Chapter 20

Disclaimer: As you can probably tell, I don't own anything, not even Hamlet. If you can't tell, maybe you should have your common sense examined…

oOo

Obi-Wan watched his Master disappear in the distance. He couldn't help but wonder how Qui-Gon managed to pick up these pathetic creatures on almost all of their missions. Although it was not unusual for Qui-Gon to go out of his way to help the poor beings and even grant them residence in their quarters at the Jedi Temple, he would inevitably lose interest in them once they had returned home and their newness had worn off.

And so Obi-Wan had been scratched, drooled on, haired on, bitten, peed on, poisoned (thankfully only once) and even thrown out of his bed by a sick skunk which Qui-Gon insisted needed a warm and comfortable place to sleep. After the animal had been nursed back to health, Obi-Wan had even voluntarily prolonged his occupation of the living room because he simply couldn't stand the stench that had lingered for more than a fortnight. Somehow he was sure that one of the life-forms Qui-Gon picked up would someday be the death of him, but he was equally sure that that would not happen for many years to come.

After he had stared at the horizon for a whole five minutes, lost in thought, Obi-Wan shook off the tight feeling on his chest and returned to the ship. But he was still so distracted that he noticed the two handmaidens heading his way too late to avoid them successfully.

One of the girls was already giggling and pointing his way.

"Look, it's Obi-Wan! Isn't he gorgeous?" she whispered just loud enough for the Padawan to hear her (and consequently blush such a bright shade of red that any tomato in range would have died of shame, but the only thing even remotely resembling a tomato for 500 miles around was the freeze-dried powder in the fridge of the ship's galley).

So Qui-Gon had been right. The disguise, which had been a rather feeble camouflage in the first place, wasn't working.

But then, to Obi-Wan's eternal surprise and eventual delight, the other girl swatted lightly at the first girl's arm and whispered urgently: "No, stupid! It's not. Look at him! The braid's behind the left ear, right? But Obi-Wan wears his behind the right ear, so it can't be him."

The first girl mumbled a disappointed "Oh, yes. I see." Then she protested disbelievingly: "But he looks just like him!"

The other handmaiden shushed her quickly. "Yes, but it's not him, that's probably his evil twin. And taking into consideration just how dangerous that lightsaber-thing looks, I wouldn't want to cross Obi-Wan's evil twin. That might be perilous! Though I have to admit that he does look gorgeous all the same."

The first girl looked terrified. After fearfully staring at him as he walked past them, they swiftly fled to the Queen's quarters without further bothering Obi-Wan, who was genuinely thankful for their quick retreat.

With a relieved grin on his lips and feeling much more cheerful, the Padawan walked off to install the new hyperdrive, a slight but noticeable spring in his step.

On the way to the engine room, he returned the braid to its proper place. The disguise had served its purpose, and the handmaidens wouldn't bother him while he was working with the hyperdrive. They were too much afraid of getting oil or engine coolant on their clothes.

oOo

Shmi sighed sadly. Saying goodbye to her son once had been heart-wrenching enough, and Anakin had said goodbye at least a hundred times already. Now, he was finally leaving with Qui-Gon, whom she had previously said goodbye in her own, private way.

Just as she was about to return back inside, though, Anakin turned around yet again.

He looked questioningly at Qui-Gon before he ran back to his mother to hug her tightly just one more last time.

"I can't do it, mom. I just can't do it," he whined.

His mother sighed yet again. "Ani, we've been through this already. You will go and become a Jedi, I will marry Cliegg and live with him and his family until the Sand People abduct me, you will return and watch me die before you'll finally turn to the Dark Side. You see, there's no need to worry!" she patiently explained once again, though it was highly doubtful that there really was no need to worry if all she had just said would come true.

But Anakin hadn't been listening, just like the he had done for the previous two and a half hours, because that was how long they were saying goodbye already.

"Will I ever see you again?" he whimpered.

"What does your heart tell you?" Shmi prompted him gently. Maybe this approach would work better; at least it would give her son something to think about.

"Um, well, I never actually listened." Anakin was silent for a moment, his head tilted to the side, listening intently to something only he could hear. A look of displeasure settled on his face. "I don't understand what it says; it just does this thumping noise over and over again. It's rather tiresome to listen for a proper answer if you don't speak the right language, you know," he complained. "It seems I haven't learned my Huttese by heart, after all."

"Oh, Anakin! When will you ever get the hang of metaphors?" Shmi sighed yet again. "Maybe sometime someone will explain them to you so you'll actually understand. What I meant was rather something along the lines of: What do you think? What does your intuition tell you? And don't tell me you can't understand that, either, because that's what you listen to the most."

Anakin thought for another moment. Then he stammered: "I hope so. Yes. No. Maybe. Perhaps. Certainly. I don't think so. I guess."

"Then we will see each other again," Shmi reassured her confused son.

"I will come back and free you, mom. I promise," Anakin vowed.

Shmi caressed his face one last time. "Don't promise me that. You know you never keep any promises, you rather forget about them the moment you finish saying them. Now, be brave and don't look back," she instructed him. "Don't look back."

With lots of sad glances and two very long faces, yet without saying another goodbye (Qui-Gon looked oddly pleased that Anakin was already adopting his mannerisms) Anakin walked off at last, and although he usually never heeded any instructions, orders, requests, advice or any other such things, he did not turn around again.

For a moment, Shmi stood there, a solitary figure looking sad and alone. Then she straightened and walked back into her apartment to fix her hair and put on some make-up and a nice dress. After all, she had a future husband to charm…

oOo

While Anakin was saying his final goodbye to his mother, Darth Maul hesitantly walked out into the sunshine. When he stepped out into the stark light of Tatooine's two suns, their glare almost blinded his eyes. He flinched back into the shadows, massaging his throbbing temples. Why did he try to cure his hangover with another night at the local cantina again? Surely Darth Sidious, his immensely wise and evil Sith Master, must have told him that it was imprudent to fight the effects of too much booze with even more booze. With a low groan, the Sith apprentice tried to face the brilliant light outside again. With a bit of help from the Dark Side, he managed to banish the worst of his headache, though his face stayed frozen in a drawn grimace and his eyes were even more red-rimmed than was usual even for him.

As soon as he had strayed a few steps from his ship, one of his probe droids came flying at him, bleeping excitedly. It had been waiting outside for the better part of three hours since it had returned from Mos Espa, where it had spotted the Jedi they were looking for.

Darth Maul was not exactly full of joy at the prospect of having to face a Jedi with his head threatening to start splitting apart again at any moment, but he would have to manage. It wouldn't do to disappoint his Master, if only because that tended to be rather unhealthy for the one doing the disappointing.

Slowly, Darth Maul walked over to his swoop-bike. He paused for a second, after all he didn't want to be caught driving under the influence. Then he remembered that the police forces on Tatooine worked more than sloppily and could easily be distracted with a cuddly teddy-ewok if need be. That was possible because there was only one police officer on the whole of Tatooine, and he was self-appointed at that. His name was Ben (of course) and he had escaped from a lunatic asylum to "bring justice and help the poor", as he proclaimed to anyone who was foolish enough to lend him even half an ear.

Darth Maul scrambled on his bike and revved the engine. It gave a satisfactory roar before it suddenly lurched forward. Right then, the Sith spotted a bright pink post-it on the handle of his bike, on which he had scribbled the words "DON'T FORGET" next to a squiggly line he had drawn down the length of the brightly coloured piece of paper.

Darth Maul thought about this mysterious note for a moment, but couldn't for the life of him recall exactly what it was he shouldn't forget.

The memory returned rather abruptly when the object of this forgotten memory approached him at terminal velocity.

As he fell down that blasted cliff a second time in as many days, he thought, his mind still a bit befuddled: Oh, yeah, the cliff… that's what I wanted to remember. I just hope no one saw that. A Sith falling down the same cliff not only once but twice. My reputation would be irreparably damaged.

Then he sped off towards Mos Espa, never noticing the Jawa that was hidden behind a big boulder, silently laughing its head off at the evil guy's idiocy.

oOo

If Anakin suspected that Qui-Gon's sanity was occasionally… well, lacking, he now had the ultimate proof. No one in his right mind would run on Tatooine, and yet the Jedi showed no signs of slowing down.

"Are we there yet?" he gasped for the fifteenth time.

"No, just a bit further!" was Qui-Gon's answer, just like it had been the last fourteen times.

Slowly, Anakin started to wonder just how much further "just a bit" was.

When he felt that he would surely drop from exhaustion any second, he shouted: "Qui-Gon, sir, wait! I'm tired!"

When Qui-Gon actually stopped and turned around, he was so surprised that he instantly sat down, which was just what the Jedi was telling him to do, anyway.

"Anakin, drop!" Qui-Gon shouted when he spotted a figure swathed in black quickly approaching Anakin.

As soon as the bike had flown over the boy (thankfully it was a floating bike because otherwise Anakin would have been squarely run over) the man on the bike jumped off and attacked Qui-Gon with a blood-red lightsaber before he had even touched the ground.

Anakin gaped at the spectacle that was unfolding before his eyes. He had never seen a Jedi in action, and he was awed by what he saw. Qui-Gon battled this dark stranger with such grace and skill, and the dark stranger did such cool stunts that Anakin could only stare at the fighters, unable to move. The two combatants were locked in fierce battle. They were slashing and hacking at each other, blocking and parrying the swings and attacks of their opponents. It was a flurry of green and red light, the back and forth between Jedi and Sith. Qui-Gon executed a few flips that should be impossible for a mere human to do, but his adversary was not impressed. Darth Maul only sneered at him, looking for all the world like he wanted to eviscerate Qui-Gon on the spot.

Anakin really wished he could do such awesome things, too. As soon as they were back on the ship, he wouldn't stop nagging at Qui-Gon to teach him some of his moves.

He was ripped from his reverie when Qui-Gon yelled at him.

"Go!" he shouted. "Tell them to take off."

Anakin wished he could somehow help the Jedi against this formidable opponent. Maybe he could attack the Sith without thinking first, but that might end in him getting zapped with Force lightning and losing his arm. Or maybe he would defeat the Sith by cutting off his hands and finally beheading him.

Then he remembered that he didn't even have a lightsaber (for a second he wondered why there was this exasperated voice whispering in his ear that 'this weapon is your life, Anakin!') and so he scrambled off towards the ship, missing the remainder of the spectacular fight.

When Anakin entered the cool, clean air of the spaceship, he didn't immediately spot anyone whom he could tell about Qui-Gon's difficulties with the menacing stranger, so he shrugged and instead looked for something of interest to him, quickly forgetting about the fight outside. To his delight, he spotted Padmé, Captain Panaka and Jar Jar standing in an adjacent hallway.

"Hey, what are you guys up to?" he asked.

Padmé shrugged. "Uh, nothing, I guess, since we are not filming right now. So you are coming with us now? That's great!"

"Eh. If nothing's going on here, I should have stayed outside and watched the battle, at least that was interesting," he complained.

"Huh? Which battle?" Padmé asked, baffled.

"Erm, the one Qui-Gon is having with that dangerous dark dude, just outside the door."

"Yousa saying there se battle outside? Urgh!" Jar Jar squeaked.

Padmé suggested: "Maybe we should tell Obi-Wan about that." The other girls had told her about the workout they had witnessed, and now she was eager to see some of that herself.

Anakin wondered what a protocol droid might be able to do about the formidable foe Qui-Gon was battling, but if Padmé wanted to do it, it was fine by him, no matter how unreasonable it might be.

They ran to the cockpit and entered (thus violating the no-girls rule) just as Obi-Wan informed the pilots: "Qui-Gon's in trouble."

After all he shared a training bond with Qui-Gon, which had been screaming "danger" at him since the fight had begun. Obi-Wan frowned, looking out and trying to spot his Master in all the whirling clouds of dust and sand the combatants had created.

"Take off," Obi-Wan advised the pilot.

Padmé heartily approved of that, she certainly wouldn't mind leaving the Master behind, not after the last few days with him. She had grown rather tired of his strange views of the world, and if she had to hear about Chosen Ones or the Living Force one more time, she would start screaming and not stop till she was either out of breath or the Sith took over the Galaxy, whichever should occur first.

But then, the Padawan continued: "Over there, fly low."

He had spotted a whirling green blade clashing against a blood-red one in heated battle. The pilot took off and he steered the big silver spaceship towards the fight.

"Oh no, you left the hatch open!" Padmé shouted and quickly pressed the button to close it.

"Of course I did," Obi-Wan countered, swiftly opening the hatch again. "That was the plan, after all. I could have joined the fight and help my Master defeat this foe, of course, but this is Tatooine and it is awfully hot and sandy outside, and I don't want to spend any more time on this planet that I absolutely have to. And it's much too early for the epic battle, anyway, so I decided that giving Master Qui-Gon a chance to escape is under these circumstances probably the best course of action."

Thankfully, Qui-Gon took the chance to escape Obi-Wan was offering him and didn't let his stubbornness win out and stay to fight the Sith, which would probably have ended in his even more premature death than was in store for him, anyway. The Jedi Master jumped unto the lowered hatch and the ship sped off, leaving Darth Maul behind in the desert, glowering menacingly after the escaping Jedi. He vowed not to let them escape a second time.

oOo

Obi-Wan rushed to his Master's side to make sure Qui-Gon was all right. He was closely followed by the sandy-haired boy he had noticed arriving in the cockpit with Padmé earlier. So that was probably Qui-Gon's newest project. Obi-Wan had to admit that he did look rather pathetic, staring up at everyone with curiosity and just a tad of endearing shyness in these huge blue eyes of his. Normally the Padawan would have introduced himself and made the boy feel welcome because he would have to deal with him sooner or later, anyway, and although he might seem a bit detached at times, he was certainly neither heartless nor unfriendly.

At the moment, though, Obi-Wan was more worried for his Master than for the boy.

Qui-Gon sat on the floor, gasping for breath. Obi-Wan ran to him, a concerned look on his face. It was rather unusual for his Master to be so winded from this rather short fight, even though Tatooine was awfully hot and sandy.

Before he could ask how Qui-Gon was doing, though, a frantic Anakin beat him to it.

"Are you all right?"

"I think so."

Qui-Gon seemed a bit shaken, which only served to increase Obi-Wan's concerns. Qui-Gon usually was not easy to upset.

"What was it?" Obi-Wan enquired. If that weren't entirely impossible, he thought he had detected a flicker of fear in Qui-Gon's eyes, and that worried him greatly because Qui-Gon was never afraid. Ever.

Qui-Gon was still breathing heavily.

"I'm not sure," he conceded, which in itself was an extremely unusual thing for Qui-Gon, who usually so firmly believed in his opinions. "But it was well trained in the Jedi arts," he finished. His answer didn't calm Obi-Wan's concerns in the least.

Somewhere down on the planet, Darth Maul protested loudly. "IT! I'm not an IT, I'm a HE! And I've got a name, for Force's sake!" Unsurprisingly, his objections went unheard by anyone aside from a womprat or two.

"My guess is it was after the Queen," Qui-Gon continued, who wouldn't be able to tell the Queen from her handmaidens if they did a little dance on his nose or a fashion show right in front of his eyes.

"What are we gonna do about it?" Anakin anxiously asked at once.

Obi-Wan was confused. He had quite a few good ideas what he would do about that, though he couldn't imagine what a small boy like Anakin could possibly do about someone who had managed to rough up Qui-Gon so effortlessly.

"We shall be patient," was Qui-Gon's answer, "and always keep in mind that there are-"

"Please, Master," Obi-Wan couldn't help but interrupt him. "No more lectures about the existence and ubiety of fishoid life forms of greater proportions. You've said that so often that you managed to make it an empty phrase. You've robbed it of its meaning, so please don't harp upon it any more than is absolutely indispensable."

Anakin looked a bit confounded. He wondered where this guy came from and what language he was speaking, since he hadn't understood a word of what had just been said.

Usually Obi-Wan wouldn't be so disrespectful towards his Master, but this boy, even though he was just a small and innocent-looking child, for no readily apparent reason gave him the heebie-jeebies. For a second, he thought he heard the noise of harsh mechanical breathing and saw a shiny black helmet with huge insect-like eyes instead of the boy's bright blue ones. The bad feeling returned with a vengeance. Frowning, Obi-Wan told himself to get off it. It was not like this child was evil incarnate or something, after all.

"Oh, all right," Qui-Gon grumbled. Here he was, trying to teach Anakin this extremely important lesson…

Then he remembered that it was high time someone introduced Anakin to the person who would take care of the child when he inevitably lost interest in him.

"Anakin Skywalker, meet Obi-Wan Kenobi," he said, still a bit out of breath.

Anakin turned around to face the young man he had first seen in the cockpit. "Hi," he said. So that was this OB-1 guy. If he was really a protocol droid, he was the most impressively human-looking droid Anakin had ever seen.

Yet, his hand was warm to the touch, and he even gave Anakin a slightly lopsided smile. Anakin was pretty sure that no droid could smile, and especially not lopsidedly, no matter how sophisticated a machine it might be.

But just to make sure, he asked: "You're a Jedi, too?" He received a hesitant nod as an answer, though the slightly perplexed look on Obi-Wan's face was replaced with barely concealed amusement when Anakin continued: "Pleased to meet you!"

Qui-Gon laughed a bit. He was glad that his Padawan and Anakin seemed to like each other quite well. That suited him just fine, in fact.

"Obi-Wan, why don't you get Anakin settled and give him something to eat and generally make him feel welcome. And Anakin, you can ask my Padawan anything you want, I'm quite sure he has an answer for almost everything. I'll have to go and do my hair; it's gone all frizzy in the dry climate. It needs to be combed and shampooed and I will need at least half a bottle of conditioner and my curlers. I hope I did bring them along. Well, if not I will have to borrow some from the Queen, she will have some, I'm sure. That should take up the whole afternoon, so you two just think of something to do, right? Right."

Content that he had now given both Anakin and Obi-Wan something to do he stalked off to find the nearest fresher.

oOo

So Obi-Wan found himself alone with the child sooner than he had expected. Anakin was still smiling up at him expectantly, as if he waited for the Padawan to jump into action and do something incredible any second.

Obi-Wan feared that he might have to disappoint Anakin's expectations, but he thought that a decent meal (as decent as was possible on a spaceship, anyway) should make up for that.

"So, Anakin…" Obi-Wan still was a bit unsure about this boy. "How about we find you a place to put your bag and then go to the galley and look if we can find something to eat? And maybe I can answer a few of the questions you surely have," he suggested.

"Wow, wizard!" shouted Anakin, instantly taking a liking to this young man who offered him food, his most favourite stuff in the Galaxy. "So how is it? To be a Jedi, I mean? Do you like being one? What do you do the whole day if you don't rescue Queens? What do you do if you do rescue Queens?"

Before Anakin could continue his barrage of questions, Obi-Wan answered: "I couldn't imagine being anything else than a Jedi. Like most Jedi, I was accepted into the Temple when I was but very young. For the last thirteen years, I've been living with Master Qui-Gon, who teaches me the ways of the Force and everything else I need to know so that I can become a halfway decent Jedi Knight someday."

"Wow, wizard!" Anakin shouted excitedly. "I wanna be a Jedi, too. Can I? Can I, can I, can I, can I? Please?" he begged.

Obi-Wan laughed quietly. "That's not for me to decide," he explained patiently. "I think Master Qui-Gon will try to get you accepted into the Order, but whether you will be accepted or not is not for him to decide, either, I'm afraid. You are a bit older than the children who are usually admitted, though that doesn't have to mean anything. The Council will ultimately decide about your future. Only the wisest and most powerful Jedi are asked to join the Council. They ponder and discuss the Force to lead the Jedi Order in accordance with its will."

"Is Master Qui-Gon on the Council, too?" Anakin asked.

Once again, Obi-Wan laughed softly as he imagined Qui-Gon sitting in one of the plush Council chairs, arguing heatedly with the rest of its venerable members about whether his favourite saying were valid submissions to a hypothetical competition for the creation of new Jedi proverbs.

"No, he isn't. It's not because of lack of wisdom, though. Master Qui-Gon is very wise, in his own kind of way, but he also continually disagrees with the Council's verdicts. He can be very stubborn, you see? If the Council's opinion and what he perceives as the will of Living Force are at odds, which in Master Qui-Gon's opinion they are quite often, he argues with the most revered Masters and never gives in, and not even Master Yoda can persuade him to change his mind."

At that point, they arrived in front of the door to the Jedi's quarters on the spaceship. Obi-Wan pressed the button to open the door, and it disappeared into the wall with a soft swishing noise.

"So here we are. This is the room my Master and I were assigned. You can leave your bag here. I'm afraid that we'll have to look for another place for you to sleep, though. It's not like I wouldn't give you my sleep couch," he hastily added as he saw the disappointed look on Anakin's face. "But with Qui-Gon sleeping in the other bunk, it's highly improbable that you would catch a single second of sleep." Obi-Wan cleared his throat before he continued with just a hint of embarrassment colouring his voice: "My Master snores. And it's not just your everyday loud breathing; I'm talking about a full-blown snore which is just as loud as if not even louder than a whole arena full of bloodthirsty Geonosians, and just as detrimental to one's health."

Anakin stared up at the Padawan, amazed and also a bit unbelieving. "How can you sleep if he's that loud?" he asked.

"I use the Force to plug my ears. I've learned that trick shortly after I became Qui-Gon's Padawan, because I didn't sleep a single second during the first few nights, and that despite the fact that I had my own room, which was separated from Qui-Gon's by two walls and a hallway. I guess I'll eventually have to teach you how to do that, too, because Qui-Gon will surely offer you accommodation in our quarters once we are back on Coruscant. Besides, it comes in handy quite often actually, but for today, I think you already have enough new things to adjust to and I don't want to overexert your capacity to learn new things." Obi-Wan gave Anakin a reassuring smile and received an appreciative one in return.

Obi-Wan continued: "I guess you can share a room with Jar Jar. He's actually not all that bad, at least not when he's asleep."

That remark earned him a snicker from Anakin.

"Now, how about we find you something to eat?" Obi-Wan suggested.

Anakin's only answer to that was a loud "Yippie!"

oOo

Obi-Wan watched Anakin inhale the heaps of food they had gotten from the galley, fascinated by the way such a little boy could eat so much in so little time.

"Hey, that's really good," Anakin mumbled between mouthfuls.

The boy swallowed the bite he was chewing and asked: "So who is this Master Yoda you were talking about?"

Then he immediately shoved another piece of food into his mouth.

Obi-Wan thought about that question for a second.

"Master Yoda is the most respected Jedi Master in the Order. He is also green, wrinkly, has huge pointy ears and big eyes, is about 860 years old and about that tall." Obi-Wan indicated the diminutive Master's height with a gesture.

The look of amazement on Anakin's face was priceless. Anakin wondered how such a weird creature could be the most respected Jedi Master. After a short contemplation, though, he glared at Obi-Wan and an offended pout twisted his elfin features. "Now you're making fun of me. That's not very nice. As if I'd fall for such an obvious lie."

Obi-Wan considered putting a hand to his chest in overly dramatic mock-hurt that Anakin would suspect him of lying, but he didn't know the boy long enough to dare such jokes yet. So he just settled for a mischievous grin instead. "Jedi don't lie," he earnestly informed Anakin. "We might be wont to occasionally tell the truth from a certain point of view, but we don't lie."

Seeing Anakin's face so clearly reflecting perplexity, the Padawan said: "I know what you must be thinking right now. You are probably asking yourself how such a weird creature could be the most respected Jedi Master. That's quite a long story, actually…"

Obi-Wan then proceeded to tell Anakin a story about a small planet somewhere on the edge of the boring and unfashionable part of the galaxy. The only inhabitants of this planet were plants of all kinds. They were mostly like all the other plants in the galaxy, with the exception of their bigger size. In a particularly nice and sunny spot, there grew a pea. It carried but one huge, round and brightly green pea in a pod, which was quite content to simply sit there and do photosynthesis and grow even more huge and round and brightly green.

At some point, due to its especially sunny spot, the pea got an unhealthy dosage of radiation from the planet's sun, and its genes started to mutate. This genetically modified pea suddenly had a conscience, and it thought that just sitting there to grow even more huge and round and brightly green was in fact quite dull. A few hundred mutations later, it was finally able to detach itself from its mother plant and decided that the rest of the galaxy would probably be quite an interesting and exciting place to visit.

What the pea hadn't thought of was that without the roots of its mother plant, the water supply wouldn't be guaranteed any more. Without enough water, it started to shrink and grow all wrinkly. By then, the pea had evolved so much that it rather resembled a shrunken and wrinkled alien instead of its former huge and round shape, though it was still brightly green due to the high level of chloroplasts in its (or his, as was appropriate by then) cells. By then, it/he was able to ingest the water it/he needed by means of a mouth, though the wrinkles and shrivelled look wouldn't go away any more, no matter how much water it/he drank.

At some point, the pea took the pod it had grown in and used it to fly to another planet (thereby establish the creature's liking of escape pods, which would come in handy later on Kashyyk). A space pilot picked up the mutated pea, named it Yoda after his grandmother's special pea soup and gave it to the Jedi Temple, where Yoda was accepted for training. That was about 839 years ago.

Yoda's ability to learn Basic, the language spoken in most parts of the Galaxy, was remarkable. Granted, his grammar was horrendous, but considering that he is a genetically modified plant, the fact that he could speak was by itself a miracle.

Eventually, Yoda became a Knight, then a Master and finally he was elected to become a member of the Council, where he has since then never failed to annoy his fellow councillors with his warped grammar.

"So don't be surprised by Master Yoda's twisted way of talking or the weird things he occasionally says. Just remember that for a mutated pea, he speaks really well and is extraordinarily intelligent, given that an average pea has no brain cells at all. And it has become much easier to understand him, now that he's finally learned to speak the modern variety of Basic instead of the anachronistic expressions he used to use. It was rather difficult to gather what he said when he completely twisted the structure of these old-fashioned sentences, which were not all that easy to understand in the first place. If he wanted to say, for example, something like this:

Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all;

And thus the native hue of resolution,

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment,

With this regard their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action.

He would instead say:

Make cowards of us all, thus conscience doth;

And thus, with the pale cast of thought,

sicklied o'ver, the native hue of resolution is…

I think I'll stop here now that you've got an impression of what his way of speaking used to be. I've always wondered why he would recite such long passages from Shakespeare's Hamlet, though. Now, he would just say things like how there is no try or how various things lead to the Dark Side," Obi-Wan finished.

Anakin blinked a few times and tried to comprehend what Obi-Wan had just told him. He didn't have such a firm grasp of genetics or the concepts of evolution or literature that he could comprehend all the things the Padawan had just explained to him, but if he had caught the gist of what Obi-Wan had said rightly, then a mutated pea was the leader of the Jedi Order? Anakin finished his meal, shaking his head to help clear his thoughts.

"So, are you finished eating?" Obi-Wan asked him.

Anakin nodded vigorously.

"Well then, I've heard that you're quite the mechanic. Maybe you want to take a look at the engine room?"

Anakin nodded even more vigorously, quite pleased with the prospect of spending the day there, having a look at all the different machines that kept the ship functioning.

Obi-Wan was quite pleased with the prospect of an afternoon spent out of the reach of the handmaidens, who usually didn't enter the engine room for fear of ruining their dresses. And since no one had properly told them about the attack yet, they were probably still in a flurry of hysteria, but he was quite willing to let Captain Panaka do the calming down.

oOo

Author's note: I was asked to include some old English, like from Shakespeare. I randomly chose a few lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet and I hope you like the way I put it in the story (I admit it was a rather difficult challenge).

Edited on 11th February, 2011