maul finished, his voice firm and full of conviction. His Master had indoctrinated him well.

But Darth Sidious failed to be duly impressed.

"Whoa, such a pompous one! Small wonder he wasn't given more lines in this movie. No one could bear to listen to any more of this pretentious rambling. He won't even live long enough to see the end of this episode and fails to see his own utter insignificance. I have truly done a great job to instill arrogance in him," Sidious mumbled to himself.

Then he addressed his apprentice. "You will go to Tatooine and find the Queen and her Jedi protectors. Everything is going according to my plans – although I have to wonder how we found out they are on Tatooine. Let's just assume that thanks to my unending genius we had a tracking device installed on the silver space ship they have taken and that the Jedi were too dumb to look for one. Make sure to find them quickly before anyone manages to pick up my next apprentice. Should he fall into the hands of the Jedi, I shall be most displeased."

His voice still in Sith mode, Darth Maul answered: "Tatooine is sparsely populated. If the trace was correct, I will find them quickly, Master."

Darth Sidious, not to be outdone in sounding like a Sith, instructed in a raspy and slightly nasal voice: "Move against the Jedi first. You will then have no difficulty in taking the Queen to Naboo to sign the treaty. I'm counting on your incompetence to fail in that task, because we don't actually want the Trade Federation to gain legal authority over Naboo. This is just for show, so scare them a bit and kill as many Jedi as you possibly can, but don't actually succeed in bringing Padmé back to Naboo. We still need her here on Coruscant for that vote of no confidence. Oh, and while you're at it, please set up a few of these 'Vote for Palpatine'-posters."

Darth Maul nodded solemnly. "At last we will reveal ourselves to the Jedi. At last we will have revenge."

"Duh, you just said that. And please don't reveal yourself to the Jedi; I don't think they would want to see that. Remember, a Sith always keeps his clothes on in public. But you have been well-trained, my young apprentice. They will be no match for you. But please remember what I told you about laughing at pathetic apprentices hanging from sheer walls. It would be a shame to lose you after all the years of training I invested in you. And now off you go to find your doom… erm, I mean your targets."

With a stony-faced bow, Darth Maul took his leave and strode towards his custom-made spherical spaceship.

oOo

On Tatooine, while Obi-Wan was unsuccessfully trying to meditate whilst being surrounded by all those handmaidens, Padmé, Anakin, Shmi, Qui-Gon and Jar Jar were just finishing dinner.

The topic of their conversation once again gave testament to yet another social blunder of Jar Jar's. They were discussing the slave status of their hosts.

"All slaves have a transmitter placed inside their bodies somewhere," Shmi explained as she refilled the cups on the table.

"I've been working on a scanner to try and locate mine." Anakin didn't let the opportunity to boast of his mechanical skills slip by unused.

Shmi continued: "Any attempt to escape-"

"-and they blow you up. BOOM!" Anakin finished, slapping his hand on the table.

Shmi could only shake her head at her son's tale. True, it was customary to tell 'outsiders' nightmarish tales about slavery in the vain hope that someone would finally do something about it, but this had maybe been a bit overdramatic. Also true, they had a transmitter which was usually disguised as an earring, but that was only used for locating and not for blowing up. After all, it would be really stupid of any slaveholders to blow up what they considered to be their property.

Still, Anakin's claim seemed to have impressed the strangers.

"How wude!" Jar Jar was outraged at the notion of perfectly serviceable people being blown to smithereens.

Padmé also looked shaken and upset. "I can't believe there's still slavery in the galaxy. The Republic's antislavery laws –"

"The Republic doesn't exist out here. We must survive on our own," Shmi informed her matter-of-factly.

Qui-Gon wondered how Padmé could not know that, seeing as she lived on a planet in such close proximity to Tatooine that they could traverse the distance even with a smashed hyperdrive. She must have been raised really sheltered and was probably very naïve and also a bit ignorant. Not exactly what was valued in a politician. Qui-Gon shrugged. Her luck that she was just a handmaiden, then.

Jar Jar's tongue flicked out and snatched one of the fruit from a bowl on the table.

"Xcuse me," he mumbled as he caught the stern look Qui-Gon threw him.

"Has anybody ever seen a podrace?" Anakin asked. From the look in his eyes one could tell that he had something specific on his mind, though what his ultimate purpose was still eluded Qui-Gon.

"They have podracing on Malastare. Very fast, very dangerous," he answered dutifully, curious as to where Anakin was headed with this.

That was exactly what Anakin wanted to hear. "I'm the only human who can do it."

Had Yoda heard that, he wouldn't have been able to stop saying that arrogance leads to the Dark Side for the next three and a half days.

"You must have Jedi reflexes if you race pods," Qui-Gon said, demonstrating said reflexes as he caught Jar Jar's tongue in mid-air as the Gungan once again tried to snatch up a piece of fruit with it.

"Don't do that again," he chided.

"You're a Jedi Knight, aren't you?" Anakin asked.

"Oh no, now you've blown my cover. What gave me away? Was it the hair? Was it my constantly phoning my apprentice to talk about Jedi stuff? Was it my showing off supernatural skills?"

Anakin shrugged. "Yes, that too. Where did you get those reflexes?"

Qui-Gon leaned back in his seat with an amused smile on his face. "Perhaps I killed a Jedi and took it from him."

Padmé looked shocked. "You killed someone? How could you! And a fellow Jedi, at that!" Then she shrieked as a revelation hit her. "It's not Obi-Wan, is it? Your own apprentice? You couldn't have killed him! That's horrible! And besides, I still need him to… um, protect me."

The voice of reason to calm the horrified girl down was Shmi. "That's rubbish. You can't steal a person's reflexes, not even if you kill them."

After a short contemplative silence where everyone pondered the possibility or rather impossibility of stealing someone's reflexes, Anakin chimed in: "I saw your laser sword! Only Jedis carry that kind of weapon."

"Perhaps I killed a Jedi and took it from him," Qui-Gon repeated.

Before Padmé could start screaming groundlessly again, Anakin interject with all the conviction of naivety and youth present in his expression: "I don't think so. No one can kill a Jedi."

"I wish that were so," Qui-Gon said quietly. "Then I wouldn't have to die at the end of this movie."

"I had a dream I was a Jedi. I came back here and freed all the slaves. I also had a dream I was a slice of delicious pizza with extra cheese, and Jabba the Hutt ate me. That one was weird. But not as bad as the one where I was that really awesome guy called Chuck Norris. I did lots of awesome and impossible things, like doing all these roundhouse kicks to all kinds of people. Or the one where I was reading a book. That one was weird. I believe that book was called "Darth Sidious' Ten Step Guide to Galactic Dominion" or some such stuff. Sounds like it was written by some really smart guy. But the best one was where I got turned into a fluffy pink piece of cloud and flew all over the bright blue sky of Tatooine until some cloud catcher caught me and fed me with miniature pizza slices with extra cheese (you know the ones Jabba likes so much) until I exploded. I woke up screaming after that one, it was just too terrifying. Do you think these were prophetic dreams? I hope not, it would scare the crap out of me. Have you come to free us?"

It took a few moments for Qui-Gon's head to stop spinning from Anakin's gushing way of talking and quick change of topic. When he had recovered enough for coherent speech, he regretfully said: "No, I'm afraid not."

"I think you have. Why else would you be here? There is nothing more important here on Tatooine than me. In fact there is nothing more important in the entire universe than me. So naturally you must have come to free me, you just haven't realized that yet. What else would you want here? Except for my presence, Tatooine is probably the most boring planet in the whole Galaxy, the only interesting thing about it is me. This by definition makes it the most interesting planet in the whole Galaxy, because I am so interesting that the average amount of importance of Tatooine is still higher than that of any other planet. But that's just because of me. When I'm gone, this planet will revert back to being extremely dull once again. So you really must be lying when you say that you didn't come because of me. I am of infinite significance! Even though I neither understand the word 'infinite' nor 'significance'. But they sound really important and befitting for someone as grand as me."

"I can see there's no fooling you, Anakin. But that won't stop me from trying! We're on our way to Coruscant, the central system in the Republic on a very important mission. Granted, that might be neither as important nor as interesting as you, but it's my job and I have to do it."

Anakin looked doubtful. The Galaxy revolved around him, so why didn't Qui-Gon? But Anakin vowed to make sure that he would change that in no time.

"How did you end up here in the outer rim?"

Padmé decided to answer since Qui-Gon was too busy wondering how such a slender and fragile neck could possibly support a head as big as Anakin's and whether said head would someday burst from the sheer pressure that much hot air must invariably put on the child's skull.

"Our ship was damaged and we're stranded here until we can repair it."

Anakin's face was still scrunched up in a slight frown. He still couldn't see how this was not about him, but he decided to rectify that as soon as possible.

"I can help. I can fix anything. Even stuff that's completely gone. Like fizzling scraps on the floor, I can build you a whole new hyperdrive out of that. No problem at all."

"I believe you can. And it's not as if I had a perfectly capable apprentice back at the ship who would surely by now have repaired the hyperdrive if it were that easy. So first we must acquire the parts we need."

"Wit no-nutten mula to trade," Jar Jar added mournfully.

Padmé also looked a bit downcast. "These junk dealers must have a weakness of some kind."

Once again, Shmi gave her a healthy dose of reality. "Gambling. Everything here revolves around betting on those awful races."

"Podracing. Greed can be a powerful ally," Qui-Gon stated.

Anakin didn't know anyone called Greed, but one of his friends (the green guy with the bulbous black eyes and the snout) was called Greedo. But Anakin didn't want Greedo to be a powerful ally. He wanted to be the powerful ally himself! And he would be! Given enough time and even only half an opportunity, he would gain unlimited power.

"I built a racer. It's the fastest ever!" Take that, Greedo! Trying to steal away my friends.

"There's a big race tomorrow on Boonta Eve. Strange, what a coincidence that this great race takes place right when you come to Tatooine. You could enter my pod."

"Anakin, Watto won't let you," his mother cut in.

"Watto doesn't know I've built it. You could make him think it was yours and get him to let me pilot it for you." Anakin almost sounded whiny.

But his mother would have none of it. "I don't want you to race. It's awful! I die every time Watto makes you do it."

"But, Mom, I love it!" This time, the whine in Anakin's voice was more pronounced. "And besides, you die in the next Episode, anyway. It doesn't make such a big difference, you know, I'll just turn to the Dark Side a few years early, and it saves you the pain of the torture by the Sand People. And it's not like you can die multiple times. So if you are already dead from my previous races, then you can't possibly die again when I'll do it tomorrow. And I think that you're a bit overdramatic. The races are really very dangerous and require an exceptional amount of skill to do it, of course, but for me they are really easy. You know that I have the ability to turn the merely difficult into something impossible… or something like that. The prize money would more than pay for the parts they need."

Anakin gave his mother the pleading puppy-eyed look.

Still, Shmi wouldn't give in. "Anakin!" she scolded.

"Your mother's right," Qui-Gon agreed. "Is there anyone friendly to the Republic who can help us?"

Shmi shook her head apologetically. "No."

That was not exactly the answer everyone had been hoping for.

But Anakin hadn't given up yet. "Mom, you say the biggest problem in this universe is nobody helps each other." When even that in combination with his most pleading look didn't achieve the desired effect with his mother, Anakin was at the end of his repertoire. Usually, when he gave her that look, his mom would allow him almost anything.

"I'm sure Qui-Gon doesn't want to put your son in danger. We'll find some other way," Padmé said. She thought that it was not exactly a very good idea to put all their hopes in a small child they had met just this afternoon. For all they knew, he could be a loony little show-off who lived in a world of his own, and that world evidently differed considerably from reality.

"No. There is no other way. I may not like it, but he can help you," Shmi agreed. "He was meant to help you."

Qui-Gon frowned pensively. To convince Shmi had been easier that he had feared. He hadn't even needed a Force suggestion. Pity, he was rather fond of those. Still, he had thought that the death-defying stunts and horrific accidents that were commonplace at such races would have a mother shrieking in fear for her offspring, especially when the person piloting such a powerful pod was only nine years old. Not that he would complain, it saved him a lot of trouble. With a shrug and a gentle smile, he also agreed to the plan. After all, it fit his intentions perfectly.

oOo

Edited on 3rd January, 2011