Author's Note:
Good news! I finally have a steady internet connection! (Well, moreso than before, anyway). The ISP is also one that doesn't ridiculously put FFNet behind some weaksauce version of The Great Firewall (even if it's weak, it's still a pain in the backside). Hopefully updates can return to a more regular schedule.
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= Skywalkers =
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Profit
A day in Watto's store.
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The customer was only looking for a little something he had read in magazines about how to improve his shuttle's engine's performance. After talking a while to him and listening to some of the problems he experienced at take off and landing, Tom managed to persuade him to let Anakin check the main coils of his internal gravity/anti-gravity field generator.
"It's for free, I swear, since you've just made a solid purchase with us." Tom insisted with the same charming smile. "My brother could go take a look and tell you what the problem is. We could give you an estimation of how much it would cost—whether you want to fix it with us or not is entirely up to you."
Let's hope he hasn't thrashed it, Anakin thought. I don't think I have the time to take it apart and put it together again in an afternoon.
That's a very small possibility. He'd only complained of minor issues, not of objects floating away or pallets tossed, Tom said. Anakin gave a cautious mental acknowledgement of it as he walked out with the guy from Mos Eisley to go check his ride. Tom's feelings was borne out, it seemed. It was just a slight glitch, because some of the parts generating the field were out of sync with the others. The frequency difference wasn't much, but it was a difference and created a local area where the strength of the gravity there marginally cycled.
"It's not much," Anakin said. "I doubt you'd need any new parts to fix this. I can fix this."
The man was incredulous. Anakin didn't even know why he was incredulous and just gave him a flat stare. He's probably a trader—he looked like a trader, from his dusty clothes to the vague smell of bantha on him, and as such he was definitely not the mechanic here. So why was the out-of-towner doubting his words, again?
"That's impossible! She's an old ride, I know, and this problem crops up every few months or so that I have to bring her to my regular place. But she'd always need some of the bridge-somethings around the coils replaced."
Then you've been suckered, Anakin thought, stopping himself from rolling his eyes. Tom had somehow slipped around and stood between him and the customer before he said anything else. Probably because he heard Anakin's unflattering opinion in his head.
How much is he paying that other guy? How much for service and how much for the parts? Tom asked, and Anakin did a light mental scan of him while Tom was placating the customer, assuring him that his brother was a talented mechanic and this wasn't such an unusual case that they can easily take care of. He gave Tom both the amounts he was looking for.
Charge him a third of his usual service costs, Tom decided.
What? It's probably only worth a tenth of that! I could fix it in ten minutes.
When you say that, I think you could actually do it in five, but we won't get more credits that way. Tom replied. I'll tell him that it would take three quarters of an hour, and you can finish it in a little under half an hour and impress him.
That's too long! Anakin spluttered.
No it isn't. Not if he still has business to tend to in Mos Espa, anyway, something that he'd been grumbling about a while. Plus, we know his mechanic's lousy. Tom insisted, and he went ahead and say exactly those things to the man because he could sense Anakin's doubt.
"…and that's the cost to service the gravity generator. It can probably be done in a quarter of an hour, Mr. Yaller. Of course if it is too inconvenient for you, we understand. Perhaps you are in a hurry to finish your urgent business, Sir, then I suppose you can always visit your regular mechanic."
Tom smiled and waited patiently.
Three... two… one…
His guess was not wrong and the man folded like a green private at a Sabacc game, even if he was still pretending to be considering it. Satisfaction radiated from his twin, and Tom gave a small shake of his head, his lips also twitching.
I still can't imagine how you're so good at this, Anakin mused.
Believe it or not, I once worked at a pawn shop. I've also noticed that people are the same everywhere. They want a good deal from a nice, trustworthy stranger.
Anakin gave a mental snicker at that and ignored the mock-wounded sigh that Tom gave.
So if I could give them that, I'm gold.
Tom could follow any of Anakin's diagrams to fix or reconstruct something, but that was it, and he lacked Anakin's more creative insights. Customers, however, were a different issue. Ever since Tom had started to take over counter duties from Watto, he had never ceased to be surprised by the ease at which his brother could close a deal, extend one deal to another, or intuit the price that would be profitable and yet was still satisfactory for the customers. One or two of their smarter regular customers had even timed their visits to the times that Tamlin Skywalker was certain to be manning the store instead of Watto. His preferred method to gaining more profit was to sell people more stuff, by finding out what else they need and see if they have it, instead of charging a high mark-up.
That way, he can use the excuse of giving them a bulk discount to Watto due to the size of their purchase and everybody's happy.
"It was good doing business with you, Sir," Tom said with a smile and a handshake, and went back inside the store while Anakin took his toolbox and set to work on the shuttle.
This might have been a pretty regular task that Anakin could've done without thinking, but there had been others, shadow services that took all of his attention and forced Tom to practice perimeter sensing with the Force as he kept watch over his brother. It wasn't just about selling parts or changing them, or fixing the parts left over night in Watto's shop. It was also fine-tuning or sometimes even doing complex upgrades, some of them were probably still experimental at this date (but since when Anakin cared about that minor detail?). It was mostly done on the sly and away from the slave-owner's scrutiny. Anakin didn't like Watto, but he didn't feel quite comfortable with the subterfuge. Tom had came clean with his reasons then, on one particularly cold desert nights as they stared out at the stars.
"There are several future possibilities, yet one of the things that I'm not sure about is whether the Jedi Master that will free you will have enough credits to free the both of us."
They'd finished dinner and made sure that their mother was asleep before going out. Anakin had gently lowered her into a deeper sleep through the Force.
"I've considered that," Anakin said. He sounded calmer than he felt. "That was why I was always scrounging up parts I was sure Watto wouldn't miss; I want to build a detector to locate our slave transmitters so we can extract them when the time comes and run."
Tom nodded. "Good plan. Still, what about mother?"
"What about mom? She can come with us."
Tom stared at him in disbelief. "You would bring her to the same planet that Palpatine is on? Why don't you ask him for a slave collar you while you're at it?"
He winced. "Urgh, I can't believe I forgot about him."
"I still think it was safer if she was here, away from his scrutiny and attention."
"But the Tusken Raiders…"
"Let's make a plan about that when you've started dreaming about it again. In the meantime, it's still too far away. It's also still a far more manageable problem than her being within reach of Palpatine, and able to be used as leverage."
A Sith Lord and a tribe of Tusken Raiders—there really was no competition there.
"Not that I liked the man much, but why are we going to cut deals and stuff outside of Watto's knowledge instead of just working at the shop as usual? I don't like risking getting caught" Anakin wondered aloud.
"Because the money can go towards mother buying her own freedom from him, and it would stop us from being too valuable to Watto. We can't be the goose that lay the golden eggs—"
"The what?"
"—it's an old earth story, I'll tell you later. It's like… having a bantha whose milk is liquid gold. You wouldn't want to sell it unless at a very high price, right? And how would anyone be able to buy us off if that was the case?"
Anakin sighed. He was starting to see the problem alright.
"Or we could just be honest about some of the things we could do for the shop, and if he didn't want to sell both of us at the same time when Qui-Gon arrives, we'll just escape right then, after taking our transmitters out. He would assume that we'd just been stolen, and if Mom doesn't know about it, she wouldn't be blamed since she wasn't party to it. We could leave the extra money on the bed for her." Anakin said.
"Alright, so it's risky. What if we only do it for high-value jobs, especially those involving out-of-towners that don't come here often and off-worlders? That way there'd only be a small risk of them being repeat customers, or meeting Watto."
Anakin shook himself out of his recollection and turned his attention back on his work. So, are we taking this for our own, or not? Anakin asked. The answer was probably no, considering it was still pretty standard stuff that he could imagine a young Anakin doing without getting too much attention. He still asked out of habit.
I'll book it, Tom replied. But considering that he doesn't seem to come here often, I'll write it down as half the amount.
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