My highschool adventure as a Sith is wrong, as expected (OreGairu/Star Wars) (ch.3) (Patreon)

“My master and I were meeting up with a contact in the Empire -- apparently my master saved the life of a general in the Empire, and when he learned of what the Empire had planned, he reached out to master Okkur. He...was discovered and killed, but not before he gave us this datastick. Then master Okkur sacrificed himself to make sure that I escaped,” Padawan explained unprompted as she stared down at the cup of water I gave her. 

I paused putting everything back in its rightful place. In the end, it was early in the morning, so there was little point in going to bed again. 

“The Empire knew about the exchange since the beginning. They placed a tracer in the datastick. I only found out when I was pulled out of hyperspace in orbit and ambushed. I managed to take down quite a few, but they shot me down…” She trailed off, taking a sip of her water. I don’t think she was really talking to me, or rather she was talking at me. “I crashed, but I managed to convince my captors that the datastick had been destroyed by hiding it in a vacuum tube on the ship, blocking its signal until you found it.”

Padawan’s gaze swept over my home, lingering on the ship. “I am sorry for the trouble I have caused you,” she said, sounding so...nice. The more she spoke, the longer I spent around her, the more it became clear that she was a Nice Girl. Was it just because she was the Protagonist? Despite her attempts in painting herself in a good light, I grew more and more suspicious by the second. 

When I didn’t reply, she continued to try to make small talk. “This place...do you live here alone, youngling?” She asked after a small beat of silence. I focused on the shelf before me for a moment before jerking my head in a nod. “I see...I...am sorry for your loss,” she said, assuming there was a reason for why I was living here, alone, so far away from the nearest city. 

“Don’t be,” I dismissed. Being sorry for someone’s loss, saying hearts and prayers -- ultimately, they were empty words. It was impossible to understand the loss that another felt when they lost family because everyone had different relationships with their family. Someone that lost a mother can’t understand the pain of someone that lost a brother, just as someone who lost a son can’t understand the loss of someone losing a father. It was similar, but never truly the same. 

My relationship with my parents was...nonexistent, for the most part. They were corporate slaves, working all day every day, and while I did respect them, I wasn’t close to them. Already, I could barely remember what my father looked like, and I only remembered my mother so clearly because she looked like an older Komichi. The loss of my parents was minimal. The loss of my little sister was far graver, but I soothed that ache with the knowledge that it was only temporary. 

“Did you collect all of this? Alone?” She asked, obviously fishing for information. To be fair, she was on a hostile planet and she still didn’t know my name. 

“I did,” I answered shortly, taking a breath as I reached out with my ab- the Force. It was difficult to describe lifting things with my mind, but it was as if I were willing the objects to defy gravity. I wanted them to rise, so they did. A dozen different parts of varying shapes and sizes lifted off the ground at the same time the shelf did. After they settled in their rightful places, I moved onto the next batch of junk on the floor. 

“You are very skilled with the Force, youngling,” Padawan commented, earning a soft scoff from me. That was patronizing beyond belief coming from her. She threw people around like they were nothing, she used mind control, and how she had moved...I couldn't do any of that. She was simply giving empty flattery. 

Even still, my face burned as I set another half dozen pieces onto the shelf. “Not really,” I answered simply. Comparing what she did earlier wounded and dehydrated to me on my best day showed just how underpowered I was in this Isekai. 

“Did...you have a teacher? A master to show you the ways of the Force?” Padawan asked, not managing to hide how loaded that question was. If I had to guess, knowing the tropes of Light Novels and the like -- Twe'like was a dark side user, meaning that she was the bad guy, while Padawan used the nondark side, meaning she was a good guy. We were in Empire controlled territory, so she wondered if I was a dark side user, thus a bad guy. 

"I didn't have anyone teach me," I answered with a shake of my head. "Until today, I didn't know anyone else could do the things I could." Much less do them better. 

Padawan made a show of looking surprised, "truly? You must be very strong with the Force then to have such fine control," she offered up an empty compliment, trying to find one thing about my ability that was actually praiseworthy. "But…” She trailed off, giving me a searching look, “you hide yourself so well. I can’t feel anything coming from you...And to be self-taught...if it weren't for Master Okkur, then I would have never have mastered the Force as much as I have. Not that I am a master or even close! I am just a padawan." 

I see. Not only was she the Protagonist, but she was also serving as an exposition dump. Despite living here for years now, I knew very little about this new universe I found myself in. Over time, I learned the broad strokes -- Empire vs Republic war that I was reborn at the tail end of, First Contact with aliens was tens of thousands of years ago, and that was about it. Candith wasn't just a port in a storm, it was the very last port anyone in their right mind would willingly go to. It was a haven for pirates, mercenaries, and criminal cartels and slavers that existed only because the most powerful gangs played lip service to the Empire. 

“What is the Force?” I asked, turning my attention to my ship, unsealing a panel to inspect the inner damage. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Padawan stiffen at the question, surprised, but clearly pleased. 

And she told me. In a lot of words spoken with a calm serenity that slowly painted a picture in my mind. She practiced the light side of the Force, who were the self-described good guys of the universe that upheld peace and respected life and a bunch of other things that made them better than the vile Sith. The Force, apparently, was some sort of unseen glue that connected the entire galaxy together, and those that were force-sensitive could manipulate it with several abilities. 

What I got out of her info dump was that I was not only underpowered but as far as force-sensitive people went, I was pretty much useless. I was less sure of her opinions on the Sith and the Empire because it was a very common tactic to treat your enemies as if they were irredeemably evil, so her claims that the Sith were pure evil rang a little hollow. 

“But, you’ve never had a teacher? All that you can do, it’s all self-taught?” Padawan repeated for clarification after her exposition dump was done. 

“It is. At first, it started with moving pebbles, and stuff, then I started using it to get sand off me,” I explained, recalling the slow progress I made over the years. At first, I used it to make my heavy work a little lighter, but when people learned I was more advanced than I should be for my age, they had me working on computers and droids. Repair, upgrades, and the like. 

“Is that how you escaped from slavery?” Padawan asked, making me go stiff, almost dropping a shelf that I was in the middle of straightening out. “I...saw the scar on the back of your neck. I recognized it.”

A hand went back to trace the straight line that ran along my spine, feeling a small bump where an explosive still resided. A reminder of my three years spent in slavery. 

“...yeah,” I confirmed with a small nod of my head. In this life, I wasn’t born as a son to two corporate slaves, but actual slaves. As soon as I was born, I was microchipped with an explosive to track me and kill me if I tried to flee. I barely knew my parents in this life -- both were sold off early on in my new life, back when everything was a blur and I was struggling to accept my new reality. “I short-circuited it, then ran away. I lived in Esteria for a year, but then I found this place and figured it was safer.”

“I see,” Padawan said, closing her eyes. “You have endured much, youngling, but you have remained tall despite the hardships you have faced.” She complimented, and it was only then did I notice how she was speaking. At first, I chalked it up as a difference in upbringing -- it seemed foolish to compare her to a teenager in my last life because, for one, I doubt she knew what a highschool was and, secondly, she was some kind of soldier. 

However, how she was speaking was just soo...Padawan wasn’t talking like herself. She was talking like what she thought whatever a Jedi would say in this situation. 

I just shook my head, memories of the slave pens were all to quick to resurface. “Others suffered a lot more,” I dismissed any praise. Without my ability, without the Force, I would still be stuck working for that droid shop I was sold to. Even being a lowly shop worker slave was still a fate far, far, far kinder than many suffered. 

There was a small silence for a moment.

“Thank you for lodging me, youngling, but-” She started to get up, only to pause when I sent her a sharp look. She smiled lightly, more amused than anything, before lifting up her robe to reveal her wound. Over the past few years, I’ve seen more than my fair share of blaster wounds and the one that marked her torso wasn’t one that happened recently. It looked weeks old, far in the process of becoming a nasty looking scar but nothing else. 

“Force healing,” Padawan supplied an answer for my unspoken question. “Master Okkur...we’ve been at war for so long now, that he decided to teach me more advanced techniques. Force healing, force suggestion, and force concealment.” I see they were taking the Batman approach to naming their techniques. “He said that they were invaluable wartime skills…”

Okkur sounded like a pragmatic guy. “You’ve been staring at my ship for some time now,” I stated bluntly, seeing her wince ever so slightly, realizing that she had been caught. I kept my eyes on her hands, wary of the force suggestion technique she just mentioned. I could see how this was going to go down all too easily -- if I refused to let her use my ship to escape the planet, then she would ‘convince me’ to let her use it anyway. 

People were people. Labels like good and bad were simply molds -- perspectives that could change by simply looking at the situation from a different angle. If being a good guy meant you were good, then phrases like ‘for the greater good’ or ‘lesser evil’ wouldn’t exist. I’m sure that stealing my ship was by far the lesser evil compared to letting the Sith attack the Republic capital. 

“I-” Padawan started to talk, but I couldn’t give her justification for mind-controlling me to handing over the keys. “You...would be willing to help me?” Padawan ventured, sounding relieved. She practically sagged into my bed, her hands dropping back down to her empty cup of water. 

“It doesn’t work yet,” I cut her off. “But, it’s almost there. I installed the hyperdrive, but I don’t have any fuel or an OS that can handle calculating hyperspeed travel.” I explained, reaching out with the Force to pour her another glass. Water was extremely valuable on this planet, but if I was getting off it soon then I could afford to splurge a little with my reserves. 

“You do not have to use your ship on me,” Padawan offered half-heartedly. “I can see the time and care you have spent on it. I can steal a ship on my own,” she pointed out but I was already shaking my head. 

“Cadinth doesn’t have much of an Empire presence, but if those plans are important as you said, then they’re going to be locking down every spaceport. You won’t be able to take off before you get shot down.” I refuted, “and that’s assuming that they don’t have the planet blockaded.” 

I couldn’t picture the scale of the Empire-Republic war. The closest thing I could compare it to was World War II, and only through a textbook. When entire planets were treated as cities, and armies that numbered in the millions -- it was hard to imagine. If what I gathered from Padawan’s explanation and metaknowledge thanks to my loner background, it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine that they would do whatever it took to make sure that no one could get off-planet or communicate with anyone 

“Time is on their side. If they keep you here until the plan is completed, then they still win. You need a ship that can take off outside of the spaceports, and won’t show up on any kind of space traffic registry.” In other words, my ship. “What we need is an astrodroid and fuel.”

“The Force does work in mysterious ways,” Padawan said with a small laugh, smiling at me in a way that forced me to look away in embarrassment. And when she said the Force, I’m pretty sure she meant the Plot. “I promise you that you will be rewarded for this, young one. I’ll make sure of it.”

I glanced over at what will be a flying brick soon enough before I looked over at Padawan. “Getting off this planet will be reward enough for me,” I said, not wanting to come across too greedy. Getting off this planet was just step one. The second would be finding out where Earth was and finding out if I was either in the distant future, another reality, or whatever else could explain my presence here. 

“Perhaps you could join the Jedi order. After seeing this,” Padawan gestured to my base, “and with your abilities, I’m positive you could become a Jedi Knight in no time.”

That sounded like a compliment, so I took it as one. 

"Then let's go steal a droid and some fuel to save the Republic."