IdeasGuy
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My highschool adventure as a Sith is wrong, as expected (OreGairu/Star Wars) (ch.1)
🕑 Added 2019-12-17 19:07:16 +0000 UTCThis is a new story I've been working on for some time, and now that I have a nice backlog of chapters, with the upcoming trainwreck of the Rise of Skywalker just around the corner, this seems as good of a time as any to post this.
Updates will likely either be on Wednesday or Thursday, the average chapter will be about 5000 words. Let me know what you think!
...
Escapism is one of the few lies that transcend race, religion, culture and personal beliefs. It is a lie that had stood against the test of time, a lie that is intrinsic to the human race as breathing and eating. Since the first humans, as they huddled around fires in their caves, they used this lie to distract them from reality. That they weren’t scavengers surrounded by predators and that they weren’t one sneeze away from certain death.
Escapism is one of the few things that all people have in common -- the desire to not be where you are for any number of reasons. Escapism came in many forms over the tens of thousands of years it existed. From cavemen drawing on the walls of caves, to peasants playing samurai in the Sengoku period, to the modern era where objectively better methods of experiencing escapism came to be. Books, movies, anime, video games and so on.
Because satisfaction was a fleeting feeling. It only lasted for moments at a time, to be recalled fondly years later as your brain purposely forgot the hard work it took to achieve that feeling. Because for something to be satisfying, it must be worked for. It must be earned. Something handed to you on a silver platter might be gratifying, but it will never be satisfying.
The lie of escapism is a short cut to the feeling of satisfaction. A knockoff. It distracts you from your miserable nine to five job as a corporate slave, or worse, as a high school student while allowing you to live vicariously through another. When people read a fantasy book, when they became absorbed in the characters and lore of a world, whether they admitted it or not, they wanted to be in those worlds. They wanted to escape the confines of this world and leave their problems, no matter how big or small, behind them. To have a clean slate.
When you escape to these worlds that existed only on paper and in your mind when you have left your worries behind you, that feeling of satisfaction when you slay the evil dragon that terrorizes a kingdom...it is a lie. It's fake. But it feels genuine. It feels good. And it's so much easier to obtain this fleeting feeling in the confines of your mind than it is in reality.
That lie of satisfaction is called gratification. Something that is far easier to achieve with countless methods to obtain it.
It was because of this that the Isekai genre had all but taken over the anime industry -- manga-kas and otakus alike finally learned that they didn't have to bother with the thin disguise for their trashy self-inserts. The market was flooded with them, you couldn't throw a stone in a light-novel store without hitting a half dozen isekai stories with their own gimmick. They were slowly choking the life out of the anime industry! Because Iseaki anime sold, so every single one got an adaptation, no matter how stupid or poorly written and since there was only so much money, the companies chose to push out crap over quality, classical-.
The point is that the Isekai genre blew up like it did because it made it so very easy to picture yourself in the generic protagonist shoes. The genre indulged the power fantasies that we all secretly wished to experience by handing out OP abilities like they're candy, to throw harems at generic protagonist so dull that they literally have no personality traits so the reader can picture themselves in their shoes easier. All of these things to get the readers and watchers hooked on this false sense of satisfaction when the protagonist does something difficult and amazing.
However, the Isekai genre was make-believe. Escapism and reality were like oil and water, they could only touch but never mix.
At least that's what I thought when BMW-sama claimed my life to turn me into a generic Isekai protagonist. All because a girl couldn't keep her dog on a leash. It ran out into the center of the road, across a busy street, directly towards me as if it could smell the bento in my backpack. There had been a distinct lack of thought when I jumped off my bike to save the dog. My body had simply moved on its own accord.
I hadn't felt the impact. My body had turned off, like a lightswitch. I only knew I was hit by something when I came to a rolling stop, a squirming bundle of fur in my arms. My first thoughts weren't if the dog was okay, or what had hit me. I knew the answers to those -- it was a busy street, so obviously a car had hit me and the dog better be okay after I shielded it with my body.
No, my first thought was why I couldn't move anything. My second was wondering who was screaming. I never got to make it to my third thought because everything went black.
That was how I found myself here.
….
“I hate sand,” I declared to myself and not for the first time. Sand was a blight upon the galaxy — it got everywhere, even the place where it should be impossible to get to just because it didn’t care about how tight or solid your clothes are. It would find a way to get down your pants, into your socks and firmly plant itself wherever nook and cranny that would irritate the most.
To prove the point, I pushed my makeshift goggles up and rubbed a few grains of black sand out of my eyes. Which probably didn’t help since I’m sure I was just rubbing dust and more sand into them, but it was the thought that counts.
“I need better goggles,” I muttered, blinking a few times to make sure that whatever was left in my eyes wasn’t going to irritate me for the rest of the day. Satisfied, I returned the thread-thin, ripped rag back to its rightful place. Murky glass let me see through it, and the lenses were probably the problem. They were stitched in hazardily, giving sand all the opportunity it needed to slip into the small gaps in the cloth.
With a small huff, I turned my attention back to my work. Dust covered hands tipped with filthy fingernails -- a far, far, far cry from the soft and clean hands of before, I grabbed a superconductor that took the form of a long tube and started turning. As my body worked, my mind wandered, as it so often did.
I’m lucky that I got here first. Amazingly so. The black sand oceans of Cadinth had a habit of swallowing starships whole so a quick response was everything for scavengers, such as myself. Not exactly sure what happened, but a quick battle took place between someone and another. Obviously, someone lost and was shot down, otherwise, I wouldn’t be stripping the Y-wing for useful parts.
The tail fin marked it as the property of the Republic, but I was just going to ignore that. For one, we were in Sith territory, and two, I invoked the ancient right of finders keepers, losers weepers. Meaning, it was mine up until someone bigger and meaner than me found it and decided that it was theirs.
As I worked, I glanced behind me and scanned the tops of the dunes for any sign of life. Just as the last ten times I did it, I found nothing but it didn’t help that pit of unease that formed in my gut.
Anything that seemed too good to be true always was. Someone could be waiting me out, letting me do all of the hard work before swooping in and taking everything from me.
Closing my eyes, I reached out with my near-useless ability that labeled me the Protagonist in this setting. A sense of awareness stretched out around me. It was...hard to put into words. Before this, before I found myself in the body of an infant on this desert planet, I use to put my house key on my nightstand next to my phone every day after school. That way I never had to think about where it was or worry that I lost it.
Every morning I would roll out of bed, shower, get dressed and pocket my phone and key. And, every night, I would come home, place that key on my nightstand before hopping into bed. A well-oiled routine that was only broken by my abrupt arrival here.
With my ability, I gained that level of awareness of everything around me. I knew where all the little scraps and pieces broke off and landed during the crash, some that I would dig out and add to my collection. It didn’t stretch very far, little more than fifty feet in every direction, which sounded like a lot but in the vast ocean of sand it seemed like nowhere near enough.
It was a large jump from the five feet or so that I started with and I could only hope I increased my range at the same speed. But, even if the range did grow, I couldn’t help but feel cheated. My OP ability that isekai protagonists were supposed to have wasn’t OP at all. In fact, it was next to useless.
Where was my high-class magic in a world that could only cast scrub tier spells? Where was my super powerful body that could punch planets lights out? If this was supposed to be an isekai, then why was it lacking all the fun bits from the isekai stories?!
Still nothing. That knot of tension stubbornly remained between my shoulder blades at the reassurance, even when I used the less specific version that gave a little nudge to my silent search for people. The small nudges that my useless ability gave me didn’t tell me exact distances, but they were all in the direction of Esteria, one of the few spaceports on this godforsaken planet.
With a sigh that sounded suspiciously like a yawn, I turned my attention back to the task at hand just as the superconductor popped off. I reached out with my ability, catching it so it slowly descended into my hand because they were heavy.
At the very least, my nearly useless ability was more than a radar. I could use it for telekinesis as well, though it was fairly limited in that regard. I struggled a lot with lifting heavy things. Superconductors that weighed about twenty pounds, I could manage that fairly easily. After that, the heavier it got the more I had to exert some unseen mana bar. Lifting a ship out of the sands it crashed in was asking for the impossible for me.
Gently tossing the superconductor into my sand skiff, which was becoming dangerously overfull, I went back into the guts of the Y-wing. As one would expect in a crash, most of the components were damaged and what wasn’t were in the following explosion that ensued when the fuel stores caught on fire. However, even damaged, the components could be sold for a profit. Or better, to be repaired with other broken components and sold for an even greater profit.
My ability nudged me to two things in particular. It was hard to describe in words, but it was like searching for something you knew you lost -- you looked in the most obvious places first. My ability nudged me to look there for something. Using telekinesis, I accelerated my clearing of the path to it by unscrewing dozens of small bolts, unsealing seamless weldings and unhooking ports at the same time with my nearly useless ability.
I died and I could do things with my mind that I could do with a wrench. I probably saved ten whole minutes there. Even still, I was inside the actual guts of the ship within a few minutes.
My efforts revealed a small box. An intact small box. A small box that I never, ever, expected to see intact in a crash due to the habit of the fuel line exploding when on fire, and this was where the fuel lines connected.
“Payday,” I whispered underneath my breath, touching the hyperdrive almost lovingly. Relatively small, a one by two rectangle that was the center and arguably the most important part of the ship. Tenderly, I began unscrewing the superconductors and unhooking ports.
Within a minute, I unhooked the invaluable piece of equipment from its rightful spot, not believing my luck.
As in I actually didn’t believe it.
Is it broken? It didn’t look like it, but maybe there was a jostled piece on the inside. Whoever crashed the ship did a good job, all things considered. Well enough that they managed to walk away, if the fact there wasn’t a corpse in the cockpit was anything to go by. There hadn’t been any tracks in the black sand that covered this planet, but there was a sandstorm last night so the tracks could have just been wiped away.
I have the parts to repair it. It’ll just take time. Time. Something I had plenty of but every second I spent on this desert hellhole was one too many. Regardless, I used my ability to gently float the priceless piece down and tenderly placed it in my skiff. It hovered over the ground, though greatly weighed down underneath the valuable cargo. I couldn’t say that I got everything, but with a crash like this…
This was a republic fighter. I couldn’t claim to understand anything about this place, but what I did know was that the Sith and the Republic were enemies. They were enemies that have been enemies for literally thousands of years. Actually, I’m pretty sure they were at war at the moment. So, a republican fighter on this planet meant bad things for the Sith.
I hadn’t heard of any battle taking place, so that meant this was a lone agent. A lone agent that probably survived. Meaning, that lone agent was probably carrying some super-valuable information that was vital to the war effort. Going by anime logic, it wouldn’t be long before the Sith investigated the crashed ship.
I did not want to be here when they were. Scraps weren’t worth a second trip.
Then I turned my attention to the second thing my ability was nudging me towards. I had already cleared most of the way to it, so it only took a short minute to get to a scorched wall. Or, rather, the panel that made up the wall. Reaching out, I unsealed is, moving it to the side as my eyes searched for what it might contain. If it wasn’t for my ability, I would have missed it entirely.
Hidden inside a tube was a datastick. It almost looked like a USB, but narrower. I looked down at it with some suspicion, turning it over to see if it had any warning to not look at what it contained.
For a split second, I was half tempted to leave it here. Whatever was on it, it was worth someone going out of their way to hide it. Given that this was a Republican ship shot down in Sith territory, I’m guessing that it was nothing I wanted to poke my nose into. Or, just as likely, I could trade it for some of the final parts that I needed.
But, my ability guided me towards it. That same ability that warned me of danger. I found it difficult to trust something that I didn’t understand, but looking at my abilities track record, it hadn’t lead me astray yet. So, against my better judgment, I tucked the data stick into my pocket.
With my payday firmly secured, I walked over to the driver's seat and hopped in. I reached out with my ability, searching for anyone nearby but finding no one. I looked up to see the dull blue sky hanging above, not a single cloud in sight to offer a hint of protection from the two suns in the sky.
“Something's going to go wrong,” I told myself, feeling from more alarmed at my stroke of good fortune than overjoyed. No matter how I looked at it, this ship was an Event Flag. The Sith would be coming to this relatively useless planet. The Republic agent would be trying to get off-planet, which would eventually rope whatever poor smuggler they convinced to help them into a great big mess since we were deep in Sith territory.
...I should stay out of town for a few days. Just to avoid any possible flag tripping. I wanted off this planet, but not that bad.
Grabbing the rope tied to the front, I used my ability to help pull it over the sand dunes. It was far, far, far, far too heavy for me to even think about moving it without help. All the while I reached out and did the same to the ship. Underneath where it crashed, I felt the countless grains of sand before I used my ability to shift them outwards.
I didn’t so much as glance over my shoulder as the ship began to steadily sink underneath the sand. Much like a ship in water, it steadily sunk as it took on more and more sand and it faded from view entirely. The sand smoothed out, repliating what the dune would have looked like before the crash.
Nothing so much as hinted that the crash ever happened at all. If the Sith found it then I knew they were specifically searching for it. If they were, then I was going to hand it over to them as soon as I could and call it a day.
I kept walking, erasing my trail with every step.
…
Home was a sand dune. Or rather, hidden inside a sand dune. Yet again reaching out with my ability, I found that I was alone. With a single gesture, sand blew away from the entrance to my home and revealed a steel door. The sand muffled the grinding sound as I forcefully opened it as well, revealing a tattered sheet to keep out stray sand.
With one last look over my shoulder, I started pulling my skiff in.
My base was larger than needed. Especially considering that it was the cargo hold of a crashed freighter. Most of the ship was too damaged to bother clearing out but I knew it was old. Very old. So old that no one knew it was here, buried underneath a mountain of sand only to be discovered purely by accident.
It took a month to stealthy alter the dunes enough that a reasonable path could be cleared to it. It took another month to make it readily accessible and weeks to clear it of sand and whatever critters took up residence. That was two years ago.
Fifty feet tall and nearly a hundred feet long, I had plenty of space for projects and my things. A bed rested next to the door, flanked by open creates with makeshift shelves for clothes and things. A small table nearby and a bent chair salvaged from the cafeteria of this ship for meals, which left a lot of room.
It left a lot of empty space to fill and fill it I did. Hundreds of parts of varying shapes and sizes, almost like an assembly line. Though, it looked far more impressive than it was. Everything left in here was junk that other scrappers passed over. Dozens of broken parts would be pieced together to make one functioning one. Mostly from sites that were picked clean of the good stuff and were slowly gathered through the years.
A cash farm, as it were. Especially considering that actual farming was impossible. Dirt wasn’t a thing on Cadinth and moisture farming required very specific equipment. Not that I could do those things at all, because it took licenses to sell food and water. Getting them as a slave was impossible. Getting them as an escaped slave was extra impossible.
All for one thing that took up most of the room.
“I’ve got something for you,” I told the brick hanging by support platforms. A brick with the aspirations of becoming a flying brick.
Twenty feet long, ten feet wide and ten feet tall and, as mentioned, very much shaped like a brick. Two large ion thrusters on the back, smaller ones dotting the sides, top, and bottom. A seamless metallic gray since aesthetics was the very last concern I had. All of the weldings were, once again, thanks to my ability.
A cockpit filled with more salvaged equipment that also served as the entrance to the living area. In the limited space not being used for fuel, equipment or storage was the bedroom. The chair, once autopilot was engaged, slid back and served as a bed while allowing me to roll off of it to a rudimentary kitchen -- which just translated to a place where I could pour a liquid on dehydrated nutrient meals to eat. It wasn’t a lot of room, but it was enough for me to stretch my legs and not go insane from the streaks of light of hyperspace.
Abandoning subtly, I used my ability to unload the entire skiff at once. Superconductors, computer components, fuel lines, and countless bits and pieces flew to their rightful places on the shelves in a flood. I couldn’t lift larger things very well, but over time I figured out how to move a lot of smaller things. Mostly to get rid of sand. With absolute precision, they settled at the same time, letting me focus on disassembling the hyperdrive to check for damage.
“Rocket science isn’t what it used to be,” I commented with some amusement. It was to be expected, in hindsight. Space flight entered the civilian market. All of the components to build your own spaceship could be bought on the extronet and they could be bought on the cheap. Well, you could if you didn’t live on Cadinth. Guides for building spaceships were available for purchase. It wasn’t cheap, by any means, but it is entirely possible for one kid to build one on his own purely through scavenging.
All it needed were a few pieces, one of which was the hyperdrive.
Pulling up to my ship, I looked at where the hyperdrive was supposed to go. It would take some delicate work to attach everything in it, so I couldn’t risk my makeshift tools for this. Closing my eyes, I reached out with my ability, feeling my ship respond almost physically. I dreamed of this moment since I decided to build a ship to get off this planet. I knew exactly what to do.
Hours passed as I hooked in wires, connected superconductors, and fused metal into place with my ability. It was beyond tedious work, but that was okay. I’d rather be bored out of my mind for hours on end rather than spread out across the galaxy because I didn’t double-check every wire.
I couldn’t spare not giving the hyperdrive my full attention, so it came as a shock when I finally opened my eyes and realized that my body was stiff. I must have been sitting there for hours. About eight, if the clock tucked into a corner could be believed. Standing up, my small body didn’t make the sounds I was used to when I did the same stretches in my old life.
There were no cracks and pops. Just the feeling of bliss as I stretched out taut muscles. I guess that would change once this body began to grow.
Ignoring my growling stomach, I walked up to the hyperdrive to see that it was firmly in place, looking like it belonged there. I reached out with my ability, feeling how the hyperdrive seemed to harmonize with the machine.
I had the parts of a spaceship, but I was lacking an OS to run system checks for me, so I was stuck doing it the hard way with trial and error. Eventually, if I paid close attention, I learned that when I felt that a piece would work with my ability, then it usually did. I still didn’t know exactly what my ability was, but if it couldn’t be overpowered, then the least it could be was multifaceted.
Despite my progress, it wasn’t done yet. For starters, I would need an OS to handle the system. Building one from scratch was well beyond my abilities, so I would have to get my hands on an astrodroid of some kind to rip it out of its droid skull. Not to mention, the hyperdrive needed hypermatter to make my ship anything other than an expensive brick.
I didn’t even know how I was going to get any of that. Not to mention, this brick had to get through the atmosphere, survive in the vacuum of space and make it through hyperspace. Getting a hyperdrive was a pretty big step forward, but the finish line was still miles away.
A grin found its way onto my face. I’m sure the other back home, back on Earth in my old life, would have called it creepy. And they were probably right. My eyes didn’t exactly complement a young face streaked with dust, so, if anything, it was probably worse now. I could practically hear Komichi teasingly scolding me.
I was going to see them again. It took me five years to take the first step to get home, and I didn’t care if it took me another five to take the next. Ten years, a hundred or a thousand. It didn’t make a difference to me. One day, I would leave this life behind and return to my old one, to my home, with my family.
And there was absolutely nothing this galaxy could do to stop me.
Comments
Ab9999
Interested to see where this goes, well written oregairu fics are a treat :3
marchex
Seems to be promising. Hachiman becoming chuuni at the end made me smile.
