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Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
"Circumstances compel you to finally come out of your shell next week. Unfortunately, you are a hermit crab."
Mystery of Chopper Base, dokma.
"You used to think that it would be cool to have a computer implanted in your skull, but it turns out it's not."
Empire Day, Tseebo slouched.
"Your lifelong fear of caramel apples will finally prove useful, albeit a little too late."
Fighter Flight, a stormtrooper with a meiloorun being held out.
"You will soon learn the secrets of the butterflies. Their stark, unrelenting malice will drive you gibberingly insane."
Double Agent Droid, AP-5 surrounded by those space-butterfly-creatures.
"The devil will appear in a sudden cloud of fire and brimstone to present incontrovertible proof that he did not, in fact, make you do it."
Visions and Voices, Maul with Ezra in the background.
"You will meet a dark stranger this week. Please note that "dark" has at least seven different definitions which might apply in this case."
Twilight of the Apprentice I, Maul's appearance.
"You will see something this week that really makes you think. It's just an unusual-looking rock, but it's a start."
Trials of the Darksaber, the Bendu.
"No matter who tries to hold you back, remember that the demonic voices were very insistent about who lives and who dies."
Visions and Voices, Ezra with his lightsaber raised and Kanan holding him back.
Ezra had expected a bit more enthusiasm from Hobbie on his revelation. His friend was standing, arms folded, leaning against the side of the storage crate that had become their unofficial base of operations over the past few days. He was frowning, not exactly in disbelief, but he was obviously still waiting to be convinced.
“It stopped,” Ezra said, needlessly, pointing at the dokma by Hobbie’s feet. It was the second time he had demonstrated the ability, and Hobbie still looked doubtful.
Hobbie looked down. The dokma had settled next to the storage crate, pulled its feet inside its shell, and looked like it had no intention of going anywhere else for some time. “Yeah,” Hobbie said. “But dokma stop walking around all the time. Are you sure it’s because of you? There’s one over there doing the exact same thing.” He pointed into the distance.
Ezra looked, raising a hand to shield his eyes, partly to block out the glare of the sun, partly to disguise the fact that he was squinting. He couldn’t see any dokma in that direction. He glanced sideways at Hobbie, trying to decide whether there was really a dokma there, or whether he was testing him. Most likely he just couldn’t see it, Hobbie wouldn’t do that. He didn’t think Hobbie would do that.
“Yeah, I know,” he lied. “I thought of that, actually, when I realized I could do it. That’s why I tried it so many times. It works, trust me.” He spied another dokma approaching them from the crate, and pointed to it. “Ready?”
“Sure.” Hobbie watched the creature as Ezra closed his eyes and reached out to it, sending the wordless wave of intent.
Through his connection to it, Ezra could sense the creature slow, then finally stop. He opened an eye to confirm that he was right, then turned a triumphant grin in Hobbie’s direction.
“Okay,” Hobbie said, “Three out of three, that’s pretty convincing. Congratulations, you have the power to bore dokma into a stupor!” He smirked.
“Hey!”
“Sorry.” He shrugged. “Well, not really.” He glanced down at the three dokma sitting around them. As he did, the second one that Ezra had stopped got to its feet and continued on its way to wherever it was going. “So, do you want to try it out for real tonight?”
Ezra considered it. On the one hand, he was curious as to whether he would be able to actually influence the outcome of the race; on the other, whether it worked or not, this technique wasn’t going to be any good in the long run. He shook his head. “No, not yet.”
The first dokma got back to its feet and continued on its way. “Why not?” Hobbie asked, watching it go.
“Because I’m supposed to be figuring out how to make one dokma win, not make four others lose.”
Hobbie frowned. “If it works, does it matter how you do it?” he said.
It did. It mattered a lot. But it wasn’t something that he was going to be able to explain to Hobbie. He sat down on the ground, maintaining a tentative connection to the third dokma. It was still happily sitting there, basking in the sunlight. As soon as he released it, it would be free to do what it wanted again, and if he connected to another one, he would have to release that one first because he could only connect to one dokma at a time.
Until now, his main worry -- outside of being caught and banned from the races -- had been the idea that the whole thing would fall apart when he could no longer tell which color of paint had been daubed onto the shell of whatever dokma he had chosen. Now, Hobbie was expecting him to track five constantly moving creatures, moving his control from one to another, and to know which of the five not to touch.
He could do it. Now. Without sight, without the colors as a visual reference, it would be impossible.
Of course, Hobbie didn’t know that. He couldn’t possibly know that. He probably hadn’t even considered the future in that way. Ezra wished he still had that luxury. Suddenly, whichever way he turned, he saw it looming over him, and that wasn’t going to stop. Not until...
“Does it matter?” Hobbie said again, sounding less sure of himself now.
Ezra made an effort to push aside the thoughts running through his head. He shrugged slowly, buying himself a little time to remember what they had been talking about. Hobbie’s expression was one of confusion mingled with the beginnings of concern. Ezra couldn’t tell him the truth. He didn’t even know how to put that into words that would make sense to someone that didn’t use the Force, or that hadn’t spent any length of time thinking about what losing your sight would actually mean. Anyway, he didn’t want to explain. He could try to imply what he wanted to say, and leave Hobbie to work it out. But no, he didn’t even really want to do that, because if Hobbie didn’t know, then Ezra could continue to pretend nothing was wrong.
“It’s just got to be easier to control one dokma than four,” he said. It wasn’t a lie, it just wasn’t the whole truth. “Anyway, don’t you think it’d look a bit weird if all the dokma but one just kept sitting down for a rest in the middle of the race?”
“No, not really,” Hobbie told him. “I think it’d look indistinguishable from any other race. In fact, it’s probably going to look stranger if one of them actually races and doesn’t sit down in the middle, than if four of them take a few more rests.”
Ezra turned to look at him. Hobbie was watching him warily, obviously not knowing what he was thinking, but very much aware that something was wrong. “What is it really?” he asked
Ezra shook his head. “I don’t know. It’d just be easier to do it the other way.”
“Not if the other way doesn’t work,” Hobbie supplied, correctly.
“It will work. As soon as I’ve figured it out. And anyway, the one I’m going to try to control isn’t just going to get up and run, it doesn’t work that way. I’m thinking if I can make them want to sit down, there’s got to be a way to make them want to move. They’re too stupid to understand where I want them to move to anyway.”
“So it might move in completely the wrong direction?”
Ezra shrugged and grinned. “Maybe, yeah, unless I figure out how to make them a lot smarter. But then hopefully it’ll get to the other side, turn around and go back again. Anyway, the races wouldn’t be fun if there wasn’t some chance of losing.”
Hobbie shook his head and grinned back at him. “Speak for yourself. I want to win.”
“We will,” Ezra promised him. “Okay, I’m going to work on making this one want to move around.” He indicated the third dokma, the one still sitting on the ground, with a wave of his hand, and glanced up to gauge the position of the sun. He had an hour at least before it started to set. “Can you keep watch again?”
Hobbie sank to the ground next to him, settling in for a long stretch. “You me to tell you if it gets dark again?”
Ezra hesitated. Last time they had done this, he had given an excuse for needing to be warned about the encroaching nighttime. It hadn’t been a good excuse, but at least it had been some way to justify it. Obviously it hadn’t fooled him. He glanced quickly at Hobbie, and then away again. “Yeah, if you want,” he said, then closed his eyes and concentrated on the dokma before Hobbie had a chance to react. “But mostly, keep an eye on the dokma, tell me if it does anything interesting.”
It was a lot more difficult to get the dokma to move than it was to make them stop. That revelation hadn’t been unexpected. The vast majority of the dokma remaining around the base now were the ones that simply didn’t have the drive to go anywhere, and that meant that staying where they were was, in a way, their default setting.
Ezra furrowed his brow in concentration and pushed a command onto the creature. “Anything?” he asked Hobbie, who was still sitting nearby.
“Not sure, try it again?” Hobbie said. Ezra sighed and tried again. The dokma hadn’t moved, he could tell that much through his connection, and his ability to discern the position of the creature he was sharing a connection with. Without words, he pushed a feeling in the creature’s direction, something like the opposite of the feeling he had sent when he had made it stop.
“It’s wiggling its eye things around a bit,” Hobbie told him. “Maybe it’s just tired, it should probably have got up and walked away by itself by now. The others did.”
Ezra sighed, and pushed a little harder. Hobbie didn’t say anything, so presumably there was no noticeable difference. He pushed harder still, trying to keep himself calm and not give into the frustration that he could feel building up inside him. He could have tapped into it, and he could probably have used it to increase his ability, but he wouldn’t.
Instead, he took a deep breath and released the frustration as he exhaled. He broke the connection for a moment, then remade it, with more purpose this time. He remembered that need to move on that he had sensed in the swarm, that feeling that set them aside from their more complacent brethren; the restlessness, the need to be elsewhere. He replicated it within himself, and then sent it through their connection, pushing hard, like a wave rather than a gentle stream.
“It’s…” Hobbie hesitated. “It’s doing something. It’s getting up. Oh, unless it would have just gotten up anyway; maybe it finally got bored and decided to leave.”
It wasn’t that. It couldn’t be. Not at that precise moment, it would have been too much of a coincidence. Ezra opened his eyes to watch the dokma as it began to move away.
It was dark.
Not as dark as he had allowed it to get a few nights ago, when he had tried connecting with the dokma for the first time. The world around him was made of shades of gray and muted colors, unlike the blackness that night. He squinted. It made no difference, it was as though all the detail had been erased, leaving him with shapes and outlines.
He turned to Hobbie.
“What do you think?” Hobbie asked. “Was that you, or did it just get sick of having you in its head and decide to leave?”
Ezra could make out the shape of his friend, still hunched on the ground a few feet away. His datapad was face up on the ground next to him, the screen glowing brightly, but not in the right direction to allow him to see Hobbie’s face. Ezra climbed to his feet, keeping one hand on the side of the storage crate. He didn’t need to, but the solid object made him feel safe. Unease stirred in the pit of his stomach. He took a deep breath, and tried to release it in the same way that he had his frustration at the dokma.
He licked his lips, and tried to sound casual. “That was definitely me,” he said. He turned to face the direction from which he could sense the dokma’s presence, as though he were watching it go. He couldn’t locate it, the light color of its shell blended in well with the shade of the desert ground. “I’ll have to try a few more times to make sure I can do it again, but I’m sure it moved because of me.”
“Great,” Hobbie said with an audible grin. “So you have the power to bore them to sleep, and to scare them away.”
Ezra shrugged. “I’d be insulted, if that wasn’t exactly what I was trying to do.” He broke his connection to the dokma, and tuned his awareness, but not his face, to his friend. “You were going to tell me when it got dark,” he said quietly.
“Yeah,” Hobbie paused, “it is getting that way. I was going to mention it in a few minutes, if you hadn’t stopped on your own.”
Ezra’s awareness of him through the Force was made up of that impossible-to-describe signature that each person had, unique to them, but sometimes difficult to differentiate from others. He would learn them, eventually. For now, Hobbie’s just felt familiar, but he just wasn’t sure that he would recognize it if he didn’t already know who it was. Through it, he could feel nothing that would imply that Hobbie had noticed that anything was wrong.
Ezra shrugged, still not facing Hobbie. It wasn’t dark, Ezra could see that himself. The sun had barely begun to set, and the light level had dropped only slightly. Hobbie could obviously see well enough that it never occurred to him that it might be a problem. Probably because Ezra had never told him that it would be.
Carefully, he brushed the flashlight hanging from his belt with his fingertips, checking that it was there. It was still light. He could still see the top of the sun as it dipped into the horizon, he could still see everything, more or less, it was just the details that escaped him. The flashlight wouldn’t help with that. As tempting as it was to switch it on, all it would do right now was draw attention to him.
“Okay, I guess we should head back,” Ezra said. He tried to keep his tone light, but he could hear the tension in his voice as memories of the last time he had made this mistake flooded back to him. He swallowed hard, and stared down at the ground just before him, unblinking. It wasn’t like the last time. He could see. If he was careful, and if he was quick, he could get back to the illuminated part of the base without Hobbie even realizing that there was a problem.
It felt a little like walking through a thick mist that had settled on the ground. He could make out the ground itself, and any obstacles, just about, but with difficulty. He reminded himself with each step not to walk slowly, not to feel his way with the tips of his toes, not to look like he couldn’t see. He reached out with the Force as best he could, scanning the ground before him as he took each step. It wasn’t like the other night. The darkness wasn’t so thick and overpowering and the dokma were almost all gone. He maintained what felt like a normal pace, with Hobbie walking quietly by his side.
The fingers of his right hand ached by the time he reached the base itself, and he realized that he had been tightly gripping the flashlight that was still attached to his belt as he had walked. He forced himself to let it go and flexed his fingers, then turned to Hobbie.
“I think it’s going to work,” he said, talking about the dokma. After all, Hobbie wasn’t aware that there was anything else to talk about. “I just need to try it out a few more times to be sure, then we can try it out for real, see if it works.”
Hobbie folded his arms and nodded. “Sounds good,” he said.
He had positioned himself directly underneath one of the artificial lights of the base. They had only recently turned on, which made sense, as it wasn’t dark, but by its light, Ezra could see Hobbie easily again. He was staring at the ground, looking unhappy. Ezra frowned.
Hobbie cleared his throat. “So, I guess for future reference, this is what I should think of as dark?” he said. “To tell you, I mean.”
Ezra froze, embarrassed. “No,” he said, automatically.
Hobbie looked at him searchingly. “If you don’t tell me, I won’t know,” he said.
That was the point. Ezra sighed. “Fine, this is dark-ish. Yeah, this is what I mean by dark.”
Hobbie glanced around them. “It’s barely dusk,” he said. “I mean, the sun’s almost down, it’s not as light as it was, but it’s not…” he stopped, and looked at Ezra. “Okay,” he said. “Sorry.”
Ezra shrugged. “It’s fine,” he said. “I should’ve said. You’re right, it’s not dark. I can see it’s not dark, I just can’t s…” he looked away. “I just can’t see much else. Stupid, right?” He leaned against the wall of a building and folded his arms.
“No it’s not, it’s…”
“Anyway, it’s not gonna be a problem anymore.” He glanced around to ensure that nobody was within earshot and lowered his voice a little more. “Because I’m thinking the next step is to try to do… the thing… without being obvious. That means eyes open, and maybe while doing something else.”
Hobbie nodded, appearing to accept the change of subject. “Maybe after a drink or two, too,” he added.
Ezra relaxed. He grimaced theatrically at the memory of the burning liquid running down his throat. If he tried it again, maybe he’d be able to take a sip without gasping for breath. “As long as Kanan’s not there,” he said.
“We could still try it tonight,” Hobbie suggested. “Now you think you’ve managed to do…” he glanced around for prying ears, “…that thing you wanted… Why not try it out a few more times, beforehand, make sure it works, and then try it out for real?”
It was tempting. He glanced around and located a dokma some distance away, not doing much. He surreptitiously elbowed Hobbie in the side, and nodded in the direction of the creature, then took a few casual steps in that direction. Hobbie followed him. As he walked, Ezra began to concentrate on that same feeling, restlessness, a need to move. He watched the dokma as he made the connection, making a conscious effort not to close his eyes, and pushed the wave of feeling at the creature. As he watched, it flexed its eye stalks for a moment, then got to its feet and wandered away.
Ezra glanced at Hobbie and grinned triumphantly. Hobbie returned the grin. “I guess we’re going to the races then,” he said.
((Part of the Little by Little 'verse, and using these prompts. Canon-compliant.))
Kanan's fingers dug into her arm, but Sabine didn't mention it. She could only imagine how disorienting the crowd must be for someone who couldn't see it. Then again, he had been the one to ask her if she could take him there, and he was perfectly capable of saying that he wanted to go back to the Ghost.
"We're here, I take it," he needlessly said.
"Yeah. It's...." He wouldn't know any of the landmarks she could give. "It's a bit out of the way. I heard that there's talk of moving it to another location though."
"What does it look like?" His head turned like he was looking around, as if there was some angle which would allow him to see through the bandages -- not medically necessary any more, but they seemed to make him more comfortable -- and damaged eyes.
She wasn't going to be able to fully describe the track in all its aspects, the lights and shadows and colours, but maybe she could get across the most important bits. "It's a straight track, with knee-high fencing at the sides to keep the dokma more or less where they should be, and lanes marked out by stones. Everything was hastily set up and it shows. The --"
She was cut off by a nearby incoherent scream. Kanan jerked back in surprise, almost sending her to the ground, but they both managed to regain their balance.
"No!" the screamer yelled out to the track, and the dokma on it. "You are going the wrong way! Again! Still!" The person in loudly sighed, and then stormed off.
The outburst didn't attract as much attention as it would have earlier in the evening, when things were generally quieter, but there was still a bunch of people looking in their direction.
"What was that about?" Kanan asked. "What happened?"
"I guess the one they bet on didn't... um."
Sabine realized that he knew almost nothing about how the dokma races went, probably only what he'd overheard. "Each of the critters for the race is painted, to be able to identify them, and whichever crosses the finish line first, wins," she explained. "So far so basic. Only, they don't care about the finish line, probably don't even know it exists. They go in whatever direction they feel like, stop whenever they feel like, and there's only one time I've ever seen one go in a straight line without stopping, and that was when someone had taped it to one of those small cleaning droids." As an afterthought, she added "It wasn't hurt."
There was an odd sound. "Which?"
"Huh?"
"The dokma or the droid? Which of them wasn't hurt?"
She turned back to look. Was Kanan... laughing? It was a far cry from how he used to be, but parsecs better than he had been.
A smile crept onto her face.
"Both, actually. Once they were separated, they just kept on doing what they had been doing."
She closed her eyes for a moment. She could hear the good-natured chatter, friendly arguments about who was going to win and what they would do with their winnings, running commentary on the lack of running....
She opened her eyes. "There are four critters on the track at the moment; there's normally five, I don't know what happened today. They're painted green, white, red, and black. The red one is just standing still, and the green one is ambling back to the starting line...."
