Sith Academy: Darth Maul Buys a Bathing Suit
By Joy
spotcat@rocketmail.com

Darth Sidious wove expertly through the narrow aisles and racks of Coruscant's finest discount department store, his young apprentice trailing sheepishly behind him.

"I don't see why we have to go shopping," insisted Maul, "when I have a perfectly good set of trunks at home."

Sidious shook his head and smiled, pushing aside a discount tie rack while heading toward the Bathing Apparel department.

"Ah, but when did you buy those trunks, apprentice? Long before you came to me for training, I am sure. The reasons for this shopping excursion are two-fold. First, it would hardly befit a Sith Lord to appear at Spring Break celebrations in an ill-fitting and un-stylish bathing costume. And secondly, what am I always telling you about the Dark Side?"

Maul settled himself near a clearance-rack of bathing suits. "That fear and hatred are the quickest paths to it, master."

"I can think of no better way to expose you to fear and hatred than to have you try and find an appropriate pair of trunks." Sidious explained, as the apprentice began piling different suits onto his arm.

"Yes, my Master."

***

"There's a 2-item limit for the fitting rooms," droned a sales clerk through a mouthful of gum.

"This is two," Maul insisted with a bored wave of his hand, and not waiting for the slack-jawed clerk's approval, wandered to the fitting room furthest from the door. Once in the room, he hung the suits on the lone broken hook provided in the booth, and removed his outer cloak and placed his lightsaber gingerly underneath it. He glanced in the mirror and noticed that the blinking fluorescent lights gave his skin a disturbing yellowish cast, making his face look nearly orange. He grimaced as he bent to unlace his boot, and he felt something hit his butt. He sprang around to see whom he should kill for molesting him, and quickly discovered that the door of his booth had no latch, and had just smacked him in the rear end for nothing. Growling, he tore the door off its hinges, threw it on the floor and stomped on it.

"You're doing well, my apprentice," called Sidious from the floor.

***

Maul exhaled angrily, wishing that he had paid the extra money for the full tattoo instead of just to the chest, as he endured the stares of shoppers in dragging his clothes and bathing suits to another booth.

After wedging all manner of clothing against the door to avoid the previous booth's mishap, Maul extracted the first pair of trunks off the hanger. He turned away from the mirror as he pulled them on, tying the drawstring awkwardly. Slowly he turned to the mirror, and his face fell in dismay. The baggy shape-concealing shorts were ill suited to his physique.

"Oh, nice bird-legs, Sith Lord," He hissed sarcastically to himself, and began to disrobe again. It took him several attempts, and much grunting and groaning, the get the double knot out of the drawstring.

"How are you doing in there?" Asked Sidious, just outside the door.

"I hate it!"

"Good...very good."

***

Maul stood opposite the mirror again, this time clutching a pair of snug, form-fitting trunks in his hand. He looked down at his boxer shorts, and then to the sign on the wall:

"Please wear undergarments while trying on bathing suits."

Rolling his eyes, he stepped into the trunks, and turned to the mirror in the hopes that this pair would both fit, and not make him look like a buffoon, thus saving him the agony of another moment like this.

"Well?" came the expectant voice of Sidious from the other side of the door.

There was a measured silence, and then a sigh and Maul replied, "How can I tell how these will look on the beach or at the pool when I have to try them on like this!!!" He flung open the door angrily, and stood in front of Sidious and various other onlookers, puffy white boxers peeking out of both leg-holes, bunching up around his crotch, and poking through the waistband of the small blue suit.

"Well, well Maul - we are certainly letting our anger get the best of us," stated Sidious, calmly, "and I commend you for that. But would a Sith Lord worry about following the rules posted on the inside of a fitting room?"

In a flash of comprehension, Maul smiled, and returned to the booth.

***

"I think I've found a good one!" Maul announced after a disturbingly silent few minutes in the dressing room.

"Well, come on out, let's have a look!" encouraged Sidious.

The apprentice emerged from the booth, wearing a hip-hugging snug set of trunks in an iridescent red color. Instead of a drawstring, these trunks laced up the front. Maul grinned and spun for Sidious to admire him. "What do you think, my master?"

"I think you should go make full use of the three-way mirror at the end here," motioned Sidious. Maul strode purposefully toward the mirrors, confident in his sex-appeal and Dark Side charm. He stood in front of the mirrors and puffed out his chest a bit.

Ahh, yes, he thought, these trunks do set off the goods rather nicely. He flexed his arms slightly. I'm hot. Yes...sizzling! When I wear this to the beach, women will be lining up for miles waiting to experience my Force... Oh, yeah, ladies - come to the Dark Side...

He was beginning to turn to check his rear view, when a young man emerged from another booth. This one was wearing a khaki colored set of trunks, which were just barely large enough to conceal his cotton briefs.

"So, do you think this is a good color on me?" asked Obi-Wan hopefully. Maul was not happy to be disturbed from his reverie. He glared at the man for a moment, and then looked him up and down.

"You have Yoda knee." Stated Maul flatly. Kenobi looked alarmed.

"Yoda knee - what do you mean by that?"

Maul raised an eyebrow and began absently fidgeting with one of his back horns.

"Well, look in the mirror," he explained, "and look at your knees. See, you have kind of chubby knees, with little dimples in them. If you look at the dimples closely, they form a Yoda pattern - see? The eyes, the ears, that little smile..."

Obi Wan regarded his chubby knees with newfound horror.

"I do not have Yoda knees!" he wailed defiantly, but the damage had been done. He could not convince himself that he didn't have the image of the Jedi Master imprinted in the dimples of his knees.

"Padawan, is there a problem?" came a voice from the booth.

"No, Master Qui-Gon," sniffed the Jedi apprentice, and then turned to Maul and hissed, "anyway, you've split your trunks!"

Maul checked the mirror behind him, and sure enough, the Jedi spoke the truth - his trunks had split neatly down the back center seam, exposing more of his flesh than he wanted the shoppers of Coruscant's Basement to see. His face fell, and holding his trunks together behind him, he stormed back into his booth.

***

The last pair. Maul regarded the lavender suit through squinted eyes. It had to fit. He was not going to go back out and grab several more pair of humiliating bathing suits and try them on in this environment! No! He would not stand for that humiliation! And if these didn't work, surely there were nude beaches set aside for spring break celebrations.

Ah, yes! Nudity is the answer, he thought, as he assumed the familiar opposite-the-mirror trying-on position. He placed his left foot through the leg-hole even as he began to look forward to the joys of nude sunbathing. Everyone is nude and free - soaking up the sun's rays without the constraints and deception of quaint bathing suits...

He struggled to get his right foot into the appropriate leg-hole, hopping a bit on his left.

There is nothing shameful about the humanoid body - down with the oppression of the bathing suit...

But as he rallied inwardly, his little fitting-room-dance had seriously unbalanced him. Suddenly he was confronted with the image in the mirror of a young, Zabrakian with black and orange-ish tattoos from his head to his mid-chest, un-tattooed torso (pasty from being hidden so long under layers of Sith regalia) and disturbingly pale (with a greenish tinge from the lighting) buttocks jutting out from his bent-over form, his ankles tangled in the lavender trunks.

"AUGHHHHHHHHHHH!"

A primal howl erupted from Maul's fitting room, and he dug wildly amongst his robes for his lightsaber. He wasted no time in activating both ends of the weapon, and bringing it crashing down on the mirror, the walls, the door, his clothes, other people's mirrors, walls, doors...until every last fitting room in the area was utterly decimated, and their inhabitants had fled in terror.

Sidious stood aside, watching the destruction with an approving eye.

"Do you feel the anger, young apprentice?" he shouted, "Can you feel hatred surging through you?"

"Yes, I am full of hatred for the universe! I have anger enough for an eternity's worth of bathing-suit shopping! Loathing wells up in me until I can taste it!"

Maul took a moment to catch his breath, anger still glinting in his eyes.

"I am glad, my apprentice," replied Sidious, satisfied that Maul had fulfilled at least one of the requirements of this excursion, "Yes, very well done indeed. But could you please put a Sith Robe on - I don't need to see that."

END

(6/7/99)

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