Chapter 16
Author's note: In this chapter, I introduced a kind of challenge I set myself. I asked my reviewers to send me words they would like to see included in the next chapter, and I used these words in the most creative and humorous fashion I could think of. The words you, my esteemed readers, sent me are all in here somewhere. I marked these challenge-words in bold. Thank you for all the creative and awesome words you sent me! This kind of interactive experiment worked out so well that I kept it up until the end of this story. Unfortunately, kept deleting some of the really long words, so I had to separate them by hyphens to keep them in.
Disclaimer: I don't even own all the words in there, so no chance that I own any of the characters or anything else, for that matter.
oOo
Boom
Boom
Boom
THUD
Racket? What? Obi-Wan wondered, his mind still more than half asleep.
The source of the booming sound soon became apparent as it was repeated after a few seconds.
Boom
Boom
Boom
Someone was knocking on the door to Obi-Wan's cabin – or rather pounding on it, judging by the way the walls vibrated with the noise.
Sitting up, Obi-Wan also learned the reason for the thud. He had fallen out of the narrow bunk he had been sleeping on. Still a bit disoriented, he rubbed his eyes to gain some semblance of wakefulness. He had not slept exactly well.
"Are you awake yet?" a vaguely impatient voice, which was muffled by the thin but solid metal walls of the ship, asked.
"Yes, I am," Obi-Wan answered. Then, quietly so that the person outside the door wouldn't hear, he added: "And thanks a lot for being so darn gentle about it. Why not just barge in with a whole orchestra?"
"Good. Then get out of bed immediately, you have a job to do, after all."
Obi-Wan finally identified the grumpy voice as Captain Panaka's. What did the man want? Why was the head of security throwing him out of bed at - Obi-Wan squinted at the clock –three thirty in the morning! The word Emergency flashed through the Padawan's mind. Maybe they were attacked by Tusken Raiders or even a Krayt dragon or two. He scrambled to his feet, put on his tunic and robe with flying fingers and slipped his feet into his boots. Within seconds, he was at the door.
Panaka looked positively stunned when the door unexpectedly opened a few seconds after he finished speaking and a now fully alert Obi-Wan strode out, looking at him expectantly. They immediately took off towards the cockpit.
"Good morning, Captain. What's the emergency?" the Padawan inquired pleasantly, wondering why the Force hadn't warned him as it usually did.
The Captain remained silent for a few steps, and then simply stated "They are gone."
Even though Obi-Wan had successfully wrenched his brain out of the sleepy state it currently wanted to be in, it took him a few moments to work out what the Captain was telling him, and that this was indeed not very good news.
He used the Force to locate all the occupants of the ship and with a sinking feeling realized that three of the handmaidens were missing. What a useless kind of Jedi first fell out of bed and on top of that didn't notice when three of the people he was supposed to protect were snatched from right under his nose? His Master had just been gone for a few hours and he had already managed to bungle things up spectacularly. Well, since he hadn't been able to protect them, the least thing he could do was save them from whoever had captured them.
Before Obi-Wan could think of anything to say, Panaka told him to his enormous relief that he knew exactly where the missing girls were. That relief was swiftly replaced by exasperation and disbelief when Obi-Wan learned that Sabé, Gertrudé and Dormé had not been abducted at all but had taken the small yet luxurious landspeeder that was usually waiting in the ship's garage for occasions such as day trips or pleasure cruises. It seemed the handmaidens had grown bored with sitting around and waiting for Obi-Wan to emerge from his various hiding places and so had decided that it was high time to pursue their favourite pastime: Shopping!
Since it was in the middle of the night where their ship was parked, they had taken the small but potent speeder and had rushed off to the dayside of the planet, determined to follow the twin suns around Tatooine to explore the local shops.
Obi-Wan didn't know what to say. Whatever he had expected, it wasn't that. He wouldn't have minded abductions, attacks or wild beasts. After all, he had been trained to handle that kind of difficulties, and he felt capable of dealing with any attacks or threats that might arise.
But he didn't feel ready to deal with a few teenaged girls, and he strongly suspected that no matter how many years he spent in this universe, he never would. If ever his Padawan should father twins and for some ghastly reason he would have to take care of one of them, he would make sure to pick the boy. Although this boy would probably be whiny and not exactly bright (being Anakin's child, after all), at least Obi-Wan wouldn't have to deal with a snappy and emotional young girl, especially seeing as she would inherit Anakin's temper and overestimation of his abilities.
Confusedly, Obi-Wan shook his head to dispel these disturbing thoughts. There he was again, picturing this highly unlikely future when he should be figuring out how to deal with his current debacle.
Only that he couldn't even fathom how the combined brains of three people had obviously not been enough to tell their owners that it was very unwise to indulge in shopping under the circumstances. It was not like this was a pleasure cruise, after all. Yet it seemed nobody had told the handmaidens about that.
Obi-Wan decided to remedy that in the fastest and most unequivocal way possible. After he retrieved them from their outing, that was.
Obi-Wan was still a bit puzzled as to how he was supposed to accomplish that, so he turned to Captain Panaka. The man was the Queen's head of security; he should be used to getting the girls back from shopping malls.
Panaka noticed the Padawan's quizzical look and immediately held up his hands in a gesture as if to fend off something evil.
"Oh no. No, no, no, no, no! Don't you look at me like that. After all, it ain't my job to look after the girls. That's what you're here for, remember?"
"Well, technically, it IS your job, and I'm here for the negotiations which unfortunately were… prematurely terminated," Obi-Wan informed the Captain.
"No! Don't you get all wordy on me, Mister Fancy Pants! Stop using such huge words. And I can't possibly come with you. It's not that I don't want to. I really regret that I can't come with you. Really, I can't. I suffer from hippo-poto-mostrosequippedalo-phobia. My doctor told me to avoid situations where I might be exposed to conditions that could cause a seizure."
Obi-Wan looked undecided for a moment. Then, he took the Captain aside from the inquisitive ears of the handmaidens who had come out to check what all this racket in the middle of the night was about and asked quietly: "Are you seriously trying to tell me that you suffer from hippo-poto-mostrosequippedalo-phobia?"
He gave the Captain a piercing look.
Panaka shifted uncomfortably under the critical gaze. He lowered his eyes for a moment, but then seemed to reach some decision and nodded.
The verbose boy won't be able to figure out this big word, will he? Panaka worried.
Unfortunately for Panaka, Obi-Wan could.
"So you can't come along because you are terribly afraid of long words?" the Padawan asked incredulously.
"Umm, yes."
An uncomfortable moment of silence was followed by two more uncomfortable moments of silence before Obi-Wan asked: "So how exactly were you able to pronounce the name for your alleged condition without a moderately sized panic attack?" He did so with a completely straight face, but the mischievous twinkle in his eyes gave him away.
Panaka looked flabbergasted.
After a few seconds of thought, Obi-Wan's eyes lit up with comprehension and he gave Panaka an impish smile.
"I see. So this is the excuse you employ to obfuscate your true motives whenever you don't want to execute your Queen's orders?"
Panaka nodded feebly. Although he didn't understand half of what Obi-Wan had said, he could tell by the smile on the Padawan's face that he was exposed.
To his enormous relief, Obi-Wan just kept smiling good-naturedly and reassured him: "Don't worry; your secret is safe with me. I won't spill the beans. You just keep using that excuse; it's a rather good one. I don't think your girls will be able to work it out anytime soon. But if you want to take my advice, use it sparingly. You don't want to overexert it."
Panaka whispered a heartfelt "thank you". For a second, he had feared that he would have to make up a new reason why he couldn't oversee royal pyjama parties or come along to watch sappy romantic movies. So far, Padmé and her girls had been too overwhelmed and embarrassed to question the Captain's explanation every time he gave it, and Panaka intended to use it for as long as possible. He had one day opened an encyclopaedia at random and picked and memorized the word without actually checking what it meant. It would do as long as it sounded like a severe and complicated thing to suffer from. He had never expected that someone would look right through his ruse. But then again, it had been designed for impressionable young girls who were much too busy ogling young men and shopping to actually listen to their heads of security.
Obi-Wan, on the other hand, was not mad at all that the Captain didn't want to come along. After all, someone had to make sure that the remaining handmaidens stayed where they were and didn't get inspired by their colleagues' break for Tatooine's shopping malls, and the Padawan wouldn't have to deal with his cantankerous attitude.
With a slight nod to Panaka, Obi-Wan turned back to face the girls who had assembled around them. They had probably been roused by Panaka's gentle wake-up call and were now wondering what could warrant such a rumpus.
They were not happy to hear that the shopping madness had befallen their friends who had rushed off… without taking them along! After a rather stern reminder from Captain Panaka, they trudged back to bed, pouting.
Panaka then pressed a comm link into Obi-Wan's hand, but that was all the technical support he would get.
Now the Jedi stood outside the ship, staring off into the darkness, without a speeder, without a steed (be it reptilian or otherwise), without a swoop bike, in fact without any kind of transportation. He would even have taken a flying broomstick, but they were all out.
The shopping party had taken their last means of transport aside from the whole spaceship, which had been parked well away from any towns to escape notice on purpose and so would have to stay there, and a bongo, though Obi-Wan had yet to figure out how to make the drum transport people and if it actually worked that way at all.
Reluctantly, Obi-Wan took out his comm link and prayed to the Force or any powers that felt benevolent towards him that his Master had his comm link switched on and that Qui-Gon wouldn't bite his head off for interrupting his sleep or whatever it was he did whenever Obi-Wan wasn't around.
After about a minute of waiting, Qui-Gon actually answered the call, much to Obi-Wan's relief. The Jedi Master sounded sleepy and none too pleased to be awoken in the middle of the night, but at least he felt civil enough to grunt: "Whassup?"
"Master, it seems that three of the handmaidens felt they needed to get out more, so they took the speeder from the ship's garage and took off to do some shopping. Of course under the present circumstances that is not exactly the wisest thing to do, and we have to take into consideration that I can hardly protect them properly due to the huge amount of distance currently preventing me from correctly assisting - "
Qui-Gon interrupted him with another sleepy grunt. "Make sense, will ya? I'm still half asleep!"
"Master, I need a vehicle."
"Then why don't you just say so? Anakin's built a podracer. It's fast. It's somewhere in the backyard. Didn't have a look at it yet. But no one's gonna miss it if you bring it back by tomorrow morning. Have fun. Good night. And please turn off the light when you leave."
And with that cryptic remark, Qui-Gon once again prematurely ended the conversation, as seemed to be getting a habit with him, turned around and went back to snoring loudly and contentedly.
A podracer. Marvellous! At least it's better than walking. Obi-Wan mused. Although the Padawan had seen a few podraces, he had never actually steered one of the extremely high-speed machines, and from what he had seen, they were certainly ill-suited, if not illegal, for traffic off the racetrack. He didn't worry too much about being able to steer it, though. If Anakin (whoever that might be) could build a podracer, Obi-Wan was confident that he could drive it. At least it would be a fast way of travelling.
Qui-Gon had said it was somewhere in the back yard. Unfortunately, he had failed to mention which house the backyard belonged to, so Obi-Wan could only hope that it belonged to the house Qui-Gon was sleeping in because checking for podracers in every backyard of Mos Espa was certainly not an option.
Now he only had to walk to town, which would take about two hours. With a last look towards the ship where his admittedly not exactly comfortable but still sorely longed for bed was located, he set off at a brisk pace towards the dim lights of Mos Espa which illuminated the desert in the distance.
oOo
Darth Maul was bored. After an excessively boring flight from Coruscant which didn't offer any entertainment other than meditating or reading a copy of his Master's as-of-yet unpublished book, he had finally landed on Tatooine. At once, he had sent out the spy droids he had brought along. After all, the Jedi could be just about anywhere on this Force-forsaken planet, and Darth Maul didn't intend to search every town and farm by himself. Darth Sidious had only given him three of the black spheres, though, which meant he would still have to do some hunting himself. The Sith opted for searching all the bars and cantinas. Just because he had a mission to accomplish didn't mean he couldn't finally do something to alleviate his boredom.
So after he had sent the probe droids off, he jumped on his floating bike, switched on the radio, frowned at the dreadful music the JRS (= Jawa Radio Station) was broadcasting, switched the radio off again, kicked his bike into gear and drove off.
Still annoyed at the poor taste for music the Jawas obviously suffered from, he completely overlooked the cliff that was coming up. As he careened down the steep descend, he realized that his bike was capable of floating about a foot above the ground, but couldn't actually fly – a detail he had forgotten about in his disgust at the local music but which the ground that was approaching him with increasing velocity reminded him of.
With a little help from the Force the Zabrak managed to avoid the bigger rocks and snaked his way between the boulders. Still, the ride down the cliff was rather bumpy, and Darth Maul was glad when it was over and he reached a flat expanse of ground.
Speeding up, he swiftly drove off towards the nearest town, Mos Espa.
After the momentary excitement of his unexpected tumble off the hill, the Sith was quickly getting bored again. Driving through the featureless desert was not exactly exciting, and even less so when it was night and he couldn't see anything. Not that there was much to see, anyway, even when the suns were beating down on the monotonous plains. To Darth Maul, Tatooine really seemed to be the most boring planet in this quadrant of the Galaxy.
So he was inclined to slow down when he saw a solitary figure trudging through the endless sandy plains. Carefully, he studied the lone shadow wandering through the wilderness.
The being was tightly wrapped in his cloak, which was a sensible thing to do as it gets freezing at night in most deserts because the dry ground can't retain the heat of day. With the dark cloak and the hood drawn over his head, the wanderer looked remarkably like some kind of oversized Jawa.
Darth Maul was in the process of passing by the cloaked figure when he was struck by a few surprising thoughts Darth Sidious must never learn about. He decided that he needed a break from the daily routine of being evil, which would surely not please his Master.
I wonder what he's doing here in the middle of the night. Must be either completely broke or really unfortunate to be walking around in the middle of nowhere. The poor bugger even looks like he's wearing hand-me-downs from some Jedi! I can't imagine anyone would wear their strange clothes without need and these thrice-cursed Jedi only donate their clothes to people who are really hard-pressed to get some decent clothing of their own.
That he might actually encounter one of these thrice-cursed Jedi in the middle of the Tatooine desert seemed so improbable that the thought didn't even cross the Sith's mind.
So, to his eternal surprise, Darth Maul (who is, as you will have noticed by now, not exactly the brightest light in the Galaxy) decided to offer this pathetic life form a lift.
The Sith stopped next to him and asked in his least sithly voice: "Hey, where you going? Need a lift?"
He didn't want to scare the man off, after all, not when he offered a chance at entertainment. Maybe he would even get bought a drink, as a kind of thank you for taking that guy to town.
Whatever he had expected as an answer, it was certainly not this. He had anticipated an answer that spoke of a simple mind (because let's face it, everyone trying to traverse the desert on foot any time of the day must be really dumb or a bit looney and probably drunk on top of that), delivered in the gruff tones of someone who had grown up around the shabby spaceports on Tatooine.
The answering voice, though, sounded cultured and the words would have been fitting for any kind of important social occasion.
"Thank you, I would appreciate that very much. It's very kind of you to offer me a ride, but I don't wish to cause any inconvenience to you," Obi-Wan answered, stunned that seemingly even he had luck from time to time. After a moment's thought and a good look at the person sitting on the bike – well as good a look as is possible in the nearly utter darkness of a night on Tatooine – he was no longer sure whether it was indeed luck. There is no such thing as luck, he reminded himself.
The Jedi warily eyed the Sith, neither realizing whom he was talking to.
Miraculously, the biker still wore his hood drawn over his face, shading his features, though how it could have stayed there when the bike was speeding through the desert was a riddle to Obi-Wan, who didn't know about the little horns on the Zabrak's head keeping it in place.
In the dim moonlight, the Sith's face seemed to dissolve, the black parts vanishing in the shadow of the black hood. The only features that remained visible were the red stripes on his face, giving Obi-Wan the strange and unsettling impression that he was talking to an incomplete face that seemed to float in a seemingly empty hood without a discernible head attached to it.
The robe the biker wore was similar to Obi-Wan's own, except that it was black. Other than that, nothing else could be determined about the Sith's appearance.
Obi-Wan couldn't help but be suspicious of this unexpected offer. The person riding the swoop bike didn't exactly give the impression that he regularly helped people. Though he Padawan tried to not let the definite aura of malice or disquieting way the person's face looked in the moonlight influence his opinion (since it was unbecoming of a Jedi to judge someone by his looks alone) he didn't feel comfortable. Also he felt that it was probably wise not to look at the stranger with the Force, and instead settled on concealing his usually bright presence behind some thick shields. The biker didn't seem like a threat right now, but there it was again.
The feeling.
The bad feeling.
That bad feeling that seemed to have permanently moved in and found a cosy corner it liked somewhere in the Padawan's mind.
For a second, the image of a green lightsaber slashing through a similarly stripey-faced person flashed before Obi-Wan's eyes.
He took a calming breath and centred himself to be able to think rationally.
Oh, stop it, this is getting old, Obi-Wan admonished himself. I'm just overreacting again. Qui-Gon is right, I should stop worrying so much, not centre on my anxieties and all that. It's not like a member of a presumably extinct order of dark warriors is likely to offer me a ride in the middle of this desert. This is probably just one of the usual thugs living somewhere around here, not a particularly lethal Sith. No imminent bad intention towards me, as is the case here, is probably as close as I can get to actual compassion on Tatooine.
Obi-Wan could practically hear Qui-Gon telling him to keep his focus on the here and now, where it belonged, and that there was always a bigger fish. And as it was, here and now, Obi-Wan could really do with a ride.
"Nah, it's all right. You can buy me a drink as a reward for my help. So hop on!" Darth Maul said to Obi-Wan.
That request for a drink gave the offer the required selfish touch to make it sound authentic in these parts of the Galaxy, and so, pushing aside his misgivings with a shrug, Obi-Wan walked over to the idling bike and mounted behind its driver.
Darth Maul thought he detected a faint hint of girly perfume on the hitch hiker. He smiled slightly. This one was probably on his way to his girlfriend or on his way home from his girlfriend. Or maybe he was on his way from the home of his first girlfriend to the home of his second girlfriend. Darth Maul smiled a bit more.
As soon as Obi-Wan had found a secure hold on the bike, they zoomed off into the darkness.
oOo
"So where are you headed?" Darth Maul shouted above the rushing wind and the roaring engine. His boredom had not disappeared since he had picked up the traveller, who had stayed rather silent so far.
"-" The answer was spoken too quietly to be heard above the din.
"WHAT?"
"-!"
"WHAT?"
"I'M CHASING GIRLS!" Obi-Wan refrained from elaborating further, especially since he didn't feel like shouting till he was hoarse to have a conversation with someone he wasn't exactly inclined to talk to in the first place.
Just what I guessed! Darth Maul thought with a satisfied smirk on his face, making him look positively terrifying. If Obi-Wan could have seen his face then, he would probably have re-examined that bad feeling and found it to have some justification, after all.
After a few more shouted tries at conversation, both men gave up. It was just too loud to properly talk to each other, and the wind seemed to rip their words away before they could properly utter them.
They had been hurtling through the inky night for just under fifteen minutes when they finally arrived at the edge of Mos Espa.
Darth Maul sharply pulled his vehicle to a stop in front of the first cantina they came across. They went into the murky room which was filled with smoke and the unpleasant smell of cheap beer. A few shady patrons were sitting in a dimly lit corner. Obi-Wan hurriedly put a few coins on the counter of the bar so that Darth Maul would get his drink; then he quickly and quietly left without another glance at the mysterious stranger who eagerly turned to the dubious pleasures Tatooine's cantinas had to offer.
oOo
Obi-Wan looked around. He had finally found the backyard Qui-Gon had mentioned.
In one corner, under a huge tarpaulin, there was a vaguely podracer-shaped structure. Glad that he had finally found the means to get the missing handmaidens back, he pulled aside the cover.
What he found there looked like a pile of rubbish at first glance. At second glance, it still looked like a pile of rubbish, and even by the third glance, it hadn't gotten any better.
This assembly of oddities couldn't possibly get anyone anywhere. The only place this thing would go was the waste disposal site, and even there it would have to be dragged every inch of the way. Sure, it vaguely resembled the usual layout of a podracer, but it mostly consisted of junk that was assembled to look like one.
The places where the turbines were supposed to be were taken by two dustbins without bottoms which were filled with loose wires, small pieces of mechanical scrap and what looked like the intestines of an antique refrigerator as the main power source – not that you could get any power out of that. Instead of a steering wheel, there was a video game control pad and a broken sphygmomanometer took the place of the speedometer. The seat was an old armchair which had lost most of its stuffing somewhere along the way. All of that was accumulated on top of an old and shabby piece of carpet. Obi-Wan once again came to the conclusion that this must be a pile of rubbish.
The Jedi looked around once again, but couldn't spot anything else that might be a podracer. As the first light of day slowly appeared in the sky, Obi-Wan sat down on a low wall and thought. After some minutes of trying to ignore bad feelings and futilely pondering his lack of transportation, Obi-Wan was startled out of his thoughts by the buzzing of his comm link.
Dutifully, the Padawan immediately answered the call.
It was Panaka, who informed him that the girls had called him with the request that someone please pick them up because they had run out of fuel. To Obi-Wan's enormous relief, they had only come as far as Mos Espa, where they had spent the last three hours at a shop that belonged to someone called Ben. That meant that Obi-Wan only had to find this Ben who owned the store and could then take the handmaidens back to the ship. Unlike with more common names such as Han, Shmi or Kra'wf-tor, Obi-Wan supposed that someone with the highly unusual name Ben shouldn't be too hard to find in a relatively small town such as Mos Espa. He would just ask any remotely friendly-looking person passing his way where he might find Ben's shop.
Obi-Wan was surprised by how easy it had been. The first person he had asked had been able to provide him with directions that would get him straight to this Ben he was looking for.
When he arrived at the described location, though, he wondered what the girls could possibly want from a real estate agent. Shrugging, he entered the small office.
Behind a desk which was cluttered with pens and piles of paper sat a tired-looking man who was shouting excitedly into his desktop comm link, loudly advertising the advantages of timeshare apartments. He looked slightly disheveled, his shirt was crumpled and his face already looked moist with perspiration. When he caught sight of an actual potential client standing in his office, he quickly hung up and turned to Obi-Wan.
"Ah, good morning, dear sir! How may I help you?" the real estate agent enquired, an overly friendly and clearly fake smile plastered on his face.
"Good morning," Obi-Wan answered. "If I may ask, are you Ben?" he asked, still not sure why the girls would be here. Neither could he see them in the tiny, cramped office.
"Yes, I am. I'm Ben, the owner or Ben's Real Estates, the best real estate agency on planet. I know, not exactly a creative name, but it serves my purposes. So could I interest you in one of the high-quality offers on sale today?"
"No, thank you very much, but I'm not interested in buying anything. I'm looking for three girls who got lost and told me to pick them up here. If they are here, would you tell them I've arrived, please?" Obi-Wan asked with another questioning glance around the small room.
Ben's fake smile did not waver when he answered: "I don't know anything about any girls. But you said you don't want to buy, so maybe you were thinking of renting something? How about a timeshare apartment? I have an especially nice one you will like very much. The offer only just came in yesterday, so you might want to buy it as long as it's still available. It's a nice, isolated hut out in the Jundland Wastes. It has a bedroom, a small kitchen and a nice little garden as well as its own power generator. Of course, nothing grows there in the garden, because it's out in the desert, but you could imagine all the nice flowers, it keeps the mind busy. The next neighbours live about half an hour's speeder journey away, and really these Sand People who occasionally turn up there are very nice people who genuinely suffer from the prejudices everyone has against them. Right now, some old guy known as Ben the crazy hermit lives there. But his timeshare contract runs out in about fifteen years or so, and then you could move in for approximately twenty years before it's the next person's turn. And you could save a lot of money if you buy it now. I've got a special offer: just 20.000 Republic credits, and the place will be yours in fifteen years…"
After three minutes of non-stop talking, Ben had to take a breath and Obi-Wan used the opportunity to say goodbye before the enthusiastic salesman could tell him more about the advantages of this alleged "jewel in the desert" he had no intention of buying at all. He didn't even want to imagine what living on Tatooine for any extended period of time would be like. There was no way he would buy a house on this wretched planet when he didn't intend to spend a single moment longer on Tatooine than was strictly necessary.
Quickly, he left the office and left Ben to resume the comm call he had been having before the Padawan had entered. Obviously, the girls were not here, so, as unlikely as it seemed, maybe there was someone else called Ben around here, after all.
After a solid two and a half hours of looking for the girls in just under a dozen different shops all owned by some Ben or other, Obi-Wan could only assume that on Tatooine about every second shop owner's name was Ben. And apparently it didn't stop there. The customary way of greeting men around here seemed to be "Oi, Ben!" because chances were that the person you were addressing was actually called Ben.
If anyone wanted to disappear around here, he would just have to take on the name Ben, and you would never be found in a hundred years – as Obi-Wan was currently experiencing first-hand.
So far, he had met Ben the Baker, Ben the Lawyer, Ben the Dressmaker and Ben the Hairstylist. The Padawan had also gotten directions to Ben the Podracer, Ben the Moisture Farmer and Ben the Crazy Old Hermit who lived out in the Jundland Wastes as well as quite a few more of the sort, but since he was looking for a place that appealed enough to the handmaidens so that they had so far spent some hours there, he decided not to make further inquiries with these.
At 'Ben's Garage' he had picked up fuel for the girl's speeder. In their call to Panaka, they had complained that they had run out of fuel after just a few miles and so were stuck in Mos Espa. Obviously, they had not thought to re-fuel yet, because if they had, they wouldn't still be here.
Finally, Obi-Wan found the girls in 'Ben's All Day and Night Fashion Shop for All Occasions', happily spending a small fortune on clothes, shoes and glittery purses which were so small that not even the necessities a girl usually carried would fit in there, rendering them completely useless (at least in Obi-Wan's eyes). The beaming shop owner was reluctant to let them leave because business hadn't been as good in years.
With three content handmaidens in his wake and carrying the huge pile of recently purchased clothes, Obi-Wan got back to the speeder.
Although it was still early morning, a lot had already happened for one day. Yawning widely from the short night they had had, the handmaidens quickly hopped into the speeder and after a few minutes filled with increasingly tired giggles, they were quickly becoming drowsy and fell asleep.
Glad that he wouldn't have to deal with girls still hyper from the excitements of shopping, Obi-Wan got them back safely to the ship. He was almost surprised that the return trip passed without further trouble.
After dumping the mound of clothes in the common room for the handmaidens to sort out, he excused himself as quickly as politeness allowed and tried to get back a bit of the rest he had missed out on.
oOo
Edited on 3rd January, 2011