I kept jumping between universes whenever I had the chance.
A few days on Irk.
A few hours on Coruscant.
Sometimes weeks on one side while barely any time passed on the other.
It was still strange, but I was getting used to it.
On Irk, my little side business was doing surprisingly well.
Ten monies for a massage.
Ten monies for fresh sweets.
Cheap enough that even the broke soldiers kept coming back.
Tallers were especially funny.
They’d walk in acting like they were above the whole thing, chin raised, posture stiff, and then five minutes into a massage they’d be practically melting into the table.
Pleasure.
The Irken Empire’s greatest weakness.
Who knew?
The extra money gave me room to experiment.
I’d already started ordering alien plants through the black market—anything rumored to increase energy, improve healing, reduce fatigue, whatever sounded useful.
Irken delivery systems apparently didn’t believe in subtlety.
Every package arrived inside a small meteorite capsule that slammed into the delivery zone like artillery.
After weeks of grinding herbs, mixing chemicals, ruining batches, and generally having no idea what the hell I was doing…
I finally got something.
A little bottle of glowing red liquid.
I held it up.
Focused.
And—
Minor Health Potion — Restores 10% HP.
…
I stared at it.
Then at the description floating in front of me.
“Restores ten percent of my health?”
I blinked.
That was new.
I’d never seen an item’s description before.
Then at the crushed green leaves on my table.
“How the fuck did green turn into red?”
For curiosity’s sake, I stared at Led from the armory the same way.
Nothing appeared.
He noticed me staring and got uncomfortable.
So that was useless.
I looked at a cookie instead.
Cookie — Decreases Fatigue.
Interesting.
Useful for humans.
Mostly pointless for Irkens.
We didn’t sleep.
Still…
I immediately started thinking about Coruscant.
There were a lot of tired people over there.
Potential customers.
Meanwhile, the Jedi were doing their best to turn me into a proper little monk.
The Jedi Code came first.
There is no emotion, there is peace.
Sure.
Whatever you say.
I had literally been engineered by an empire that considered emotional attachment inefficient, and even I thought the Jedi took it too far sometimes.
The next few months settled into a routine.
Classes.
Meditation.
Physical training.
More classes.
More meditation.
More lectures about not being emotionally attached to things.
At first, they placed me with the four-to-eight-year-old younglings.
That lasted about a month.
I was already ahead of them in basic Force control, healing, theory, and most of the classroom material.
Also, some of them still ate things they weren’t supposed to.
So eventually I got moved into the older group.
Eight to twelve.
That’s where I found him.
Anakin.
He smiled when I sat beside him.
Not politely.
Actually smiled.
Like he was relieved somebody had chosen to sit there.
I understood why pretty quickly.
He didn’t fit in.
Too old when he arrived.
Too powerful.
Too emotional.
Too obviously different.
Most of the other younglings had grown up together.
Anakin hadn’t.
His growth with the Force was ridiculous.
Things that took other students months or years to understand, he figured out in weeks.
I started disappearing back to DIRT for weeks at a time just to train privately so he wouldn’t completely leave me behind.
The bastard was naturally gifted.
I had infinite free time.
Fair trade.
Somehow that turned us into friends.
Neither of us really fit with the rest of the younglings, so instructors kept pairing us together.
Classes.
Sparring.
Exercises.
Anything involving technology.
And, eventually, trouble.
Anakin also discovered very quickly that he was taller than me.
He abused this knowledge constantly.
“Maybe next time, shorty.”
He’d hold his palm over my head just high enough that I couldn’t reach it without jumping.
“I’m one,” I’d remind him.
“You’re still short.”
“I’m tall for one.”
He never accepted that argument.
Night was where things got complicated.
Jedi slept.
I didn’t.
At first, the Masters genuinely didn’t seem to know what to do with me.
They tried telling me to sleep.
I explained that Irkens physically didn’t need sleep.
Then they suggested meditation.
For eight hours.
Every night.
Eventually somebody must’ve realized that forcing a youngling to sit alone in a room for eight straight hours staring at a wall wasn’t exactly healthy either.
So…
They mostly stopped trying.
Which meant nights belonged to me.
I explored.
Trained.
Read.
Ran across rooftops.
Practiced moving through the Temple without waking anyone.
One night I was running along a high Temple walkway, using tiny bursts of telekinesis to soften each landing.
Then—
DING.
Skill Gained: Enhanced Movement (Lv 1 / 10).
Oh.
Nice.
It wasn’t anything revolutionary.
Plenty of Jedi used the Force to improve movement.
Still useful.
I also started liking Coruscant.
The planet reminded me a little of what I imagined Irk might’ve been like before the Empire covered everything useful in military infrastructure.
Buildings everywhere.
Ships everywhere.
People everywhere.
No silence.
The Archives became another favorite place.
My PAK loved them.
Maps.
History.
Xenobiology.
Ship design.
Weapons.
Jedi biographies.
Old records.
There were Force techniques in there I’d never even heard of.
Pyrokinesis.
Dream manipulation.
Teleportation.
Time alteration.
Force abilities got absurd once you dug deep enough.
Naturally, I tried all the cool ones.
Fire?
Nothing.
Gravity manipulation?
Nothing.
Messing with time?
Absolutely fucking nothing.
The Force apparently believed I needed to learn patience.
The basics improved, though.
Force Sight.
Telekinesis.
Imbue.
Healing.
Slowly.
Steadily.
Unlike Anakin, Obi-Wan wasn’t around all the time.
He had missions.
Council business.
Actual responsibilities.
Which meant Anakin spent a lot of his free time bothering me instead.
That was how we started sneaking into the Lower Levels.
Anakin wanted podracing.
I wanted customers.
Everybody wins.
I had those fatigue-reducing cookies now, and Coruscant was full of people who actually got tired.
I considered bringing health potions too, but this galaxy already had bacta.
Selling weird red mystery liquid when hospitals could regrow your skin seemed unnecessary.
Our Lower Level trips almost got us caught constantly.
Mostly because Anakin had the subtlety of a crashing ship.
We’d throw robes over him and pretend he was some short alien.
Meanwhile, nobody knew what species I was anyway.
A perfect disguise.
One human child poorly pretending not to be human.
And one actual alien nobody could identify.
We ran from security more than once.
“Maybe next time, shorty!” Get faster updates on g.com.
Anakin yelled that while we were sprinting across a maintenance catwalk with security behind us.
I just lost our non-verbalized race
Turbines were roaring beneath the floor.
“Maybe next time you’ll grow a second brain!”
I yelled back.
Enhanced Movement kept my footing steady while we ran.
Neither of us stopped sneaking out.
I literally had nothing else to do at night.
How Anakin functioned after losing three to five hours of sleep every time he joined me remained a mystery.
The Temple still tried to give me a normal routine.
Morning training.
Afternoon lessons.
Evening sparring.
The Archive periods were almost pointless for me because my PAK could process information much faster than a normal student.
That left me with even more free time.
The Masters told me to rest.
Physically, I adjusted to the Temple pretty quickly.
Mentally…
Less so.
The robes were annoying.
The meditation chants got repetitive.
And occasionally I got these strange flashes around certain aliens.
Disgust.
Not normal dislike.
Something sharper.
Instinctive.
A few Masters triggered it too.
I’d see a species my Irken brain apparently didn’t approve of and something inside me would immediately go—
Wrong.
I kept it hidden.
Mostly.
DING.
Passive Progression: Force Veil (Lv 1 → 2).
Apparently not well enough.
Anakin and I eventually developed a routine.
Classes.
Sparring.
Then we’d disappear for “errands.”
He loved machinery almost as much as I did.
We started collecting random ship parts.
Engines.
Control components.
Anything interesting enough to steal—
Acquire.
Anything interesting enough to acquire.
We got caught once carrying several boxes back toward the Temple.
The Jedi Knight staring at us looked deeply unimpressed.
“We’re studying aerodynamics,” I told him.
He looked at the boxes.
Then at us.
“In a practical setting.”
Silence.
Beside me, Anakin whispered—
“Maybe next time.”
Then placed his hand on my head.
I elbowed him.
He grinned.
Our parts got confiscated.
Bastards.
THWACK!
Our training sticks slammed together.
Anakin pushed forward.
I twisted.
Used the Force to slightly adjust the angle of my parry.
He immediately compensated.
Annoying bastard.
I’d started using tiny Force tricks constantly during sparring.
Nothing dramatic.
Just enough telekinesis to improve a block.
Reduce impact on a landing.
Shift a bind.
Small advantages.
Anakin noticed and started doing the exact same shit back to me.
DING.
Skill Progression: Lightsaber (Lv 1 → 2).
My attention flicked toward the notification.
Bad idea.
THWACK!
Wood struck me directly across the face.
I hit the floor.
“Ow.”
Anakin stood over me, breathing hard and smiling.
“Again?”
I rolled onto my back.
“Again.”
The next match was closer.
I almost had him.
Then one of my antennae snagged awkwardly against his sleeve during a movement.
That tiny mistake cost me.
He won.
Again.
Then the doors opened.
Great.
Them.
Zeephy Rho.
Twi’lek.
Tala Vress.
Togruta.
They disliked us.
Not even subtly.
They hated our unofficial trips.
Our sparring scores.
The fact that Anakin learned too fast.
The fact that I cheated at basically everything through technology.
Honestly, they mostly just hated us.
The feeling was mutual.
A while earlier, Anakin had knocked one of them flat during training.
Tala had immediately started lecturing.
“That’s not the Jedi way.”
Anakin looked confused.
She pointed at him.
“Your habit of taking shortcuts.”
He’d only been trying to push them harder.
Unfortunately for them, Anakin pushing harder usually meant somebody ended up on the floor.
“It’s efficient,” I said.
“Efficiency is compassion for the future.”
Zeephy looked at me.
“That sounds like something a droid would say.”
“Thank you.”
He frowned.
“If you’re so efficient, why are you still in the youngling clans?”
Anakin answered before I could.
“Why are you still losing to me?”
…
And that pretty much established the relationship permanently.
Now the four of us just stared at each other.
They scowled.
Anakin and I started putting our gear away.
I had to admit something, though.
My dislike of them wasn’t entirely based on personality.
There was something underneath it.
Something ugly.
They were aliens.
And some part of my Irken instincts cared about that more than I wanted to admit.
Humans didn’t trigger it as badly.
Maybe because I’d once been one.
Maybe some part of my old mind still recognized them as familiar.
Other species?
Sometimes the reaction was immediate.
I didn’t like that.
Mostly because I couldn’t fully control it.
By month four, another problem appeared.
I kept unlocking completely useless skills.
DING.
Skill Gained: Dancing (Lv 1 / 10).
…
Why?
DING.
Skill Gained: Woodworking (Lv 1 / 10).
Also why?
At least Sneaking made sense.
DING.
Skill Progression: Sneaking (Lv 1 → 2).
Can’t hear me, can’t see me.
Dancing happened because of Quinlan Vos.
Anakin and I were in the Lower Levels again when we spotted him.
Quinlan fucking Vos.
Jedi Knight.
He was stumbling down the street with a giant drink in one hand and a woman hanging off the other arm.
Clearly drunk.
Very Jedi-like.
We immediately panicked.
If he recognized us, we were screwed.
So we did the only reasonable thing.
We joined a crowd of street performers.
And started dancing.
I hated every second of it.
Vos stumbled past.
I watched him go.
Jedi, huh?
What a pathetic—
He turned.
My thoughts stopped.
For one second…
I felt something.
Clarity.
Not mine.
His.
Like something in his mind had briefly brushed against mine.
My eyes immediately moved away.
Don’t look.
Don’t think.
Just dance.
I could feel his attention on us for another few seconds.
Then it disappeared.
Anakin and I waited until he was completely gone.
Then immediately left.
I never mentioned what I’d almost thought around him.
The xenophobic spikes continued.
And of course Shaak Ti noticed.
Because Shaak Ti noticed everything.
“You become tense around certain species.”
We were meditating.
I kept my eyes closed.
“I become tense around most species.”
Technically true.
My instincts supplied something less charitable.
Worms.
I ignored it.
“I’m working on it.”
“Then work on it with me.”
Of course.
That became a recurring thing.
Meditation.
Breathing.
Shaak Ti quietly waiting for me to admit what I was actually thinking.
Me refusing.
Good times.
Back on Irk, business kept growing.
Massages.
Cooking.
Sweets.
Word spread.
Soldiers started lining up.
Even Tallers.
Especially Tallers.
My potion business also expanded, although I kept that anonymous.
No chance I was attaching my actual identity to experimental black-market medicine.
I used the handle—
RedComet.
Minor Health Potions sold slowly.
Carefully.
Nobody ever met me directly.
Orders came in.
Meteorite delivery capsules kept smashing into the receiving area.
Money kept appearing.
Perfect system.
DING.
Passive Progression: Merchant (Lv 2 → 3).
DING.
Skill Progression: Alchemy (Lv 1 → 2).
DING.
Skill Progression: Herbalism (Lv 1 → 2).
Scat eventually noticed how many orders I was getting.
“Keep it quiet.”
He wasn’t wrong.
The customer base was growing a little too quickly.
Last thing I needed was the Control Brains wondering why some random smeet had started manufacturing medicine.
Temple training kept progressing too.
Anakin and I got better at mixing the Force into movement.
Tiny bursts of telekinesis during obstacle courses.
Enhanced jumps.
Controlled falls.
Wall runs.
It reminded me a lot of Cal Kestis.
Which was funny considering he technically existed somewhere in this galaxy right now.
Probably as a toddler.
DING.
Skill Progression: Lightsaber (Lv 2 → 3).
DING.
Skill Progression: Brawling (Lv 3→ 4).
DING.
Skill Progression: Sprinting (Lv 3→ 4).
DING.
Skill Progression: Acrobatics (Lv 2→ 3).
DING.
Skill Progression: Enhanced Movement (Lv 2 → 3).
DING.
Skill Progression: Parkour (Lv 3 → 4).
Progress.
Actual useful progress.
Then, for some reason, I kept woodworking.
And dancing.
And sneaking around corners for no reason other than seeing if I could.
My skill list was becoming ridiculous.
Shaak Ti caught me dancing once.
Headphones were clamped awkwardly around my antennae.
I froze mid-spin.
She stood in the doorway.
There was amusement in the Force before I even looked at her face.
“That is unusual.”
“It’s cardio.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“For what?”
“For the war.”
“What war?”
I gestured vaguely at the entire galaxy.
“Whichever one starts next.”
She stared at me for several seconds.
Then walked away.
I chose to count that as a victory.
By the end of the year…
I had adapted.
Mostly.
The Temple no longer felt completely alien.
I understood the routine.
I knew which Masters tolerated me.
Which ones watched me carefully.
Which hallways had weak security.
Anakin had become my closest friend whether either of us wanted to admit it or not.
Our rivalry was fully established.
Zeephy and Tala hated us.
My Force Veil was improving.
My basic Force skills were progressing.
The fancy abilities still refused to cooperate.
No teleportation.
No fire.
No slowing time.
Fine.
I had years.
A decade, if everything went roughly according to schedule.
Plenty of time.
One day I’d have armies.
Planets.
Undead legions.
Whatever else this insane life eventually handed me.
For now?
I had illegal podracing trips with the future Chosen One.
A black-market potion business.
And a disturbing number of customers addicted to my cookies.
We all had to start somewhere.
CLASS: Necromancer (Lv 3 / 100)
HP: 50 / 50
MP: 150 / 150
SP: 50 / 50
Unallocated Stat Points: 10
STATS
STR: 5
END: 5
DEX: 5
INT: 10(+50)
WIS: 15
CHA: 10
LCK: 10
ACTIVE SKILLS
Raise Undead (Lv 1 / 10)
Force Sight (Lv 5 / 10)
Force Telekinesis (Lv 4 / 10)
Force Imbue (Lv 3 / 10)
Force Heal (Lv 3 / 10)
Precognition (Lv 1 / 10)
PASSIVE SKILLS
Force-Based Skills
Force Sensitive (Lv 5 / 10)
Force Meditation (Lv 4 / 10)
Force Veil (Lv 2 / 10)
Physical / Combat Skills
Sprinting (Lv 4 / 10)
Acrobatics (Lv 3 / 10)
Climbing (Lv 2 / 10)
Parkour (Lv 3 / 10)
Brawling (Lv 4 / 10)
Melee Weapons (Lv 1 / 10)→ Knives (Lv 2 / 10)→Lightsaber (Lv 3 / 10)
Stun Resistance (Lv 1/10)
Marksmanship (Lv 3/10)
Ranged Weapons (Lv 3/10)→ Small Arms (Lv 4/10)
Dancing (Lv 2 / 10)
Sneaking (Lv 2 / 10)
Utility / Social / Misc Skills.
Anatomy (Lv 2 / 10)
Butcher (Lv 1 / 10)
Chemistry (Lv 2 / 10)
Traps (Lv 2 / 10)
Mechanics (Lv 3 / 10)
Computers (Lv 1 / 10)
Advanced Weaponsmith (Lv 4 / 10)
Masseuse (Lv 7 / 10)
Cooking (Lv 7 / 10)
Merchant (Lv 5 / 10)
Woodworking (Lv 1 / 10)
Alchemy (Lv 2 / 10)
Herbalism (Lv 2 / 10)
TRAITS
Mana Gifted
One with THE FORCE
2nd Mind
Robotic Stamina
Dimensional Traveler