For my thirtieth birthday this weekend, I got a Darth Maul lightsaber. It didn't explode.

What it did do, however, was prove to be an awfully inadequate weapon. I put the batteries in and then hacked off my own leg. I twirled it and whacked the ceiling by mistake. I fought with my uncle, who leaned on his cane with one hand while brandishing his single-bladed "Luke Skywalker" saber with the other... and with one leg and one blade, he beat the living crap out of me.

Disheartened, I put the toy saber back in the box. How could Darth Maul have been such a badass with this awkward thing? What kind of weapon was this?

As I collapsed the lightsaber and put it back in the box, a note fell out. A note from a long time ago.... with a postmark from a galaxy far, far away.

TO:
Fer'Bona Incom
CEO, Lightsabers 'R' Us Incorporated

FROM:
D. Maul
Coruscant General Hospital

Dear Sir:

Thanks muchly for allowing me to try out the prototype for your new DuelBlade 2000™ doublebladed lightsaber. While the advanced technology you provide is certainly exciting, the design flaws involved cost me and my Master our revenge against the long-hated Jedi and I myself am writing this from inside two separate Bacta tanks.

This DuelBlade 2000™ is completely unusable and hazardous to the owner's health for the following reasons:

1. THE RADIATION SHIELDING IS INADEQUATE. I am aware that your physicians have run repeated tests that show that the DuelBlade's shielding is up to UL standards, but I find it extremely suspicious that shortly after I began using it my eyes turned yellow. And then my teeth started to fall out. My doctor says this isn't normal, and also states that your assertion that the hooded robes I wear "frequently cause scalp irritations that sometimes develop into little yellow horns" is not a statement that would stand up in court.
2. THE BLADE DESIGN IS ONLY CONDUCIVE TO FIGHTING JEDI KNIGHTS. While the DuelBlade's patent-pending doubleblade configuration is definitely unique, only Jedi seem dumb enough to swing at the saber blades out on the end. Everyone else I fought with just aimed at the handle, which is three feet wide, located smack in the center of my body, and has my hands on it - at one training stage I was going through three or four artificial hands a week. (And three or four training partners - we Sith have to keep that veil of secrecy, y'know.) I'm not quite sure why only Jedi are inclined to actually go for the blades, but then again, these are the same Jedi I kicked in the face three or four times and they never seemed to catch on to stay away from the feet. They're noble, but they're not too bright.
3. THE ACTIVATION BUTTONS ARE POORLY PLACED AND THERE IS A HIGH LEARNING CURVE. When I finally graduate from my "Advanced Enemy Asphyxiation 101" Sith class next week, I'm going to strangle everyone in your R&D department for coming up with this one. Who the hell decided that having big off-and-on buttons on a handle you're supposed to twirl around with both hands was a good idea? Every time I twirled, I hit a button by mistake and shut it off. Do you realize embarassing it is to pull off a really cool baton-style twist and end up with a deactivated saber? All the other Sith were laughing at me. Well, the other Sith, anyway.

Don't get me wrong. I appreciate that your design department put in special lock switches for me - but they didn't hold that well. During my last fight, I had it locked down. I had this little dweeb of an apprentice with a really bad ponytail trapped down a well and sure enough, just like I thought, he used the Force to leap out of the pit and slice me in half - and when I went to swing, the on-switch lock failed and I was left standing there saberless! Do you realize how dangerous this is? I could have been killed!

As it was, he sliced me in two, but that leads me to the "high learning curve" aspect of this discussion - normally a bisectional cut through the abdomen would be fatal, but fortunately I'd accidentally sliced myself in half so often trying to use this damn thing that my lower intestine had been replaced with a rubber tube from a '47 landspeeder and I just glued myself back together. I'm more machine than man, now. Darth Sidious has told me that as a result of my failure, he's thinking about replacing me with some young kid - a kid who'll be all human, not just a bunch of cybernetic parts. Man, I hope I can make the grade.

Yours truly,
D. Maul
Sith Apprentice-In-Training

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