Author's Note:
Updating by phone is really awkward. Thanks for anyone who had reviewed! Sorry to anyone if I haven't replied to your reviews-it's too easy to lose track which ones I've replies to and whichnones I haven't. And then, there's this awkward phone keyboard is being awkward for my gigantic fingers.
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Podracing
Anakin revisits an old hobby. Tamlin tags along.
'-
If there was anything in his past that Anakin wasn't sure what to feel about, it would be podracing. He couldn't decide whether to get involved again or not, seeing as his childhood had already gone differently with the presence of a twin brother and all his previous adult memories. He hadn't become close friends with the old crowd he ran with, as he wasn't quite sure if he knew how to act.
Oh, they still know each other, as the place was too small for anyone to be strangers. Yet all it amounted to was an acknowledging nod or a greeting in passing, and small talk whenever there was an occasion for a gathering. There had always been some small, informal celebrations dotted throughout the year, and sometimes there were slightly bigger events like a slave wedding—not that they would ever be recognised by the law, but it was tradition. These would be the ones where the children get dragged into, no matter how annoyed they are at being forced to wear they best and behave.
That was it, though. That was the extent of most of his social interaction with people his physical age that wasn't Tom. He had a feeling there was something else different with his childhood that he couldn't quite recall, but he ignored it for now. If he'd forgotten it, it couldn't have been that important, right?
He was fine with things as they were—between the two of them and their mother they never lacked company nor ran out of things to talk about. There was also the concern of their visibility. He and Tom might've been able to fool the adults as being especially precocious children, but he wasn't sure if other children wouldn't notice something off about them.
Considering the change that's already in place, who's to say that he needed to get into podracing again?
Ever since Tom came up with the idea of taking on difficult work on the side, in secret, they had managed to start building their little nest egg. They were a perfect team together. Tom did all the talking and dealing and barely any techniques was untouched from his arsenal of persuasion, even using his wide-eyed innocent kid guise that Anakin could never get around to doing. (Sometimes the condenscension just grates at him. Wasn't it enough that he was condescended often as a slave?) Anakin thus concerned himself with the mechanical problems as well as scouting whether there are any potential customers whenever a new craft landed in town. Getting into podracing just for the money now sounds like more risk on top of ones he's already taking.
Perhaps I should've just checked out the races and see what happens, he thought, deciding.
Anakin went to approach his brother and convinced him to close the shop right then and leave.
If Tom was left to his own devices, he would've kept the shop opened for at least an hour longer, maybe more, before closing shop and trudging back home. With his zeal for making money, the Toydarian was satisfied with Tom's salesmanship, and his disciplined record-keeping convinced Watto that he was honest and profitable enough to be trusted with the store. So Tom was there on most afternoons now while Watto went off early and enjoy a good drink. Or thirty. But really, who cares how much Watto drinks as long as he's in a good mood the day after that? Anakin would've been even happier if his liver failed on him, but then again, they might end up with a new and unknown master, and that wasn't guaranteed to be a better alternative.
Thus when Anakin told his brother that he had a plan for that evening, it was not hard to guess that he would be sceptical. He did close the shop early by his standards, though, and Anakin recognised it as the gesture of trust that it was. The brothers pulled the collar of their cloak higher as the winds buffeted sand around them, their mutual sighs lost in the desert air. Sand. That was one thing Tattooine was never lacking, more and more sand. Whenever Anakin asked himself how he could ever forget its omnipresence, he found a different part of himself asking back do you really want to remember all this?
He shuddered. No, not really.
"So, let me ask this once more: where are we going?" Tom asked.
"The podraces. You know, the one you saw me in before I left Tattooine?"
"You're getting into that deathtrap that you built, again? Wasn't once enough?"
"Ha ha, very funny." Anakin muttered. Tom didn't even spare the energy to respond, the sandy winds wearing what little enthusiasm that he had. "I know better now that it's a significant risk, being an adult instead of a kid gives you a different perspective that way. What I want to know is whether the gain is worth it. That's why I need to go there again and see."
He could feel his twin giving him a mental nod, along with faint background thoughts of, Sand, sand… so much bloody sand… wait, how did it even get there? Argh, that is so uncomfortable… Anakin coughed loudly, on purpose before he got too much information, and he felt Tom blinked and put up better mental shields. The blond sighed in relief.
"The Raceway's not too close, though. It would've been easier to go there on eeopies or dewbacks."
"Dewbacks?"
"Big lizards you can ride on?"
Silence and the ever present sand drifted between them as they walked on. Anakin was regretting on not bringing his goggles, even when he knew the chance of a sandstorm was very low. There was still enough wind to be annoying.
"As comforting as stories about hypothetical dewbacks are, I'm sure they won't be enough to soothe the ache of walking all the way there. Do you have some ride hidden somewhere that I don't know, or are they fictional?" Tom finally asked.
"How do you even say all that in one breath?"
"Practice," Tom said, just as dryly.
"No, I have no dewbacks."
"I am also not willing to part with the credits necessary to rent any." Tom said without missing a beat.
"Miser," Anakin said, but in good humour. His brother only nodded and accepted it as a compliment to his sound economic principles. Tom wasn't wrong.
"Seriously Anakin, are we going to walk all the way there? With these short legs, it's going to take ages." Tom complained again.
"What were you thinking of us doing?"
"Something with the Force."
"The Force is not to be used for frivolous purposes! Physical work disciplines the mind and this is why we've always cared for the Temple traditionally." Anakin said, copying his old master's tone completely. Somewhere in the Force, Obi-Wan would be groaning into his hands if he had heard it.
"You don't actually believe all that rot, do you?" The dark-haired twin was somewhere between exasperated and incredulous.
"Don't let Obi-Wan catch you say that." He said solemnly.
"Anakin."
"We are supposed to be training in the ancient and venerable ways of the Jedi Order."
"If you keep that up, the only ancient and venerable thing you would be is a fossil, because I will murder you and abandon the corpse in the middle of the desert." There goes Tom's odd sense of humour that he'd been waiting for. Anakin laughed.
His twin had actually stopped at that, dismay dawning on his face. "Please, please don't tell me this is a great lark on your part. And here I thought I've done so well in avoiding violence. Let me remind you that I know how much blood a human body could lose before it becomes fatal…"
"Nnooo, it's not a—what do you call it—lark," he said, in between his laughter. "I just… stars, you should see your face! It's krethin' hilarious!"
Tom rolled his eyes, "Yes, because not wanting to walk several miles in the desert is a completely unusual wish. Thank you for your concern."
"Well, thanks all the same, I needed that," Anakin said. "There is something we could try, though. You remember all the Force control exercises I've been focusing on this month?"
"Yes?"
Anakin walked to the shade of a store nearby, and Tom followed suit. When Anakin sat down and took a meditation pose, Tom copied faithfully.
Immerse yourself deeper in the Force like usual. Then, to channel it to reinforce your leg muscles. Don't worry if you didn't get it right immediately, I'm here to help.
'-
The problem with force-assisted running on Tattooine was two-fold.
The first, one would ideally reinforce one's leg muscles to benefit from the apparent increase in stamina. The second, one had to be able to focus on all the grain of sand one is about to step in at the same time, because unless something was holding the surface tension together, a human feet is going to sink in it. Anakin still remembered all those annoying details from his class on 'physical states of matter and Force interaction'. He gave silent and grudging thanks to Master Kelynn, no matter how pedantic she was.
Use too much Force to buffer the sand and it would drain too much energy and tires the technique user immediately. It's a complicated game of Force marionette that most don't bother with—there are such things called speeders that one can always use to travel. Anakin, however, had a lot of time on his hands after he followed Tom's advice of faking the completion time of various fixing tasks he had, to avoid standing out too much. So he tried his hand at mastering one-and-half times the complexity of the first Force marionette. One actually manages to pick up a good running speed that way without tiring themselves out—Anakin was pretty satisfied with what he managed it.
Right now he was trying to control his movements as well as partially supporting Tom's.
"Stop!" Tom shouted.
Anakin did, and they found themselves a few steps away from a boulder. A little later and they would've both bashed their heads in. The faint outlines of the Raceway's canyons were visible already. His twin sighed.
"So this is fast, and it's very good since I barely felt tired either. There's still one problem, though; you can't spare your attention to take into account where we're going, especially at the speeds we went."
"I knew it had been too easy," Anakin muttered.
"Is it still far?" Tom asked.
"You could see the canyon right? It's about there."
"Let's walk."
"But there's still this empty stretch of sand between here and that—"
"We'll walk." Tom insisted, marching ahead of his twin. Anakin sighed and caught up with him.
"Whatever happened to not wanting to walk several miles in the desert?"
"It's overridden by survival instinct to not die from smashing into rocks or walls at high speeds," he said, his tone only half-joking. The other half was well-represented by the hands that still had tremors from the adrenaline rush.
"It wasn't that bad!"
Tom raised an eyebrow at him. "… Anakin, you do know that I can tell through the Force when untrue statements are made, right?"
Anakin cursed. He knew there were downsides to having a Force-sensitive as a sibling.
'-
It wasn't easy to find their way in a crowd of strangers, and adults at that, but they managed. The excitement was palpable in the air, and even Tom had to admit that it was hard not to get infected as conversations on various competitors droned in around them. Various smoke drifted in the air. The scent of worn leather, artifical and real, clung to them. There was also the welcome scent of cheap food with even cheaper nutritional value—they probably still taste good, though, that's what junk food is for, right?
"What, Teer'na's odds are seventeen to one? How did he drop? I thought he did so well the last time against—"
"Fourteen-to-one on Ghodorra, eh? Not bad, not bad at all."
"Whose pod was the second to the right? I thought I recognise the build. Was the one who made it the same one as—"
He pushed a little against a couple of old men of various non-human species holding up the flow to his left. They cursed, but moved, and Tom was glad that they could finally see down to the arena. It helped that neither of them were truly kids, and didn't really mind shoving through people where it mattered and if they really need to get through.
Anakin had started to describe the details of the pods entering the race now.
"Wow, look at the middle one, Tom! Why close to a cigar shape? That is rare. It's a good strategy to reduce the drag, I admit, but then how would it handle in terms of manuverability?"
"Possibly not well?" Tom hazarded a guess.
Anakin snorted. "That's putting it mildly. Look at the one to its left…"
The blond talked more about the possible reasons of changes in the aerodynamic drag that was considered when the shape of a pod was altered. He guessed the engines that could possibly be chosen for each pod, based on what would complement the weakness of its shape or sharpen its advantages to a razor edge, though the sacrifices made for that was definitely not small, and the people who did that are probably seven krethin' kinds of crazy.
"Adding more turbojets is not the best way to gain speed! You lose too much control that way!" Anakin ranted at one point. "What good would all that speed be if you're just going to crash into a canyon wall faster?"
"Maybe the pilot's species' is one with a higher reflex speed to compensate?" Tom guessed.
Even after the years he'd begun to spend in this universe, he still felt as if he was grasping at straws at how things worked here. It was only his knack for improvisation that saved him. His brother didn't seem to notice.
Anakin scoffed loudly, his disbelief clear. "I know all the major species of the galaxy and trust me, nobody's that good."
Tom barely even knew most of the details beyond how he noticed there was the rare pod with four engines that his brother had probably been talking about, as well another that he now understood as completely suicidal with six. Anakin turned out to be looking at the exact same pod.
"Six? I don't want to know how the crew would've balanced power couplings between them… wait, on second thoughts, I do want to know. I want to know the method they've chosen to kill the pilot."
Anakin continued his speculation and rant about how each racer would probably fare in the light of some of the terrain features he had seen and heard.
Why Anakin still thought that Tom could follow all his technical conversation, he had no idea. He had a good grasp of it now, mainly through his twin's relentless chatter, the occasional bleeding over dreams and endless instruction resulting in constant osmosis, but most of the time he only understood a third of what Anakin was saying. If he was lucky, he might even get a half of that, but that was a rare day. His brother seemed to derive a lot of joy just from talking to him (and talking at him, if the non-stop mechanical rant was any indication). The glow of Anakin's happiness through the bond was certainly something he didn't mind having around often.
Oddly enough, it was… comfortable.
That was it; it felt like the warmth of a comfortable hearth after one had been rained on for a whole winter evening. It had the unexpected ability to lull him into complacence. Thus Tom was entirely unsurprised when his selfishness won out. All Tom needed to do to ensure Anakin's continued rant was nod at the right moments as well as approximate enough to ask questions at some points, just to show that he was paying attention. So as Anakin proceed to continue his commentary, Tom let all this and more just wash over him as he looked around and basked in his brother's simple joy.
Anakin's latest rant was about a pod's completely embarassing engine choice due to a well-known mechanical failure for that particular brand and model that tended to seize it at intense usage beyond two hours. He was willing to bet that the pod would certainly end last, he stated, as his argument was winding down. Tom found a natural pause and asked the question he'd had in his mind ever since he had sniffed out something close to uncertainty in his brother's thoughts and couldn't help but pick at it.
To be honest, picking at holes and weaknesses was his nature.
"Do you think you'd ever want to race again?" Tom asked.
Whatever sentence Anakin was going to say was lost at that moment. "It's… it's dangerous."
"That isn't exactly the answer to my question," He said, his voice calm, patient. His brother didn't immediately answer him, and Tom didn't prompt him. A small argument broke up somewhere to their back and to the right. Neither paid it any mind.
"I wasn't wrong with what I've said earlier either," Anakin said at last. "It is dangerous. The only reason why it had seemed so fun was because I was too young to notice all the risks I had taken. I didn't realise that I was quite lucky, or that I was favoured by the Force."
Tom tilted his head to the side a little. "You've just provided the game-breaking solution yourself. All you'd have to do is use the Force—outrageously so."
Neither said out loud the word they were both thinking, but he knew he had Anakin's interest piqued already. His resolve not to race again was wavering.
"It would still take a while before I'd finish building a pod, though."
Tom smirked. That wasn't a 'no', and he had a better idea of what his twin's concerns were. Enough bothering him for now, then.
"Excellent. Now, since I'm sure you've assessed all the competitors in the race, do you think you could give an educated guess on the winners?"
Anakin caught up with his scheme. "Winners? Why not just winner?"
"Too obvious. Everyone wants to bet on the winner." Tom said. There were the beginnings of a familiar smug smile on his face. "To tell you in detail: I haven't done a more precise calculation, just based on the odds people had been giving to each other in the crowd. There are ten pods in the race right now, with three open winning positions of first, second and third. So far my rough estimate supported a betting principle I've read about once; too many people bet on the winner to drive the odds down. If you want to make a profit, you bet on who's going to come second."
"You did all that in your head?"
"No, on a secret datapad I tattooed on my face—of course I did it in my head. What else could I use?" Tom said with a roll of his eyes. He missed the dumbfounded look on his sibling's face when he did that. "So come on, tell me. Who do you think's going to come second? We have to move quickly if we want to locate some bookies in time."
"Luccorod," he said, naming a Dug he'd seen before.
"Now if he didn't come in second, who do you think would?"
"We're making more than one bet?"
"Because I don't trust anyone not to try and rig the race," he drawled. Anakin nodded at that. It made too much sense. All those parties Gardulla had held gave him a very good idea of the size of the crime syndicates around.
"Point taken. Try Khaz'bator too, then."
'-
Anakin had thought Tom was more than a bit paranoid in insisting that the bet be split among at least three bookies, and only on one bookie did they place the bet on the two second-place candidates at once, but he didn't argue. In his previous lines of work, the paranoid were usually the ones alive. It also never hurts to be careful in a new place. The plan was for them split up and pretend they were placing their bets on behalf of their fathers. Tom's rather off sense of humour reared its head at around that time.
"Let's place the bet for Vader and Voldemort." The dark haired-twin said.
He went on before his twin could say anything. "You have to admit, those two needed to relax and have fun sometimes. Getting people to quake in their boots and bow at you for hours can get tiring."
Anakin froze several seconds when he heard his dark lord name mentioned, before giving in to small chuckles. If it sounded a bit frayed at the edges, Tom didn't say anything.
"Fine. Let's get the show going."
Well, he thought, no harm in resurrecting them as old gambling addicts.
At the end of the race, they'd more than multiplied their money by six fold. It was a modest increase as gambling results go, but they didn't care. As Tom had put it, they weren't exactly gambling, after all. They were gaming the system in order to profit from the miscalculation of less fortunate sods.
'-
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