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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Saga - OT EP's Neck of the Woods | One-shot/vignette thread 2015-2017

Discussion in 'Fan Fiction- Before, Saga, and Beyond' started by Ewok Poet, Jan 14, 2015.

  1. Ewok Poet

    Ewok Poet Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 31, 2014
    Responding to the remaining comment...







    That is what makes her most impressive around that time - that she is actually a NOTHING that is alive, just bouncing around, aimlessly, from one to another temporary solution.


    I did mean "hunt", but clearly not "hunts". D'oh! How embarrassing. Thanks for pointing it out. [face_blush]




    All of this and you're the first person to point out the last thing, so yay! :D





    Precisely. I had the same motif, but for different reasons, going on in the story with kid!Teebo, but this is much more morbid and complex.


    Some copies are originals, but that's a whole different story. ;)
     
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  2. Ewok Poet

    Ewok Poet Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 31, 2014
    Hell in His Head

    Genre: Character study, torture (not much, don't worry!)
    Characters: Tseebo, random younglings. Mention of Hera Syndilla.
    Timeframe: 4 BBY Sometime before the seventh episode of Rebels.
    Rating: G
    Summary: The line between reality and fantasy is thin, but it's thinner when you're wearing cybernetic implants the way some would wear ear muffs...




    So much information. Everything. He has learned everything about the Jedi and other Force users, but what has been happening to him since he got his implants was far worse. He could not shut off, he could not pick what he was to feel and what he was not to feel. Everything, everywhere travels through him and he’s a giant information feed. Never stopping to catch a breath. Absolutely helpless in terms of filtering out what he never wanted to see. There are times when he cannot tell his real voice from the synthetic one common to protocol droids, that usually accompanies the

    How to make it better? How to make it stop? This was not what he was hoping for. It’s not like he hoped for much, but he never wanted to become a living experiment, a frightening mashup of artificial intelligence and real, green flesh and scales. Through his large, buglike eyes, the picture was slowly becoming pixelated. What was real? And what was not?

    He has no answer to this question. Just like many other experiments, he had been stripped of his true self. He cannot speak without fearing the synthetic voice coming out of his mouth. He cannot blink without fearing that he will project something sinister to the privacy of his own personal space.

    “Is Tseebo a supercomputer?” He asks himself.

    Then, three pairs of eyes, one greener and brighter than the other two, almost as green as him, shines from the other corner of the hideout. Two stray younglings on the run play with a wounded tooka that they had managed to bring back from the brink of death. The small animal is purring, letting out an occasional “me-how”, but the static noise and the laser pews are making it so distant.

    There are times where he wishes for nothing but radio silence. He had heard that travelling through the funnels and threads of hyperspace, bending the space time was the most peaceful experience in the Universe, but he has not left Lothal before and he can’t imagine that he ever would get a chance to.

    And then, he suddenly knows what to do. Using the images from all possible holocams, everywhere, he manages to focus on what he really wants and then, he projects a fluffy tooka on his lap. He imagines petting it. He can hear the “me-haw” and “purr”, it’s almost like owning a real pet.

    “Tseebo is fine now.” He utters, to nobody in particular. “Tseebo loves his tooka, but fears that it will attack yours if they’re of the same sex. Please, forgive him!”

    The two confused younglings turn around, but they do not see what he sees. For it’s just a projection of some disc-shaped freighter. And what they have been looking at was some ship owned by the daughter of a Twi’lek revolutionary from Ryloth. Her name’s Hera Something. Hera… Syndilla?

    And it’s almost like the real world outside of their hideout, but not quite. Not quite.


     
  3. Ewok Poet

    Ewok Poet Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 31, 2014
    Another Day to Live, Another Night to Die

    Genre: Supernatural
    Characters: Padmé Amidala. Mentions of Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, C-3PO, R2-D2, the babies Luke and Leia, Bail Organa, Commodex Tahn, Ruwee Naberrie, Jobal Naberrie, Sola Naberrie, Pooja Naberrie, Boss Rugor Nass, Boss Lyonie, Jar Jar Binks, Yoda, Queen Apailana.
    Timeframe: Revenge of the Sith
    Rating: PG
    Summary: Padmé is alive for one more day, or so she thinks.

    A/N: Inspired by the movie After.Life directed by Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo and staring Liam Neeson and Christina Ricci; as well as the Atomic Kitten song Last Goodbye, and the Vanilla Ninja song Just Another Day to Live. Slightly inspired by John Frusciante's excellent Dying Song, as well. Lyrics and, in the first case, music video, in the spoiler.

    Doubles as another unofficial response to the Celtic Song Challenge, since I see that it fits the song, Death of Queen Jane, to a certain extent.


    (Lyrics)


    (Lyrics)


    (Damn, he's SO DORKISHLY CUTE, isn't he? [face_love] | Lyrics)




    What if that was the last day of my life?

    Every single thing about it is a blur, confusion.

    At first, it's Ani, his eyes sporting that yellow gleam of hate that I have never seen before…

    “You’re going down a path that I can no longer follow!”

    …and sudden feeling like I am being suffocated, then dark. Dark. Dark. I can no longer see.

    I don't know where I am and, other than hearing Obi-Wan and Threepio's voices, and occasional nervous, worried chirp of Artoo's, I cannot hear anything. Space is quiet, space is cold, but this sounds like much more than average cold and average silence. I am a frequent traveller; this is unlike anything I have ever experienced. My body seems to be getting heavier and lighter at the same time. How can such a thing be happening with artificial gravity inside of what almost certainly is a starship?

    Then it's all pain, enormous pain in the groin and the rounded, friendly eyes of a nanny droid and her warming pads on my thighs. Could it be that I am having my first child already, after this unpleasant experience? Is this warmth supposed to make for the pain of childbirth and the fact that something seems to be very wrong with my respiratory system, making every push feel like death proper?

    Like I have an idea of what death is...of course that I don’t.

    They come, first the boy that is so clearly the light and then the girl that may be appearing a little darker when it comes to her hair and eye colour, but she is like the light in the dark to me. I had a name for a boy and a name for a girl on my mind and I manage to utter them, despite the fact that I cannot breathe properly.

    And then, I say a couple of incoherent sentences and I feel like I stopped breathing for a moment. That is where confusion starts.

    I am on a starship again, breathing inside of what feels like a rustling, transparent conservation bag. Aren’t those used for corpses? I am not a corpse. I am not dead!

    Where are you taking me and why did you take my babies away? The shock of having had two and not one, experiencing not more than mere seconds of their powdery smell and soft skin and then, that blackout. And now I have no idea where I am, but I cannot move my hands and feet and I can no longer hear anybody familiar - my friends or my protocol droid.

    After a long silence, there is something familiar. The voice of my mother. Mom, I am alive. Alive. Alive. Can't you see me? Can't you feel it? I am right here!

    Has our connection weakened because I have spent most of life away from home? If somebody could open my heavy eyelids, I would be able to wink, blink or let you know that I am around in any possible way.

    They lock the top of the conservation bag open and allow her to see my face, but not my body. What is going on here? And why are they not telling her that she is now a grandmother to Luke and Leia?

    I can feel the presence of my father, too, and my sister. And then Bail Organa, who is suddenly around again, promises them to take my body to the mortician who would then prepare it for the funeral. Funeral? But I am alive!

    They talk, the man occasionally pointing to me and, at one point, poking my ribs. Bail Organa tells him that I died from a broken neck and tells him to be careful in that area. And then, I can hear rustling. Is he paying for this? Why aren’t my parents doing it from their bank account? Also, didn’t he have a wife? Why is she not here with him to teach him some good manners? You don’t pay for what is the family obligation.

    I would never badmouth him. I am just too scared for words. Now, if I could utter some and explain that...

    The mortician talks about the customs of our homeworld and explains that most bodies are cremated at the central unit here in Theed, the Livet Tower, and that the ashes are then disposed of and returned to the soil, through the water. I have always been aware of this, but right now, I’m terrified.

    Please, no Livet tower. Can't you see that I am alive? I do not want to end up as fish food in the Solleu River. I do not want to be burned and scream from a crematorium, with nobody being able to hear me from the crackling of the high-temperature flames.

    The man then suggests that, for “what they need to show”, I should be buried in a mausoleum, my body sealed shut in concrete and then the said tomb covered in works of the best of the planet’s artists.

    This being, whom Bail Organa addresses as Commodex Tahn, braids my hair and proceeds to take of my clothes and dress me up in a gown that must be somebody else's, two sizes too big. The next thing that he does is stick a large plastoid square underneath the dress and tie it to my waist.

    Am I supposed to be exhibited just for this purpose? Is this the only reason I am being buried and not cremated? And why does Master Tahn swallow lumps and claim that he was going to retire after this?

    Has Ani really gone that far? Would he come for my children if he knew that they were alive? Is that what this is about? Has he gone to the dark side for real? I thought that it had been my nightmare.

    Once again, Tahn confirms that I am indeed dead and that there is no pulse. Bail Organa makes this odd comment about how I look like I am alive. I am not sure if he is complimenting Tahn’s work or saying that I am a beautiful corpse.

    Then, somebody comms him. It’s my mother. Queen Apalaina insists on a state funeral and I never wanted that for myself. It’s a public event. And everything in my life was candid.

    On the giant viewscreen, they will be showing occasional candid holos of the crowd marching. At some point, there will be my parents, my sister and my little cousin looking down, so nobody would see her cry. And then, there will be sweet clumsy Jar Jar Binks, stepping on a stone and almost falling over bosses Lyonie and Nass next to him. He always had more limbs that his mind could handle operating.

    Speaking of that, I would trade one of my limbs for even his ears or tongue at any given time. Just so I could move any part of my body, to show them that I am here, alive and most certainly not being taken away to my resting place with unborn children in my womb. My Luke and Leia are alive, alive, alive. If only I knew where they took them to.

    Master Yoda and Obi-Wan will not be there, neither will be any of the Jedi. Does that have anything to do with the fire I saw coming from the temple on Coruscant, minutes before I took a shuttle and departed to Mustafar?

    And at this point, I am sure that I am dead. I am dying as a woman murdered by her husband, betrayed by the one I loved the most. And I am being buried without his last name on my death certiflimsi, assumed to having become pregnant from some sort of an illegitimate affair.

    But that’s not the worst thing about it. The worst thing is that there is no way back.

    This is death. I wish I could tell somebody, but everybody I love and know is still alive and I am not. I wish I could tell them that the short time it takes to pass from our world to the no-world is the strangest time they will ever encounter, as if the pain of death itself, especially if hypoxia was involved, was not great enough.

    You cannot move, you cannot breathe, you cannot let others know that you can still hear them, smell them and taste whatever embalming solution they put on you, know that they’re touching you. You cannot tell them that, if they open your eyes, you’re starring right into the very core of their soul, but you cannot to left and right, to see if a celestial being is sitting on their shoulder. You can only look ahead, into the instance that will, in a way, represent your future in the place where nothing is the end.

    Nothing ever is the end. When we leave this world, we are one with the Galaxy.

    That was the first night of my death.


     
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  4. Ewok Poet

    Ewok Poet Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 31, 2014
    P.S. Thank you so much for nominating Radiophonic Heart for the best one-shot, as well as nominating it, Chancellor and I, Before the Fall, After the Climb and the outside-of-this-thread Life, Death and Other Goals and The Brightest of the Stars (When Teebo Met Latara) as the best series, following the life of Anjie Mencuri. It's no secret that I am extremely fond of this character and that I always wanted to create one exactly like that, so this means a lot. He's my number one bad good boy and though he himself doesn't like competitions, I don't mind them, so I'm thanking you on his behalf.

    I won't tell you that another story conveniently follows them all, buuut another story conveniently follows them all and it won two awards last year. So, if you like Anjie aka Twig aka Sprout (he hates the latter name!) and you did not read A Rough Trade, go and give it a go. It's pretty short at this point, no worries. And he's a dad in it!

    Thank you, thank you, thank you. <3

    [​IMG]
     
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  5. RX_Sith

    RX_Sith Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Mar 13, 2006
    That was a very strange type of experience for Padmé as she sees what has become of her death and it reminds me of "Ghost" with Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg.
     
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  6. Findswoman

    Findswoman Fanfic and Pancakes and Waffles Mod (in Pink) star 5 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Feb 27, 2014
    Well, here you go again, crafting more stunningly beautiful and powerful vignettes. :D Color me awed—and please accept these long-overdue comments and thoughts:

    "Hell in His Head": I didn't know anything about the character of Tseebo at all and had to look him up on the Wook, but he sure is interesting, and sympathy-inspiring too, especially for the role he plays in Ezra's early life. He's kind of the GFFA version of the title character of Borges's "Funes the Memorious," only with a huge additional dose of guilt and regret thrown in—plus, Ireneo Funes at least knew for sure that all the stuff overloading his senses was actually real, while Tseebo's clearly not clear on that point. The tooka episode shows that in a very evocative way: Tseebo is at the point where he can project his own reality, at least piecemeal, when he desires—but that reality is a reality in which a tooka looks like the Ghost (if I'm reading that aright). This poor fellow—his head is full of all images and transmissions and data everywhere, and yet he is apparently mistaking a starship for a small fluffy animal (or vice versa—it's kind of both at once). The implant and its constant data stream have taken not only his personality but also his ability to just enjoy simple pleasures without people looking at him all weird—a loss perhaps just as big. :(

    “Another Day to Live, Another Night to Die”: Wow! This is one of the most powerful dead!Padmé stories I’ve come across. While you were working on it you described it as creepy, and it is, rather—reminds me of at least one dream I’ve had in the (by now) distant past about being dead and hovering outside my body watching it. It’s kind of a supernatural character study of sorts, of a character who may or may not be hovering in a gray area between life and death, half there in the casket, half hovering outside it watching herself (“watching you watching me”? ;) ) And what’s extra cool is that we get to see her experiencing the actual moment of transition from life to death—that seems to come at the moment when she realizes why the Jedi aren’t there and that, ultimately, it has to do with the fact that she is "dying as a woman murdered by her husband.” Of course, in a way, Padmé was in that gray area even when she was alive: the gray area between her public life and her secret marriage, between her love of Anakin and her fear for him. And yet, “nothing is ever the end.” In a way, she’s achieved the eternal life for which her husband (and his evil mentor) were questing so strenuously—almost without even trying. [face_thinking]

    One question: could you please explain where the hemiplegia comes in? I wasn’t quite sure.

    Bravissima once again on these two gems! =D=
     
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  7. Ewok Poet

    Ewok Poet Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 31, 2014
    Thanks for the comments, both of you. :)




    I didn't even think of that movie. It totally makes sense. :) Thanks for the comment.

    Thank you so, so, so much. <3

    I did not think about this connection, but it's spot-on. WOW.

    It looks like the Falcon, not Ghost, Ghost was a part of another hallucination and those two in the shelter with him remember it. Sorry if that didn't make sense.

    I am probably the only person in the world who never had that kind of a dream, but people told me a lot about it and I thought "why not?". And yes, supernatural character study is what it is and the experience itself lacks a mortician character that existed in the film the story was inspired by, but I think it's as effective as it could have been.

    YOU FOUND IT. She had to experience greyness, her whole existence was about duality, decoys and so on.

    And "nothing ever is the end", the way I wrote it, is what somebody said. Somebody who can be both wise and not-so-wise.

    She could appear hemiphlegic or even quadriplegic to somebody if they knew that she thinks she's alive, if that makes sense? Or maybe I wanted to use the word so, so badly because of this HAERTS song.

     
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  8. Ewok Poet

    Ewok Poet Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 31, 2014
    Breadcrumbs in the Starfield

    Genre: Romance
    Characters: Anjie Mencuri, Antonio Nokaarbe, Wompy, Dale Pavan, Shaban Sapphyra, Ranya Adma, Goldie the protocol droid. Mentions of unnamed female, Galah Jaywine and the Baobab Merchant Fleet
    Timeframe: Sometime in 5ABY
    Rating: PG-13 for swearing and some sexual context
    Summary: Anjie Mencuri, a former spice addict now back to regular life and his band, has a romantic interlude on Naboo. His wailer-group mates want him to forget the girl, they even set him up with somebody, but the hearts don't work that way...

    A/N: This is a chapter from an upcoming epic (won't be posted before next year) which fits like a glove to the quote I got in the Disney Animated Movie Quote Challenge.

    "You know that place between sleep and awake? That place where you still remember dreaming? That's where I'll always love you...That's where I'll be waiting." - Peter Pan.




    “She’s got a very powerful tooka, my comrade.” An unpleasant, quasi-seductive baritone echoed through a small space. “If she can lift a couple of tons like this. Get it?

    Anjie sighed and shook his head. He wasn’t sure what was more disgusting – his wailer-mate’s newest comparison of a machine to a female body part, or the ironic tone in the word “comrade”.

    “Wait, isn’t this ship called Tooka, too?”

    “It’s Whisperkit, my dear comrade. Whisperkit.”

    Less than two hours after they took off from Keren, Whisperkit – if that was really its name – was captured in the tractor beam of the Sionnma on the edge of the Chromell sector. The stay on the quetarra player’s home planet was cut short, much to his dismay. He had planned a couple of more visits to his place by the Solleu River and some more tests of the will. He was not quite himself, the one he had imagined he should have been, not yet.

    But Steamy Wasaka Stew’s producer, Shaban Sapphyra, would not have had any of that. Younger than he looked, more ambitious than some of the feared upon military leaders, he wanted the newly-reformed group to join him at his decommissioned Clone Wars starship-turned-music-production-studio.

    Anjie remembered his first experience at this place eight years earlier very well. He was still a fresh face in the wailer-group, only twenty-one years old, looking no older than fifteen. There had been dancers hired to entertain them, likely bought straight from the slave drivers of the faraway sectors, and they would leave them on whatever planet when they would get bored with them, then pick some new ones. There was a time when he was spending the whole night in nothing but a tesh-tunic after such encounters, crafting the kind of melodies that seemed to be fitting enough for Antonio’s debauchery-charged outpourings.

    Sure, there were some actual gems, such as the deeply sincere “Underlevels” dealing with the singer’s occasional deathstick spells while the band lived on the Imperial Centre in-between the albums, as well as the almost anti-establishment protest chant titled “Stand Up”, but most of it was coming from a place that he himself could not identify with unless he was being it. This time, he felt, it was going to be different. He was a recovering spice addict and he did not want to cross the line.

    Once they were in the docking bay and the doors had closed behind the runabout as if the starfield was no more, Dale Pavan and Wompy ran to greet them.

    "So, how was Naboo?" Wompy asked, winking at the men. Anjie just shrugged, his two-day beard barely hiding a dissatisfied pout and let his companion speak instead.

    "Sexy, as usual" Antonio, who piloted the small vehicle, winked back to his childhood best friend. "Is Shaban here?" He threw the pilot jacket to the jet black protocol droid, who appeared to be of female programming. “You’re looking golden today, Goldie…”

    "Yes, Master Nokaarbe!” The droid responded, ignoring what might as well have been advances. “Master Sapphyra is here and ready to start. He has some work to do on Bespin later, so he opted to record with us in space, on our way there."

    Shaban Sapphyra was waiting on a large couch with gigantic horns used as arm rests in an improvised control room, in the middle of the circular ship, with a protocol droid by his side. His face lit up upon seeing whom Antonio brought with him.

    "Little Goldmine, is that you? I cannot believe it!” He clapped his hands. “When Wompy told me that you had somebody to replace Sassvar, the last person I could think of was you! And wow, you look…different. What did you do to your hair?"

    “Master Sapphyra?” The protocol droid asked.

    No answer. Anjie looked down and made a step closer to Wompy and Dale, away from Shaban and Antonio.

    “Master Sapphyra?” The protocol droid asked again.

    "How about you don't call him like that, Shabs?" The grey bear of a man pointed at the holorecord producer and then hugged the scrawny one. “He’s our little brother, our Anjie!”

    "Relax, Pavan. He brought the three of you - as well as me - where you are and that's my way of telling him thank you. I remember you calling him Sprout back in the good old days, but he's golden. So, where have you been since I last saw you around the time of the Battle of Yavin, young Mencuri?"

    Anjie was bemused. He did not remember when he last saw Shaban Sapphyra, but the producer seemed to be blissfully unaware of what was happening in the meantime, hence calling him "young". Even if his near-death experiences had never happened, he would have been twenty-nine. And Shabs himself was not much older than his wailer-mates.

    “I was in another life, Sapphyra.” A sour grin flashed upon the freckled face. “Did you find anything for me? I only have one quetarra and it’s not a sonic one.”

    “True.” Antonio said. “He played some of his own songs in Keren on that particular fascinating instrument. I heard it was quite a memorable experience.”

    “I thought you had gone to see him?” Wompy was surprised.

    Shaban gestured to the protocol droid again. She brought a large quetarra case and presented it to Anjie. The black glove-clad hands were shaking. Once he managed to open the case, his smile changed to a genuine, broad one. The producer patted him on the shoulder.

    "See how we can easily improve your mood? Had I realised it was for you, I would have searched even harder. But yes, this is a genuine arboray wood quetarra from the days of the Ruusan reformation! When Antonio relayed the request to me, I sort of...sort of wondered if you were alive. But I thought it was just wishful thinking on my part. Now, what do you need it for? What are we going to record?"

    Anjie’s facial expression changed from a sourpuss one to a broad smile.

    “Antonio w-w-worked on something while visiting me on Naboo. He’s got some new lyrics about how much he likes Coronet. And I had an idea for the melody and I need it to sound more ethereal. As if was bouncing against clouds!" Anjie waved his arms in the air, making movements that the other four didn’t know how to interpret. “You know, like this! Like you’re not quite born yet and you are floating in the wastelands of intergalactic space.”

    Shaban Sapphyra's starship was a bordello-turned-recording studio and he would not work with just any band. And it was SexySpiceStarSinners, SWS’ breakthrough album that somehow managed not to be banned by the Imperial Board of Culture, that brought him fame and fortune. Suddenly, everybody wanted to work with him and he eventually made it big in the cruel word of mass-consumption of art.

    Anjie stroked the neck of his new quetarra. At this point, it had been about two years since he last received a royalty cheque from Corellia, as all transactions from the Core Worlds were blocked after the Battle of Yavin. It was one of those desperate measures that the Galactic Empire had taken against the Rebels and he was not aware of it until he was transported to Naboo with other addicts captured during the raid on Abatore’s spice-addled underground.

    Yes, this beautiful instrument was going to bring him joy. But it also had to bring him credits. He was sure not going to live in Antonio’s pantry once they return to Corellia, or something like that! Therefore, this had to be a rough trade, the one where he had to learn that he could not always have it his way. Could beautiful music ever be created when one has to be motivated by those, well, existential questions?

    …​

    Five days into the recording process, still getting used to how his fingers were working now and tasked with layering a couple of quetarra tracks over Dale and Wompy’s deliciously Duros-like beats, Anjie stopped worrying about the finances and let himself go. His preoccupation, however, switched to romantic matters again. Before he knew it, he was beating the living kriff out of his precious instrument and dancing around the chamber the three instrumentalists were playing in, clearly not following the beat, complete with strange vocalisations.

    "What's wrong, pal?" Bulky Dale asked his fellow wailer and smiled.

    "Everything is fine. Don't you like this solo?"

    "I remember you saying that you were not going to solo on the comeback album at all, because you're currently not into that thing. You said that the other day. And you have just beaten the poodoo out of that poor antique quetarra!"

    The musician stubbornly kicked the sonic-amp. "I like to change. Constantly. I get bored with things."

    "Can't fool me, Sprout.” Dale shook his head and winked, as Wompy reached out to his friend’s boney shoulders to hug him. “Something happened when you and Antonio were on Naboo."

    "W-w-what did he tell you?" Anjie almost dropped his quetarra.

    “You can imagine.” Wompy pouted and hugged Anjie tighter. The Tralusian loved his, as he often said, “wayward little brother”.

    "The usual thing – his Human partner, his Gungan partner, his sentient tree partner and what they were like in bed, or wherever." Dale stopped to look at Anjie's terrified expression. "Okay, I'm messing with you, they were all Human. Nine of them, two per day, apart on the wedding day, when, he said, there were no single women in sight left, apart from a 'wicked witch'. One just has to thank the Force for every female that rejects him; otherwise there would be a lot of children looking suspiciously like him, on multiple planets. He also said she was ugly."

    Anjie raised his voice and turned away from the two. "Ugly? That shameless, bitter kriffslider…demonizing women just because they reject him! She…she was incredibly beautiful."

    Dale clapped his hands.

    "So, that is what happened? You too got some at that wedding!"

    "No. I got a slap upside my face at the end of our date."

    "What? Did you touch her...stormie helmets or something?" Wompy cocked his head.

    "No. I told her that life will point me to her if it wants to. It's the will of the universe, Con."

    The bassoonist was puzzled.

    "Am I really talking to the same man who bedded Galah Jaywine, the woman whom even heterosexual women seemed to want?"

    "The man did not bed Galah. She attempted to bed him and it didn’t work. The man you see right now, however..."

    "...is stupid, Sprout. How do you think that woman will find you among trillions of beings?" Dale was shuffling his batons behind his back. Sometimes, he could not understand Anjie, though he grew fond of him over the years.

    "Breadcrumbs in the starfield."

    "What?"

    "Never mind. Can you promise me something, Dandelion?"

    "Sure…I think?!"

    "Do not call me 'Sprout' ever again! Sprout was a silly boy who almost paid with his life."

    "But you called me D..."

    "And that is your birth name, right?"

    “Right.” Dale said and went back to his drum kit. He changed the beat to fit the melody and soon, the song was starting to take shape. The musicians knew that they had a hit long before they even showed the instrumental to Antonio, who then came up with the lyrics, naming it “Lost Girls”, much to Anjie’s horror.

    But it was impossible to keep a secret on Sionnma and he knew that.

    …​

    The planned stop in the Anoat Sector was welcome. Shaban Sapphyra had some unfinished business to do with a group of bar performers in Cloud City on Bespin and he invited the wailer-group to join him for a weekend of gambling and partying.

    Anjie initially refused to get out of his room, where he had been thinking of ideas on how to improve his “Solleu Ashes” further. Of course, that was not entirely possible with his wailer-mates checking on him nearly every hour.

    “You’ve got to forget this girl, whoever she is.” Antonio told him. “We’re heading to a party and I’m sure that you can find yourself a new bedwarmer.”

    That is how they used to call women back then. And it used to be normal. But right now, it sounded like the noise of a particularly old speeder prior to taking off. There was something wrong about it.

    But a party? Why not?

    A couple of hours later, the foursome was at a sabacc table, surrounded by slythmongers, gamblers and beautiful women. Most of the latter seemed to be interested in Antonio, but there was one up-and-coming actress, Ranya Adma, who seemed to have taken a liking for Anjie. And the two of them were the only people at the table who were not interested in the game, each for a different reason.

    At some point, Ranya subtly stepped on Anjie’s foot underneath the table. He smiled.

    “Let’s get out of here.” She said. “My speeder is outside.”

    How was he doing this in the past? Did he ever say no? Perhaps this was the time to determine if he was still capable of functioning like a proper man in the first place. He shrugged and followed Ranya, with Antonio glancing at him from behind his two new mistress’ facades and a pair of cards, vaguely pleased. Dale and Wompy were too busy with the game to see what was going on.

    Ranya’s speeder was docked in a secluded area and soon, the two were alone, with the seats down. The young actress raised her leg on the cockpit and slowly moved towards Anjie. After a couple of smiles, they started making out.

    "My most recent kiss turned out weird. By the Force, you can kiss, Ranya."

    "You are, like…really beautiful." She continued slowly teasing the wailer. "Nothing like that friend of yours who kept on trying, and was trying too hard. He's sexy, but you seem so innocent in a weird way. As if you had been given the soul of a youngling again. And there is a reason the two of you used to be known as Lady Poison back in the days...the no-nonsense one and the Naboo charmeur one." She breathed in-between kisses on his neck.

    "Tee-hee, thank you. But…wait.” He remembered something. Aren’t-aren't you Galah's friend? You were at that holofilm premiere two months ago!"

    "I am…she told me you broke up and that I can have you, if I want to. And that maybe, just maybe, you are now ready for a woman.”

    She proceeded to undo the buttons on his shirt.

    "Nice build...for a spice recoveree. Thin and somewhat muscular."

    "I need to put on some more weight."

    "I bet you got the meat where it counts…but before it, there is nothing that makes me go nova more than a nice pair of arms to hold me."

    "I have change my mind, sorry." Anjie pushed her away.

    Galah had warned Ranya about this particular issue. But she didn't listen.

    "Look, Mencuri, I heard certain rumours about your cybernetics. I just got carried away. You can keep all of your clothes on, if that's a problem. I will gladly take mine off, you are in absolute need for some stormie helmet therapy." She removed her tunic. "Galah's were nothing but youngling hall role-play helmets. Or wait, do you prefer nice legs?"

    Anjie just sat there, looking at the actress reaching for her skirt. He may have wanted to spend the night. But not with her. Not with Galah, either. The need for human touch was slowly coming back, but there was a point it transcended far beyond the shallow waters of carnal pleasures.

    "Maybe I need to be in love, after all." He turned away, hoping that she would get dressed. "My body is betraying my mind. My mind is betraying my body."

    "Did you subscribe to some freaky cult or something?" A bare-breasted Ranya grabbed him by the cheeks and turned his head around. “Doesn’t this excite you?”

    "No. I just changed my mind. I am sorry if I led you on."

    She finally tied her tunic again. "Just…just what kind of a man are you?"

    "Broken." He said, quietly.

    Ranya looked on, as Anjie buttoned up his shirt, got up and jumped off her speeder. She was bitter. He was an ideal combination of two of her fantasies. She knew that she had to look for another chance to experience a man with cybernetics or a famous wailer between the sheets.

    Preferably one that was not broken.

    "Know that there is an ice planet nearby? Well, it's warmer than your alleged Star Destroyer!" She yelled behind him. Seconds later, she undocked the speeder and drove away.

    It was only when she was gone that Anjie felt calm. He sat down and looked in the direction of Tibannopolis. He didn't know much about Bespin, but the idea of an abandoned town populated solely by oddlings feeding on pure gas was strangely beautiful to him. Perhaps there were hermits, like the kind that he sometimes fantasized about being.

    His eyes were fixed to the strange clouds in the sky, above and below him. They would collide and then they would move further and further from one another. And not go back until it was too late. At that point, the pinkish, sugary hues were turning into black, translucent ones.

    “Night already?” he said to himself.

    Was the day too short or were his dilemmas multiplying beyond the edge or what was possible? He shrugged, took one last glance at Tibannopolis, got up and walked back to Amici’s to find his mates. They were waiting for him and his facial expression did not seem to be what they were expecting.

    “Was she good?” Antonio nudged the thin quetarra player with the elbow. As usual, the initial answer was a sheepish smile. “Baychihuahua, as the Ewoks would say!”

    “I think they say ee-chaa wa maa!” Anjie’s eyes suddenly grew solemn.

    “Whatever, I can make my shtick more unique than theirs. So, blast it out, Naboo Charmeur, did your superlaser hit anything?”

    “No.” Anjie turned his head away. “I told her that I didn’t want to kriff her and I left.”

    Antonio raised one of his hands high up in the air, his head, resembling a very deranged letter Cresh. “What? I had respect for that exquisite pair of stormies. I did not even break her in for you, like we used to do back in the good old times. And you just…didn’t kriff her?” He then crossed his arms. “Perhaps the rumours really are true and you’re not Anjie Mencuri, but some random male handmaiden who looks like him.”

    “Those good old times, they were not good for me.” A muffled interruption came.
    “And they are not old enough yet, either.”

    “So, you’re going to go for the Wicked Witch?” Wompy scratched his head.

    “Yes. And she is not a wicked witch. Her name is...” Anjie felt like his heart had just skipped a beat. It was the first time that he had said that name out loud.

    Dale, who had kept quiet until then, joined in. “But how?”

    “I told you already. Breadcrumbs in the starfield. She’s on Roon and we’re all over the Outer Rim, anyway.”

    “Roon, the never-Imperial independent system controlled by the Baobab Merchant Fleet?” Wompy asked again, forgetting that Anjie usually had no idea about such things.

    “If there’s no other Roon, then yes.”

    Antonio was slightly upset. “That is ridiculous. We have contractual obligations all over the Outer and Mid Rim and you can’t possibly make a kriffstop in the Abrion Sector. You were doing this sort of stuff with Mady. You were the slave to that woman. Stick to our deal."

    There was no “deal” to speak of. Moreover, Anjie wanted to protest upon hearing the word "kriffstop", but he stopped himself. He was so close to one such encounter the night before. And it seemed so unnatural. Should he just forget it? Yes, what happens on Bespin stays on Bespin, but how about the things that don’t happen in the first place? This planet was so strange, yet everybody had been raving about it, all the time. And he was sure – such gas giants of this size were nothing but failed stars, after all.

    ...​
    Once back in his quarters on the Sionmma, he took out a stylus and a piece of paper he clumsily made himself in the occupation therapy weeks before the wedding of whatshisname and whatshername. He attempted to draw the abandoned city in the distance, but the lines were taking him elsewhere, taking the shapes of something else. A face not quite resembling his own, staring at an abstract shape, resembling a starfield. And then came the words.

    "Lost are the stars that never became
    Doomed are the cities looming, that never really died.

    I had no strength, I had too much will,
    Was I scared? Or did I just lie?

    Where is the light?
    What is the night?
    Did I really begin?"

    He wanted to write about his breadcrumbs in the starfield. About the girl whose name he begged himself to forget and which he would likely avoid in an actual conversation; and her innocent eyes, perhaps too innocent for what used to be his taste. But what he got was something else, she was the Corporate Sector to his Wild Space, or so it seemed. Even then, the usual happened. Again. Each time he tried to write a song about somebody else, it became a song about him.

    Perhaps this was his biggest failure. Not being able to see the others as what they were. He was going to ponder on it. At some point. But first, the melody he had on his mind for this mess of words, was going to materialise in the space below his nimble fingers.

    And everything else was secondary to that.

    "You know that place between sleep and awake? That place where you still remember dreaming? That's where I'll always love you...That's where I'll be waiting."




    Footnotes
    Tesh-tunic - T-shirt equivalent. Fanon.

    A sonic-amp would be an equivalent of a real amplifier. Fanon.

    Stormie helmets - Slang for women's breasts. Fanon.

    Tibannopolis is a former city on Bespin, a bunch of floating junk by the time of the Revenge of the Sith.

    The "oddlings feeding on pure gas" are the Tibannucks.

    Amici's is an entertainment venue in Cloud City.
     
  9. Pandora

    Pandora Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Apr 13, 2005
    Another Day to Live, Another Night to Die:

    This is definitely one of the most interesting stories about Padmé, alive or dead, that I have read. I don't think I have ever seen anything else quite like it--and you could say that it is the 180 degree opposite of all those 2005 era stories where Vader was angsting at her grave. There she was made into a beautiful object, both for her people and for her husband, and here, she speaks as the consciousness--or the soul, call it what you will--trapped inside of that object. And where she has gone, she has been stripped down to just her basic self. Her lifetime of secrecy, of double selves and decoys (I think one could argue that the only time she was shown as truly herself in the movies was in that holo of her as a child with the refugee children--and that was in a cut scene), is not even a shadow here. She is no longer a senator, or the goddess of a girl-queen, or a wife to a forbidden husband.

    She is also truly alone, for what must be the first time in her existence--as Donnie Darko said, and I haven't seen anything to contradict it, everyone dies alone. She is going where the people behind her cannot go, and therefore, she cannot share with she knows with them. In this world, death itself is not only the end, it is a journey, and one that she has only just begun, as the closing line makes clear.

    And once again, as in your other story "Drops of Mustafar," you don't hold any punches about Anakin's responsibility in her death--when Padmé accepts her new state, she acknowledges that she is "a woman murdered by her husband." One other thing that her death has stripped from her are her illusions.

    Thanks for sharing this with the challenge!
     
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  10. Findswoman

    Findswoman Fanfic and Pancakes and Waffles Mod (in Pink) star 5 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Feb 27, 2014
    Breadcrumbs in the Starfield

    Hooray, new Anjie story! [face_dancing] And once again, to his bandmates' absolute chagrin, he is engaging in BAFW (Behavior Atypical for a Wailer). Not being willing to bed EVERY SINGLE female being who offers herself to him? Shock and horror! :eek: And it clearly shocks Ranya, too, who is probably genuinely confused about his refusal to go all the way with her. But the interesting thing is, this isn't mere prudishness on Anjie's part (not that that's an unqualifiedly bad thing, but you know what I mean), nor is it simply self-consciousness about his arm cybernetics (Ranya is actually very accommodating about that, though I realize that stems largely from her own desperate desire to be bedded RIGHT HERE AND RIGHT NOW—plus OMG the exotic experience of doing it with a man with cybernetics). It's in the course of spooning with Ranya Anjie comes to realize that he does need love, does need companionship and closeness—and it's precisely because he needs those things that he turns her down in the end. It's because he sees her brand of canoodling will not bring him those things—whereas that brief conversation with "that girl" at the wedding (and I know who she is...) most certainly did. As quirky as Anjie is, he's by no means dumb; certainly he can tell that Ranya wants him just because he's a rockstar and a "man with cybernetics," and that she's not "seeing him as he really is."

    So he perhaps shouldn't sell himself short at the end there—he's not so bad at seeing people as they really are, or he wasn't bad at seeing that person for what she really was. Now, with the woman at the wedding, who won't go out of his mind and who is becoming the subject of his songs whether he likes it or not—I could see where his process of getting to seeing her as she really is might take longer. It tends to when it's someone we really care about, who cares about us. You generally have to follow a whole lot of breadcrumbs through the starfield before you reach the bright center of the universe. But the effort, as he'll no doubt find, is worth it. [face_love]

    (By the way: "breadcrumbs in the starfield" seems very akin to Galen's nickname for Jyn, "stardust." Should I be looking for a parallel or two? ;) )

    Wonderful preview of your forthcoming epic and a great challenge response—it really does fit well! Thanks for sharing! =D=
     
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  11. Ewok Poet

    Ewok Poet Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 31, 2014
    Thank you. :) I tried!

    That was my intention. Not a Snow White that bit the poison apple, shown there to be admired while nobody knows her secrets; but a real person, "Truth and Bone" as per that Heather Nova song. I didn't see the cut scene, but now I must look for it.

    I have nothing else to say to this, but "yes".


    Of course - one cannot make him blameless here, it's impossible. But getting into his frame of mind, at least a little bit, IS possible.

    And you're welcome, it was a pleasure. :)

    IMAGINE HOW MUCH IT SHOCKED ANTONIO, THE ARCHETYPAL FRONTBEING OF A WAILER-GROUP!11!!


    He's definitely not a prude. Can't turn into one overnight, but yeah, he just realised how much he had changed, through this particular experience. No more quick kriffs, no more one-night-stands. Just doesn't work anymore.

    Self-consciousness definitely IS a thing here, the moment he realises that she's fetishizing him, more or less.

    And yup - she'd do ANYTHING at this point.

    The spooning moment, I'm pretty sure that I saw it in some famous film, where a man out of jail pays a prostitute only so she could lie next to him.

    And that bolded thing is precisely why A Stranger in Someone Else's Dream is, well, not real. That said, boy, am I glad that I'm six months late with comment replies here - it's deeper with that new short being, well, a thing now. :D

    I can do nothing but [face_whistling]...but... YES! :)

    I wrote the chapter before I saw Rogue One, so it's a coincidence. But a good one! :)

    And thank YOU for reading!
     
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  12. Ewok Poet

    Ewok Poet Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 31, 2014
    You See Me As a Bed of Nails

    Genre: Poetry
    Characters: An unnamed female narrator writes to Anjie Mencuri
    Timeframe: Sometime in 10 ABY
    Rating: Not sure, given the title
    Summary: Somebody loves Anjie. And can't stand him. But loves him.

    A/N: This is my response to the OTP Quotes challenge.

    The quotes I got are under the spoiler:

    20. "You have a big brain, a good heart, and an ego the size of Montana." (Abbey Bartlet from The West Wing)

    27. "Another used to say: When love was strong, we could have made our bed on a sword-blade; now that our love has grown weak, a bed of sixty [cubits] is not large enough for us." (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin, 7a)




    You see Me As a Bed of Nails

    Let me rock you in the stars,
    Let me be what you always wished somebody to be
    But you never had.

    Let me heal all your scars,
    Let me be what you always dreamed somebody to be
    But they never did.

    You see me as a bed of nails,
    I see you as the dead-end of the valley.
    You see me as a darkest shadow,
    I see you as the light at the very end.

    Won't you please, jump and come down,
    The world is less scary than you think.

    Won't you please, throw away your crown,
    Somewhere out there, there's a happy wink.
     
  13. Findswoman

    Findswoman Fanfic and Pancakes and Waffles Mod (in Pink) star 5 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Feb 27, 2014
    Oh wow, this is so neat—such a unique and unexpected take on the two prompt quotes! Hoping I understand this correctly: from the way the narrator asks Anjie to come down from the sky and take the crown off, it looks like Anjie is suffering from a bit of an "ego as big as Montana” at this point in his life. But the narrator also tells us that Anjie’s “up in the sky” because of fear: “the world is less scary than you think.” A good thing for us all to remember when the going gets tough!

    And then there’s the way the two view each other. The image of the narrator herself as a “bed of nails” is a very interesting one and seems like it could go a couple different ways. In the Talmudic quote, being able to “make a bed on a sword-blade” reflects a love that is fierce and passionate and ignites at the drop of a hat—but it can also be a source of great pain, and perhaps that’s part of Anjie’s reluctance. (Anjie may be afraid of gaining more scars besides the ones he already has—and I know how those fit in to his story.) Similarly, Anjie sees the narrator as someone dark, shadowy, and uncertain, but to the narrator he’s a glimmer of hope after a long period of darkness. (And yes, that fits with what I know about another character of yours;) )

    So perhaps they will meet halfway (another motif that has come up once or twice in the romances in your oeuvre). Of course, Anjie will need to “jump down” first—and it may take some time before he’s ready to. But once he does, the happiest of winks will be waiting for him. <3

    A wonderfully different addition to the Anjie saga—thanks so much for sharing! =D=
     
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  14. mavjade

    mavjade Former Manager star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Sep 10, 2005
    What a lovely and creative way to use those prompts!

    The contrast between lines in the third stanza was fantastic: darkest shadow, light at the end. Bed of nails, the end of a valley. This contrast really gave the impression of a give and pull between feelings.

    But the lines that really spoke to me were:
    Won't you please, jump and come down,
    The world is less scary than you think.


    The idea of a leap of faith and just giving it a try, that things aren't as bad as they might seem. It's very uplifting and quite moving.

    Beautiful! @};-
     
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  15. divapilot

    divapilot Force Ghost star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 30, 2005
    "Breadcrumbs in the Starfield"

    Anjie is at the end of one part of his life and the beginning of another. Here he is a more mature, older, sadder and wiser Anjie. He’s back with the boys, but as much as they want to recreate the decadent old days, Anjie isn’t going back. He asserts himself as much, telling Shaban not to call him “Little Goldmine” and telling Dale to never call him “Sprout” again. He won’t let them define him anymore.

    The music is the constant for him, the one thing he can turn back to and trust that it will be there for him. Even so, it’s at a crossroads, too:
    “Yes, this beautiful instrument was going to bring him joy. But it also had to bring him credits. He was sure not going to live in Antonio’s pantry once they return to Corellia, or something like that! Therefore, this had to be a rough trade, the one where he had to learn that he could not always have it his way. Could beautiful music ever be created when one has to be motivated by those, well, existential questions?”
    It seems so many things are a “rough trade” for Anjie.

    Then there is the issue of the women.
    He is still very much connected to the memory of the woman from his past. So much so that he rejects Ranya, who is very, very eager to bed him right there in the speeder. As it turns out, she was looking for a conquest, to sleep with a rock star, and she gives him half-compliments as she goes about it (“Nice build...for a spice recoveree."). Then we find out her motivations:
    "She was bitter. He was an ideal combination of two of her fantasies. She knew that she had to look for another chance to experience a man with cybernetics or a famous wailer between the sheets.

    Preferably one that was not broken."


    Ranya is not interested in his personal struggles or what made Anjie the kind of man he is. And she has no patience for a man who is broken. All she wants, just like nearly everyone Anjie has ever met, is for Anjie to fulfill her fantasies so that she can use him up. That’s what Antonio has been doing with the hundreds of women he’s bedded, to the point that he literally leaves them behind on planets when they no longer amuse him. Anjie wants something more out of life, and something more out of love.
    Anjie is at the start of a new life. He’s struggling to figure out just what that life will be. Continue with his wailer-mates, their life of debauchery and luxury? But then he is slave to the corporations and their insatiable need for profit, and he becomes a commodity to be consumed. Try to redefine himself? He was trying to do that on Naboo, since he stated that “he was not quite himself, the one he had imagined he should have been, not yet.”

    He’s looking forward- looking for that woman, the one in the starfield, and hoping that she will find him. He’s waiting for the person who will balance him out. Your use of the Peter Pan quote captures that wistful, hopeful belief he has that they will meet, they will find each other. And he will finally have the selfless love that he has wanted all along.


    Another thoughtful piece about the most interesting OC on the boards. =D=
     
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  16. WarmNyota_SweetAyesha

    WarmNyota_SweetAyesha Chosen One star 8

    Registered:
    Aug 31, 2004
    Ewok Poet -- I think this is one of the most insightful gorgeous character pieces on Mara I've ever read!! =D= =D= You got inside her soul and heart and turned it into poetry! The second person POV just makes it that much richer. :) [:D]
     
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  17. Ewok Poet

    Ewok Poet Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 31, 2014
    Some Suave Dance Chop(pper)s

    Genre: Humour/Crack!fic
    Characters: Ezra Bridger, Chopper, Garazeb "Zeb" Orrelios
    Timeframe: 4 BBY
    Rating: G
    Summary: Ezra thinks he's having a trouble-free day. But Chopper's got a sinister trick up his dome...

    A/N: Raissa Baiard posted a bizarre photo on her Facebook profile. I then had a wacky idea. And yeah, this is the first story I've actually written since May (the DDC was finished in April, so was Convor's Song) and the first time I'm writing the Specters, so be nice, ktnxbai.

    Many, many thanks to everybody who helped me and motivated me through these hard times and what's so far been the worst year of my entire life - you are all wonderful.




    Ezra Bridger was somewhat enjoying the time on his own. Sabine, Kanan and Hera were on a supply run and Zeb was doing some repairs elsewhere on the Ghost. His memories were not bothering him, neither was his ever-so recurring unrequited crush on Sabine. It was a good day, for a change. And nothing was going to spoil it for him. He was going to sit in the cabin and indulge in some kiddie vices – a not-so-healthy helping of sugar and gossip in the worn-out copy of “Juicy Blabber” that he had discretely snatched from Hera’s side table.

    Just as he was about to munch on a large chunk of chocolate, he heard the familiar, angry chirp.

    Not him again! Anything, but that! He was determined to ignore the resident troublemaker number one. Sometimes, he was positive that Chopper was more annoying than all of the Loth-cats in heat, together.

    The droid entered the room and tried to get the teenager’s attention, almost immediately.

    “Bwop-bwop?”

    Ezra stuck up his nose. “Yeah, whatever, Chopper. I know that you hate everybody…nothing new! Move on!”

    “B-WOPPP!” The droid protested and spun in circles before him. He reached to the newsflimsi in Ezra’s right hand, but the little Loth-rat hid it behind his back.

    “You’re not allowed to say that on HoloNet, didn’t you know?” Ezra was completely sure that he could tell the b-wops from one another by now. Either way, he was not going to give the astromech the time of the day.

    Just then, a tiny top hat emerged from Chopper’s dome. The beat-up astromech raised it above, holding it in its shaky claw and broke out in a song.

    “Hello, my baby,
    Hello, my honey,
    Hello, my Lothal gal!

    Send me a kiss thru hyperspace,
    Baby, my heart's gonna podrace.”

    Ezra nearly choked himself on his ANGRY MACE™ all-sprinkles-no-cocoa chocolate product. Was Chopper singing the song that he vaguely remembered from his early days? In a bass-baritone that could easily outmatch the gruffest of the gruff resident of this very spaceship – and we all know who that would be, thank you very much. WHAT IN THE FORCE WAS GOING ON HERE?

    “K…a…r…a…bast!” he barely managed to utter. At this point, he did not care whether you could say THAT on HoloNet or not. “Chopper, what did you just do?”

    “If you refuse me,
    Honey, you lose me,
    Then you'll be
    Floating in space.

    Oh baby, comm me,
    And tell me that
    You love me!”

    Yes, it happened again. By this point, it was worth a whole starfield of karabasts, kriffs, borks and karks. Ezra was starting to doubt his own sanity. He stuffed the chocolate product into his mouth, swallowed it together with its wrapping sporting a holo of a menacing bald man, and ran to the common room.

    Luckily, by then, Zeb was already done with work and was now enjoying a cup of caf. Seeing Ezra run to him like a herd of crazed nerfs, he nearly choked on his beverage. T-t-t-that kid!

    “What is going on? Why are you interrupting me?” He got up, his arms on his hips. “I told you to never EVER disturb me when I'm enjoying my hot caf!”

    “But, but Zeb, this is critical! Critical beyond all possible beyondness!” Ezra was flapping his arms by now. The Lasat raised an eyebrow ridge and put his best “yes, I’m judging you” face. “You have to see this! CHOPPER IS SINGING ‘My Lothal Gal’…that old ditty by Barefoot Band!”

    Zeb gave Ezra a blank stare. After a couple of seconds of silence, he burst into laughter, nearly snorting in the boy’s face.

    “Yes, right. And the next thing you’ll tell me is that this very cafmaker is in love with him.” The Lasat pointed to the appliance in front of him. “The odds to that are equivalent to surviving a…”

    “Look, Zeb.” Ezra attempted to pull himself together, as he leaned against the nearby arch. “I’m not telling you the odds or anything like that, I’m one-hundred percent sure of it. Come on, take a look!”

    Ezra pulled Zeb by hand and led him back to their cabin. Chopper was standing by the bunks.

    “Look!” he pointed to the astromech. “Chopper, show him what you just showed me!”

    “B-wop?”

    “Chopper, come on! ‘My heart’s gonna podrace…’”

    “B…wop.”

    “Dance and sing for Zeb like you did for me!” Ezra was getting desperate.

    “Bwop-bwop!”

    Zeb pulled out a large holo of a cracked pot and pointed it to Ezra. The teenager did not take that well.

    “I am telling you, Zeb! He’s fooling us! He sung that song to me. He just…he just doesn’t want to repeat it for you.”

    Zeb angrily stormed out of the room. The moment the sound of his footsteps vanished, Chopper gave Ezra a quick blip and begun singing again, with the top hat spinning above his dome.

    “I’m just Zeltron about Pojee…
    And Pojee's nerfy about me…”

    That was too much for Ezra to take. Forget peace, forget serenity, forget knowledge! He was not able to keep cool and he literally launched himself out of the cabin, straight to the fresher. Zeb could only hear him scream from under the sanistream.

    The Lasat shrugged, scratched his head and headed back to his seat. Whatever was going through Ezra’s head, would have passed by the next standard day or so. Humans’ puberty was still beyond his understanding, though he could recall that Sabine was only putting up posters of various wailers on her walls. Perhaps it was worse for the boys?

    “Astromech droids singing an old jizz standard…yeah, right.” He sat down and sighed.

    “Hi there, hot stuff.” Somebody whispered from right behind him.

    Zeb turned around. There was nobody around, just his beloved caf maker.

    “I said, hi there, hot stuff!”

    “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”




    Footnotes
    Evie the caf maker had previously appeared in two of Raissa Baiard's stories: Not Your Mother's Life Day and A Steamy Romance.

    Chopper's behaviour in this story was obviously inspired by that of the Warner Bros' cartoon character Michigan J. Frog and the songs he sings are the GFFA versions of Hello! Ma Baby and I'm Just Wild About Harry.

    Juicy Blabber is a celebrity gossip weekly supplement to the newsflimsi called The Lightyear Holo, and a parody of Daily Mail. It first appeared in my entries of The Galactic Correspondent round-robin back in the spring of 2015.

    The ANGRY MACE™ all-sprinkles-no-cocoa chocolate product is just one of the numerous ANGRY MACE™ products that previously appeared in a couple of fics written by the fab trio that is Ewok Poet, Findswoman and Raissa Baiard, as well as the 2017 Awards ceremony.

    Barefoot Band is canon. I'm implying that they're a long-running act, with multiple line-ups over the centuries...or something like that.
     
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  18. Raissa Baiard

    Raissa Baiard FFoF Artist Extraordinaire star 4 VIP - Game Host

    Registered:
    Nov 22, 1999
    [face_rofl] [face_rofl] [face_rofl]

    YES! The GFFA needs a dancing frog, er, droid! I knew that you of all people would get the homage to Chuck Jones’ immortal “One Froggy Evening” in my Chopper photo. :D Now you’ve taken it a step further, and brought the story to life. Chopper would do that, wouldn’t he? And be chuckling evilly to himself the entire time. I love the lyrics for “Lothal Gal” and “Zeltron about Pojee” I can totally hear them in the voice of the incomparable Michigan J. Frog. I only hope that Ezra doesn’t share the fate of the unfortunate construction worker who found ol’ Michigan.

    You’ve done justice bringing this classic cartoon into the Rebels-verse. StarWarsGuy wants to know if he can use this in the next epic chapter of Toon Wars: The Return of the Toon. ;)

    Oh, and Zeb, the odds of the caf maker falling in love with you are....pretty good actually.
     
  19. divapilot

    divapilot Force Ghost star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 30, 2005
    Oh, this is so cute! I love the little reference you drop in here, like Zeb genteelly sipping his beloved caf, and the Angry Mace products making an appearance. Poor Ezra! That droid is doing a number on him.
    So glad to see you writing again! We've missed you, gal. [:D]
     
  20. RX_Sith

    RX_Sith Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Mar 13, 2006
    Great comedic performances all around from Chopper.
     
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  21. WarmNyota_SweetAyesha

    WarmNyota_SweetAyesha Chosen One star 8

    Registered:
    Aug 31, 2004
    Ah, so Ezra likes chocolate, like me. LOL

    [face_rofl] Nopers, no decline in sheer unquestioned hilarity! Ewok Poet -- you got it where it counts! [face_rofl]

    [:D]
    [:D]
     
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  22. Findswoman

    Findswoman Fanfic and Pancakes and Waffles Mod (in Pink) star 5 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Feb 27, 2014
    Oh, this is so much fun! Chopper makes an absolutely perfect Michigan J. Frog. Knowing him and his wry sense of humor, I bet he’s enjoying every moment of his little song-and-dance performance, as well as every moment of NOT singing and dancing when Ezra asks him to do so for Zeb. I could totally see where Ezra would doubt both his sanity and his Jedi composure after seeing and hearing this... extraordinary performance. I love that you made “Lothal Girl” (which is no doubt as cheerful and swingin’ a song as its Earth equivalent) a song that Ezra remembers in a very distant, echoey way from his childhood—that gives the whole thing a dimension of poignancy and takes it beyond the realm of a crackfic.

    And just HIP HIP HOORAY for intertextuality in all the wonderful little references to Other Stories We Might Recognize that you have worked in so cleverly—from ANGRY MACE™ cocoa-free chocolate to that bass-baritone voice to Zeb and his caf to the Love Life of a Caf Machine... oh, little does Zeb know what he’s in for now! (Hint: something arguably weirder than Chopper singing and dancing to old jizz standards!)

    Thanks for this delightful little piece—it makes me so happy to see you and your muse back in action. This is (one of many sides of) the EP we know and love. Keep on keepin’ on! <3
     
  23. Ewok Poet

    Ewok Poet Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 31, 2014
    Thank you folks, you are the bestestestest. ^:)^ [face_love]




    I'm glad that I saw that right. :D

    As for Ezra...there could be an AU where he goes completely crazy and avoids ALL astromechs. Maybe he should become Boba's flatmate...and Suzy's.


    I would be honoured. I wanted to beg you for more of that stuff, anyway. :D

    *cue Pogo from Oddbods' sneaky laughter*

    Thank you. @};- [face_love]

    DON'T INTERRUPT ZEB WHILE DRINKING CAF. EVER.


    Thanks. :)


    Who doesn't? :D

    And thank you. @};- Guess I'm gettin' my writing chops back.


    Of course, Chopper is one lil' prankster and deffo aware of that. He's trollin' Ezra like there's no tomorrow. And I'm not sure if the song would rhyme in this version, but well, I tried. :D

    The nostalgia bit gives the story just a tiny bit of...reality.

    Uh-huh....cocoa-free chocolate PRODUCT. There's a difference.

    Intertextuality WTF!

    Poor Zeb, come to think of it. Ezra's situation is at least a wee, wee bit more realistic. XD

    THE MUSE MOOSE IS ON THE LOOSE, yup-yup-yup!

    Thank you, and thanks for having helped me to reach this state again. [face_love]




    EDIT: Just realised that I forgot to respond to Findswoman and mavjade's comments on You See Me as a Bed of Nails, divapilot's comment on Breacrumbs in the Starfield and WarmNyota_SweetAyesha's comment on Echo Bounces. I apologise - here they are. I added them in the early morning hours of November 26th, 2017 and in this post, rather than after the most recent story.




    You See Me as a Bed of Nails

    First of all - LOOK AT THE LENGTH OF THIS COMMENT AND THE LENGTH OF THE POEM ITSELF. OMG. YOU, LADY, YOU'RE A G.E.N.I.U.S. I don't know if I would be able to squeeze that much out of it myself!

    And yes - the narrator can't really determine if it's ego, fear or both. And she cannot be sure if any or both of those are Anjie's actual character traits or acquired traits (I probably didn't say that correctly).

    I tried to put a spin on the quote and I am glad that it did not end up sacrilegious or anything! Glad that I got the rest right.

    And Anjie has experienced so.much.pain that he's got to be reluctant - whether it's rational or not.

    In the end, these two need to see the same picture of each other. But that will, inevitably, take time.

    I admit that the "wink" was a bit of a desperate rhyme, just like in that weird drabble with that homicidal admiral I wrote around the same time, but I hope that the rest isn't silly. Anjie needs to jump, as in, make a leap of faith. :) Absolutely!

    <3 <3 <3 Thanks for reading!

    I didn't know you were into poetry. :) Then again...INFP. Figures. :D @};-

    I might be repeating myself each time I do that light and dark thing, but thank you. <3

    And yes, the leap of faith, as I said to Findswoman above. You got it!


    Breacrumbs in the Starfield

    He tries, if nothing else. But nope, can't.

    But those nicknames...ugh. Ugh.


    I see those "rough trades" all around the Galaxy Far, Far Away...

    The whole idea of using music to actually return to an acceptable standard of living is probably repugnant to Anjie, but there's no other way of doing it at this point.


    She might even be negging him. I liked the idea of a woman using the seduction tactic common for male pick-up artists.

    Nothing else to add here.


    Nothing to add - perfect! :D

    Once again - it's all about rough trades. And whichever way he goes, he will have to redefine himself, at least a little bit.

    As for Naboo - glad you pointed that out. He was still recovering and his recovery is ongoing at this point in time. But basically, there comes a point where the person is able to function at 100%, which was likely not the case on Naboo and is the case now.

    Ha...little did I know that I would be speaking from my own experience once I've gotten around to replying to these comments. Still, funny that I had a vague idea of the process when I actually wrote the story. o_O

    Does he even know what he's looking for? He might not know it even if it slapped him upside his face (which actually happened!). He needs to figure out all of the things you just figured out for him. Not saying that he's dense, by any means - he just had so much disappointment in everybody and everything in the past, that he simply doesn't know how to.


    Awww, you're flattering me. *mega-blush* Thanks for reading. :)


    Echo Bounces

    This was my first time writing Mara, so I was kind of freaking out about it. There are so many of you on here who know her soul, so to speak, and then there's me - the person who only read the comic adaptation of TTT and a bunch of fanfics so far. [face_blush] So, it's needless to say that I am surprised by the positive comments I got! And I'm glad that I managed to figure Mara out - she's a very complex, intriguing character.

    Also, this was my first and so far the only time trying out the second person POV. It was fun! :)

    Thanks for reading. <3
     
  24. Ewok Poet

    Ewok Poet Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jul 31, 2014
    A Stranger in Someone Else's Dream

    Genre: Romance, supernatural
    Characters: Anjie Mencuri, Charape, Marea. Mentions of Antonio Nokaarbe, Wompy, Dandelion "Dale" Pavan and Madelle "Mady" Griasmaa - all OCs.
    Timeframe: 5 ABY/1 ABE...or...
    Rating: PG-13 (references to spice use and some sexual content - don't worry, it's tasteful)
    Summary: Anjie Mencuri is having second thoughts about women again. Or is he? [face_whistling]

    A/N: This is my response to the Sea Shanty/Ballad challenge, where I got the song My Jolly Sailor Bold. This story is, in many ways, a counterpart to another Anjie one, Breadcrumbs in the Starfield.

    Many thanks to Findswoman for the beta (vita). :D




    “Please take your tesh-tunic off,” The Drall operating the holocam droid commanded the lean man in his late twenties and turned around to his assistant. “Marea, bring me a drink. This is going to take a while.”

    “There you go, Master Charape!” Marea handed him a small tin of cola.

    This was the point where he would have normally said no, but the management insisted on the “learning from your past mistakes” approach. At least this was not ten years ago, these were not the days of the oven mitt shtick and he was going to keep his trousers on. Was that supposed to reassure him? He did not want a reveal like this, he did not want to be branded a poster child for recovery. Before him, his band mates posed as dominant characters – Antonio in his usual ladies’ man persona, Wompy in a pile of scattered toys and Dale in a mean, antique speeder. He was going to be portrayed as the prodigal son of the wailer-group, the one who regretted his past as a spice abuser. And it was not like his wounds had completely healed. Why didn’t those three nerfs at least stay behind to support him? Wasn’t he their wayward little brother?

    But yes, he was going to keep his trousers on this time.

    The Drall spoke again. “Master Mencuri, the management did not exactly describe you as cooperative, but Marea and I are doing our best to make you feel comfortable. Please lean against the backdrop and put your arms behind your back, so we can only hint at your condition in the first holo. I want a half-smile and…Marea, his grav-ball short needs to hang out a little bit!”

    Marea approached Anjie as if he had been a droid or a mannequin and quickly pulled his trousers a couple of centimetres lower. Charape had strange ideas, but his so-called “vision” was not to be spoiled, contradicted or questioned. She raised her head for a moment and encountered the young wailer’s strange facial expression, accompanied by slightly blushing cheeks. All she could do was smile and shrug, hoping that he would understand.

    And he did. Sort of. She had probably seen worse things than a scrawny being with patches of cybernetics on his arms and false teeth. Wait. She did not even know about the latter. Maybe Charape doesn’t, either. But the journalist who got their hands on the holos would. Let’s hope it won’t be somebody from that slimy, vile Lightyear Holo supplement.

    The Drall holographer seemed pleased.

    “This gives you the laid-back look, geddit? You are like one of those proverbial Force ghosts, but sort of clumsy. You’ve just fallen from outer space and you’re lost, because your perception of the world as it is has been permanently altered.”

    Anjie nodded, absent-mindedly. Marea was gesticulating to the additional light droidettes from the right side of the white canvas.

    He was handsome, she thought. Those strange arms did not bother her at all. The one earlier that day tried to court her and he was annoying. Those two after him were kind of ugly. She had promised herself that she would never, ever attempt anything with another wailer, after that unfortunate experience when she was still a holography student at the University of Coruscant. But maybe that was long enough ago? After all, she was no longer dependent on her father’s wealth – she preferred doing whatever she wanted to being a rich merchant’s daughter.

    She was kind of pretty, he thought. Must have been of his age, or close. He was tired of younger women, anyway. That most recent experience was something he wanted to forget as soon as possible. His cheek was still ringing from the slap he had received at the end of that unfortunate date on Naboo.

    The session lingered on. Charape instructed Marea to bring Anjie his quetarra, the only one he had with him at time, and pose with it. He stood still, holding it as if it had moulded against his body. Then he pretended to play the solo off “Funk My Bit”, that part when both of his hands were on the instrument’s neck. Just when he thought it would be over, Charape pointed to the antique, wooden quetarra on the top of the stacked props in the corner of the studio.

    “Marea, bring him that! Master Mencuri, hold it high and look at Marea as if you were about to…seduce her. I want the Naboo charmeur look. You see, I cannot make you completely unattractive, that would reflect badly on album sales. Come on, young man, show me your Hapan side, too. Be handsome. The fragile, tortured kind thereof!”

    This was ridiculous. But that was what he had signed up for upon renewing his long-paused contract with Steamy Wasaka Stew. He gave Marea a blank stare, pouting. She nearly laughed and put her hands over her mouth. There was something funny about that, it made him crack a smile, just when the holocam droid clicked.

    Charape clapped his hands. “That’s exactly what I wanted. I cannot see how other holographers could have called you uncooperative. This was one great session. Marea, where is Master Mencuri’s tesh-tunic?

    The woman shook her head once the Drall turned his back. He didn’t even know what clothes his client wore. She grabbed the long-sleeved shirt off the nearby chair and came up to Anjie.

    “I can undress…I mean…dress myself, thank you.” He took the shirt from her hands and grinned, this time awkwardly. “And s…sorry that he yelled at you.”

    “It’s okay, Master Mencuri, he does that all the time. I’m used to it.”

    “Call me Anjie. I’m not a master of any kind. I feel uncomfortable with that.” He buttoned up his shirt. “Say, I have not been to Coruscant in a couple of years. Could you please tell me where could I get a good bio-lunch?”

    Marea swallowed a lump. Was that a hint? No, it couldn’t have been. This man looked like he wouldn’t have recognised a hint if it had hit him in the face. And he did look like something had hit him in the face, just look at that crooked nose! No, wait, that made him look even more interesting. If only he would…

    “There’s a great bio-slider joint four levels below. They have things such as red glie stew and vegetable sliders that are baked, not fried.”

    Anjie looked at her confusedly and then he smiled again. “Okay, I will be going there.” He quickly stormed out of the door.

    Faster than he knew, he was lost in the middle of some large park. Why was this always happening? Was he starting to pick up on the characteristics of that clumsy, fallen-from-space being that the management wanted the audience to see? Or was that really who he had been all along? He shook his head and grabbed the commlink. The holographer’s comm-code was still there. He was relieved. As stupid as it might have been, that arrogant Drall would probably send a protocol droid to help him out and accompany him until he returned to his hotel.

    “Master Charape, I don’t know where I am. Can you please come and get me out of here?”

    “He’s busy. This is Marea. Wait…is that you, Anjie?”

    “Y-yes.”

    “Kriff that…” she whispered, and then realised that Anjie could hear it. “Can you describe where you are, at least?”

    “There’s a sign reading ‘Battle of Geonosis Monument – to thousands of’…”

    “That’s it, I know where it is. I’ll come and pick you up in my speeder!”

    Twenty minutes later, they were sitting at the aforementioned bio-joint, chugging on large glasses of keleekay tea with a spoonful of Gungan mud. Marea was not enjoying this, but she managed to swallow one sip after another, holding her breath. Anjie was crumbling a slice of dustcorn bread in his hands.

    “Imagine if I had not heard the comm beeping?”

    “I would have been lost forever, then.” He gave her another grin. “The breadcrumbs…like these here…wouldn’t have helped me, you know?”

    What in the name of all the moons and satellites in this planet’s orbit was he talking about? Breadcrumbs? She decided to change the subject.

    “You know, I used to be involved with the underground scene on here when I was younger. A lot of wailer-groups played the small clubs where I took holos while at the university. Perhaps yours did, too. There were places friendly to those whose music was on the list of scarlet, even banned works.”

    Anjie stopped crumbling his bread and looked at the framed poster of Zap Farr on the wall across their table. “Maybe. Those years are a blur. We-we have been to so many places that I am not even sure which planets I had already been on…I wish I had – had been keeping a diary back then. There are so many things that I don’t remember.”

    Marea’s now-or-never mode was activated. She grabbed his hand and said. “You don’t know, I don’t remember much from back then, either. A lot of my holos are blurred. I had a handheld holocam, no cam droid and I was drunk and high on deathsticks most of those nights. So…how about we talk now and not then?”

    To her surprise, Anjie took her other hand in his. “If we’re talking now, what are we talking about, anyway?”

    She subtly stepped on his foot under the table. “I saw the way you were looking at me back at the studio.” She stopped for a moment to catch her breath. “You know, I wouldn’t have helped a random wailer out. I have seen so many of them over the years. Most of your kind is horribly arrogant. But you seemed sweet and kind of lost. I like you, Anjie.”

    This was not the time before the battle of Yavin. This was not going to lead to one of those sleepless nights. What happened on Coruscant did not stay on Coruscant anymore. These were new times, made for wiser decisions. He pulled his foot back, solely for her to reach for the other.

    “W-what are you doing?” He was confused.

    “Come on, you know it’s true. You are not arrogant, therefore you like me and I like you. This is where you’re supposed to say something in the lines of ‘I saw you looking at me, too and I sort of shivered when you brushed against my back.’”

    He just nodded, seemingly enchanted by Marea’s sincerity. Why was he making this mistake again? Was it a mistake if it happened after his life reset on Naboo? Didn’t he once say that he never got the girls he wanted, but the girls who wanted him? On the other hand, they definitely had some sort of connection. His hands, still flesh and bones, were pulsating from the warmth of her hands.

    “Yes…” he said.

    “Yes to what exactly?”

    He giggled. Was this man really her age? “So, this is about tractor beams and freighters, after all?” She fumed and rolled her eyes, solely to be met with a shy nod. By then, she was sure that if it had been about something else, or anything for that matter, he was not able to make up his mind. Putting words in his mouth turned out to be good tactic, after all!

    She gestured to the waitress droid.

    “N-no, I’m paying!” Anjie reached in his pocket and placed a couple hundred of credits in the droid’s hand.”

    Marea was about to stop him, but he pulled her hand and dragged her out of the diner.

    “Are you bantha poodoo insane? You paid her twenty times more than you should have!”

    Anjie just shrugged and nearly tripped. What was the deal with him? Why was he doing…all that he was doing?

    They sat in her speeder and headed towards the luxurious building that was The Kaerlia Queen.

    “So, where do I dock? There are five hundred and three rooms!” she said once the hotel was right before them, and the speeder was hovering in the air.

    The wailer had just realised something.

    “My bad. I’m staying at the Manarai. Level forty-four, room twenty-three”

    “For kriff’s sake…” Marea said, sotto voce, but then remembered what she wanted. “That’s, err, a common mistake, it happens. It’s right around the corner, anyway.”

    Once they have docked and entered the messy room full of musical instruments, Marea grabbed Anjie’s hand again.

    “Do you have any protecto-foam with you?”

    “N-no. Only BarbaShave. It’s old-fashioned, but –”

    “Anjie, that is not a shaving cream!” Marea was close to losing her nerve, but at the same time, she was intrigued by her companion’s level of cluelessness.

    “Never mind, I have a pack with me. Come here.”

    He nodded. And finally got it. The kiss was sloppy, but the next one was better. The third one was even better. And it went on and on. It was strangely enjoyable, awakening some long-repressed thoughts in him.

    “Where is the bed in this place?” Marea asked.

    Anjie pointed to the pile of clothes. “I c-c-couldn’t find my G-421-F, so I had to pull everything out of the garbcases…I even inflated all the underwear cubes.” He raised the sheet and pushed all the scattered clothes to the floor. “Tee-hee, problem s-solved.”

    “Yeah, right.” Marea showed him to shush. “Did I tell you that you’re handsome?”

    “I have cybernetics.”

    “I don’t care.” Marea pushed him on the bed and placed her bare foot on his chest. “Rule number one: don’t talk. Just kiss. Rule number two: you’re not a wailer and I’m not a holographer’s assistant. We are just bodies.”

    The night was but a blur, a dance of shadows on the walls and in the traffic outside of the hotel. He almost forgot that the last time he and Mady attempted to sleep together must have been some six years ago, but it seemed like not a day had passed since then. Marea was stunning, intimidating yet gentle, cynical yet like poetry. Perhaps she liked old sound-modulators, too? How about ancient Force sects? The ancient Force sects were the best! Or maybe right now was the best? He had not experienced a nude goddess caressing his face and tracing her fingers down his chest and belly in what seemed like forever.

    The night was quite memorable. She had not bedded a wailer since the age of twenty and had sworn to all possible deities, even the alleged Force that she would not do it again. But this one was a sweetheart. Bizarrely innocent, yet naughty. Astonishingly confused, but a completely different being in her embrace. This was just what she needed – a change after that nasty breakup. The synthflesh wasn’t as strange as she thought, not when a Naboo charmeur was following a trail of passionate kisses up her spine and around her neck.

    She woke up with her head on his shoulder and sat up. This was not the kind of a decision one would regret by the morning. Just then, he grabbed her from the back and pulled her back to himself. His hands were all over her again. This was too good to be true, she thought, determined to enjoy every single moment of it.

    “I think I am in love with you, Marea. You’re connecting now with the undiscovered stars on the edge of the Galaxy. You are the Sun!” Anjie pointed to the busy speeder lanes outside. She did not want to tell him that they could not see the sun from where they were, that it rose on the other side. Why shatter his dreams?

    She got up and reached for her brassiere. “You’re flattering me, Anjie. But yes, I like you a lot. I know that SWS are heading back to Corellia for interviews, but you will come back here soon, right? I mean, this is Coruscant, right?”

    Good that she had reminded him of that. When he woke up, he was sure they were on Empress Teta, for some odd reason. He bent over the bed and pulled a stylus from a drawer that he barely managed to open. He then scribbled something on a piece of paper. She realised that she had never seen paper before. What kind of a person was using something as obsolete?

    “This is my c-c-contact information.”

    She took the stylus from his hand and suspiciously took a piece of paper herself. It seemed harder to write on than flimsi.

    “Promise you will e-mail me when you’ve arrived to Coronet City?”

    “I p-promise.”

    Why was he blushing after everything that happened last night? Marea sighed. While she knew that her married younger sister would scold her over this encounter and that her mother would have been shocked about it if sheknew, she was pleased. This Anjie, he was different from those back then, he really was. He wanted to keep in touch, for kriff’s sake!

    “Will you res-respond?” He cocked his head.

    And he was worried that she would leave him? Was this really happening?

    An hour later, she was driving back to her rented apartment in the Bindai District, still thinking of her new lover. She took her chances with him and though he was unsure at first, he obliged. Such a thing happened once before, when she followed this up-and-coming wailer-group all around the CoCo Town because they had a handsome young quetarra player rumoured to have been half-H…

    No. It couldn’t have been. It simply could not have been.

    But it was.

    “No. No, no, no, no, no and NO!” she slammed her fists against the control board, nearly losing control over the speeder. She couldn’t believe her luck.


    Two days later, Anjie was back home on Corellia. The apartment he purchased after he had renewed his contract was conveniently located at the top of a high rise, away from the world. He liked it.

    It took him about an hour to find his datapad. It was in the kitchenette. He opened it and tapped on the mail-exchange pictogram.

    “Marea,

    I am back on Corellia. I am aware that I am about to receive more attention than I ever really wanted, but I guess that this is the price of fame. Tonight we’ll be going to the holocin, Antonio and I, we have been invited to the premiere of ‘Alderaan Love Festival – The Memories’. Tomorrow, I will be recovering from that and perhaps I could holocomm you? I will make sure that you get the guest pass for the next concert.

    Love,

    Anjie”

    The response arrived much faster than he had expected, as if it had been pre-written. And it was not what he expected.

    “Anjie,

    Sorry, not sorry. I have changed my mind. You will be better off with somebody else. We don’t have anything in common outside of the bedroom. You are unrealistic, to the point of being delusional.

    What the kriff, I might as well tell you the real reason.

    You might not remember this, but back during the Bantha Juice tour, when SWS played in CoCo Town, you kriffed me, then went to the ’fresher with another groupie, throwing me out of the hotel room and telling me never to show my face around you again. Then I talked to a bunch of others, one of whom spent the night with both Antonio and you, she said that she went for you because you were half-Hapan. Once I realised you were the same being as back then, I was disgusted.


    Please don’t ever contact me again!

    Marea”

    Anjie could not believe it. He almost banged his head against the table, but he managed to stop himself, remembering that he still had his night vision spectacles on.

    Was this…revenge?

    Delusional…delusional…delusional…how dare she say that? Believing in love at the first sight was not a delusion! Huh…delusional.

    Delusional…

    …​

    She woke up in a cold sweat. That was one strange dream, but not the first that she had had about HIM.

    Why was she not able to get him out of her head?

    Why was it him, again?

    Why did he have short hair?

    What was the deal with the cybernetics? Did that mean anything?

    Seriously, just what was all that about? Did anybody else have memories of notoriously bad dates morph into dreaming of the person having an affair with somebody else? She jumped off the top bunk and tiptoed to the table. The light from her datapad was inevitably going to wake up the other two beings in the room, but she had to satiate her curiosity. Charon and Deeina had once told her of the central database containing the names of all of the Galaxy’s celebrity holographers and the latter kindly allowed her to use her passcode for whatever unholy purposes she had in mind.

    There was no holographer named Charape in the database. But this did not cause her to change her mind.

    “He’s probably out kriffin’ some more Mareas right now, anyway.”

    She slammed her datapad shut and headed back to bed.

    She didn’t want to admit the truth to herself – that she wished it had been her, but her upbringing had been so strict that she couldn’t even dream of the one she was in love with….yet she was as jealous of this Marea as if she had been real.

    This had to stop. Somehow. Someway.




    Footnotes

    Tesh-tunic is the GFFA equivalent of a T-shirt. Fanon.

    Cola exists in the GFFA, at least in this one story.

    The oven mitt shtick is described in the first of Anjie stories, Radiophonic Heart.

    Grav-ball short is the GFFA equivalent of boxers. Fanon.

    The Lightyear Holo supplement hinted at is, of course, Juicy Blabber. Fanon.

    University of Coruscant, of course, exists.

    The "unfortunate date on Naboo" will be elaborated on...soon.

    "Funk My Bit" is a Steamy Wasaka Stew song, with lyrics by Antonio Nokaarbe and music by Anjie Mencuri. It's on their famous album, SexySpiceStarSinners. And it's a deliberate parody of a very stupid RL song.

    Naboo charmeur would be something like a Latin lover, because Naboo is Italy...IN SPACE! Fanon.

    Bio-food would be organic food.

    Red Glie is canon.

    Gungan mud was first used in @Chyntuck's epic, Ἀνάγκη - Necessity Beyond Sway, but I turned it into a health food fad. :p

    The Battle of Geonosis Monument is fanon.

    Dustcorn (originally spelled dust-corn) is canon. The planet Sacorria is known for its production.

    Zap Farr is my Frank Zappa...IN SPACE! He was previously mentioned in some other Anjie stories.

    Tractor beams and freighters = birds and bees. LOL. Fanon.

    The Kaerlia Queen and the Manarai are canon. I only expanded the latter to be a hotel as well.

    Protecto-foam would be some form of contraception. Fanon.

    BarbaShave is the GFFA shaving foam which was first used by @Findswoman in her award-winning fic, The Prodigal Knight and the Tragic Cupcake, and was subsequently used in stories written by @Raissa Baiard and yours truly. My interpretation is that it's something outdated (given that they used it in Carth Onasi's days), something like Old Spice would be in our world.

    G-421-F is a musical instrument or a module made up on-spot. Fanon.

    Garbcases = suitcases. Fanon.

    Empress Teta is, of course, canon, but in this story, it also serves as cheap innuendo. The idea of Anjie not knowing on which planet he is stems from a real life blooper.

    Bindai District is canon.

    Alderaan Love Festival - The Memories would be the equivalent of Woodstock and Coachela documentary films, etc.

    Anjie's kitchenette will be significant at some point. I promise.

    Charon (San Valorum) and Deeina (Ferry) previously appeared in The Black Star.
     
    Last edited: Jul 24, 2018
  25. DaenaBenjen42

    DaenaBenjen42 Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    May 15, 2005
    No idea whom these people are, but... interesting. (And... I'll be back. Must go actually participate in my Kinesiology class. PM for who these charas are, so I'm not lost would be great.)
     
    Ewok Poet likes this.