My highschool adventure as a Sith is wrong, as expected (Stage 1.8) (Patreon)

“Hey,” I whisper lamely, trying to shake Padawan awake. With JR-1 shining his flashlight in her face, I saw that her eyes butterflied open, trying to return to the land of consciousness, but not quite managing it. I shook her harder, unsure what else to do because I knew what this was. When I expended the unseen mana bar back when I first experimented with the Force, when I pushed myself to my limits, I collapsed a lot like this. 

The only issue was, I didn’t know how to snap her out of it since I never found a way to avoid the crushing exhaustion other than not pushing myself that far. I tossed my useless blaster to the side, shaking her with both hands to get a low groan from Padawan. “You need to wake up,” I told her, glancing down the tunnel, prompting JR-1 to glance down as well. Thankfully, the tunnel was still empty. 

“I...can…” Padawan started to roll over, trying to push herself up but her arms wobbled like a newborn deer before she fell flat on her face.

Right. I knew where this was going. 

“Come on, we need to get out of here,” I told her as I grabbed one arm and heaved. It was rude to comment on a woman’s weight, but Padawan was heavy. Pure deadweight. I threw an arm over my shoulder, forced to use the Force to help me with the task because she was no help at all. It took some effort, but I managed to get her on my back, her chest pressed against me as her legs dragged behind. 

“Bo-bo-boop-beep?” JR-1 questioned, getting a nod from me as I tried to find a good hold on Padawan. Her arms were loosely wrapped around my shoulders, semi-aware, but not enough to pick herself up. 

“Lead the way,” I ordered, taking a step forward with the hypermatter tucked underneath one arm. As JR-1 hopped forward, his head on a swivel, determined to check absolutely every single shadow before moving forward. The maintenance tunnel was fairly bare except for some grating on the floor that hid ancient pipes. There were lights on the walls, but they had died long ago, leaving the only source of light being JR-1 since Padawan’s beam saber was residing in one of her pockets now. 

“And you try to stay awake,” I told her, trudging forward as sweat began to drip down my forehead already. 

“I...am…” Padawan argued groggily, which was good. Whenever I pushed myself too far, I fell asleep for hours and couldn’t be roused for anything. Given my previous...occupation, that caused no shortage of problems so I learned to never push myself as hard as Padawan seemed to have. 

“Good,” I breathed, feeling better that she was conscious. It meant that I wasn’t alone in these tunnels filled with giant insects. Misery loves company, after all. “Stay awake,” I ordered, getting a breathless laugh that tickled the side of my neck. 

“Your very...odd for a youngling,” Padawan muttered so lowly that I’m not sure she realized she was talking aloud. “Master Okkur s-said that...experience matters little to age...but…” she trailed off, her voice growing thick with emotion. For a moment, my heart dropped to my feet because I was absolutely terrified that she was going to start crying. I wasn’t equipped to handle any of this, but I was even less equipped to handle a crying girl. 

But I heard Padawan take a bracing breath, swallowing a sob that threatened to escape her. I chose to pretend that I hadn’t noticed, what Twi'lek said was still fresh in mind. Hopefully, what she said about torturing him was just trying to get inside her head and make her use the Dark side -- something that I still didn’t understand, because why would you want your enemy to get a power-up in the middle of a fight-

“Your ship,” Padawan interrupted my thoughts as we continued to follow the maintenance tunnel, taking the left that was on the map. Now it was just a straight shot forward. “What’s… its name? All ships have names…” She muttered, and it took me a moment to realize what she was doing. She wasn’t just distracting herself from thoughts about her master’s death but trying to keep herself awake with idle chatter. 

The only problem was, before today, I went about two months without speaking to anyone like a true hermit. And small talk was never a strength in the first place. 

“It’s called the Icarus,” I answered after a moment of thought. I never thought about giving it a name before, it was simply my ship. 

“The Icarus?” Padawan echoed as I nodded, idly noting that JR-1 was trying and failing to pretend that he wasn’t listening. 

“It comes from an old legend,” I explained as I walked forward. From Greece, or somewhere. “About a boy on a mountain that decided to craft a pair of wings instead of climbing down like a normal person. He made them out of sticks, feathers, and wax.”

“Did it work?” Padawan asked, sounding interested. 

“Sort of. When he jumped, the wings caught air and he flew. Somehow. But he got a big head and flew up too close to the sun, so the wax melted off his wings. Then he fell to his death,” I explained, a beat of silence passing for a long moment. “Uh, the end.”

Padwan snorted, surprising me before she descended into giggles. Her body shook as she laughed at my horrible, but likely accurate naming sense. I was thankful that JR-1 was staring ahead, otherwise, the deeply embarrassed flush creeping up my neck would have been noticeable. Her chuckles lasted for a long time, long enough that at the end of the tunnel, I saw another service door that was illuminated by JR-1. 

“Well, let’s hope this Icuras flies better,” Padawan commented with a smile in her voice as we approached the door. Swallowing thickly, both because I didn’t want to admit that I hadn’t done any proper system checks for my ship beyond the Force telling me that it would work, but also because I prepared myself for what I was about to see. 

I reached out to the door, starting to tug at the gears to make the door open, but this time it was much more difficult. The gears ground to a halt, the door itself refusing to budge open. I pressed my lips into a thin line, pushing harder on the cogs, and harder and harder and harder, but they refused to budge. My hand trembled and I couldn’t help but be struck by my own inadequacy. 

Padawan didn’t just hold back a wall of insects, saving our lives, but she pushed them back. She pushed herself to the point she couldn’t even stand up on her own. 

And I couldn’t open a door. 

Then it opened. The Force surged, flowing through my veins like a jolt of electricity. A painfully loud sound of something ripping apart wetly filled the air, followed shortly by a stench that made me gag. I couldn’t even compare it to anything because it was easily the most disgusting thing I had ever smelled. My eyes watered to the point a tear raced down my cheek, swiftly pulling up my robe to breath through my mouth but even through the thin cloth, I could taste the putrid smell. 

But, even still, I inched the door open, and I realized that there was an inch of black...something on the other side of the door. Almost like obsidian, but with a purplish hue to it that made it appear wet. It wasn’t just on the other side of the door, but it lined the walls of the large stadium-like area that served as the waste treatment plant. 

For the briefest of moments, I panicked that another flood of insects was about to attack us because I could hear them. Padawan’s grip tightened on me, JR-1 make a low whirring sound as he glanced over at me. Swallowing the lump in my throat, I tightened my grip on the hypermatter and gave a curt nod. 

JR-1 was either braver than me or not programed to feel fear because he hopped forward, the first to brave the freshly opened area. His head looked to the left, then to the right, my heart hammering at my ribs so hard there was a risk of it punching through them. But, after an impossibly long second, JR-1 turned around and let out a series of low beeps. 

I nodded again, swallowing thickly before I dared to step forward. All too soon, I crossed the threshold and stepped into the waste treatment plant and I was lucky that I hadn’t eaten today because I would have vomited it up. 

At the base of the treatment plant was the source of the stench, a breeding ground for the dune bugs. There were large pools where I’m guessing once treated waste but now were lined with bulbous milky colored eggs about the size of a volleyball that kept in place by the purplish-black stuff. Dune bugs slithered in between them, and at the center was a queen that could best be described as xenomorph looking. 

Easily three times as large as the biggest dune bug we saw so far, the tail of it making to incredibly long as white eggs were lined in it. I watched in morbid fascination as a dune bug tore one of the eggs out before taking it to the wall and holding it there while another pushed malleable black stuff to keep it in place. The queen simply laid there, hopefully asleep, while dozens of dune bugs worked around her. 

The black stuff was everywhere, filling where gaps should be and forming wasp-like tunnel homes. I fought back the impulse to reach out with the Force to try to figure out just how many there were, but I crushed it ruthlessly. Padawan had noticed when I did it, and I didn’t know if these things would too. So, I was just going to assume that there were a lot of them. 

“Calm your mind,” Padawan whispered, “and think of nothing but the task at hand.” She said, trying to lift herself from me, but her legs couldn’t support her weight. She looked at me helplessly, while I simply nodded. I was going to have to carry her...through this. 

Daring to take another step forward, I noticed that there were several rings layered that made up the waste treatment plant. The black stuff covered some of them, but not all. In some of those levels, there were tunnels much like the ones that we had been traveling in. We stood at the top, and from my vantage, I saw that there were at least ten different tunnels.

And the exit could be any one of them. 

We couldn’t check them all. There...there had to be some sort of map. Managing to tear my gaze from below at the active hive of dune bugs crawling about, I searched for some kind of control center. Something that would point us in the right direction. As if my eyes were drawn to it like a magnet, I found it.

Down below. A small squat single room building half-covered by black stuff, but not quite, perfectly poised to overlook the treatment plants and direct the piping that flowed into them. It could only be the command center.

Right. 

Of course, it was. 

"I'm going to have to set you down for a second," I told Padawan, going back into the maintenance hall. "I'll leave JR-1 with you, but I have to get down there to figure out where we're going," I explained as I set Padawan down. For a moment, it looked like she was going to argue, trying to push herself up again, but she barely managed to budge before her strength gave out. 

She took a deep breath, closing her eyes, before she slowly nodded. "Can you do it? Don't lie if you can't -- we'll figure something else out. I promise," she said, trying to sound confident but it fell flat when she was so exhausted she couldn't even stand. 

I bit back a sharp retort because, like it or not, this was our only option. Our only way back was sealed, and even if it wasn't then the city itself was going to be crawling with imperial soldiers or dune bugs if they didn't manage to seal the tunnels. 

"I can do it," I said, having no idea if I was telling the truth or not. "Just sit tight," I told her, standing up. As I did so, my gaze landed on the hilt of Twe'like's beam saber. Padawan didn't fail to notice my gaze, a hand dipping down to it before she held it out to me. 

"Take it. Use it only when you have to, and, whatever you do, do not touch the blade. You'll lose whatever you stick in there. Nodding at the warning, I took the hilt, idly noting that it was heavier than I expected, while I gave her the hypermatter in exchange. "Take the droid with you-" 

"No," I denied, ignoring a low whine from JR-1. "I can't risk the attention. I'll go alone," I decided, clipping the beam saber to my waist and giving her a final nod. Padawan obviously had a problem with that, but she couldn't argue my logic. My only hope was to go unnoticed and having a flashlight in a place that hadn't seen light in over a millennia, or longer, was a recipe for disaster. 

"May the force be with you," Padawan said, nodding at me while JR-1 whistled a quite goodbye. Turning around, I strode towards the exit with what I hoped was more confidence than I felt. As soon as I crossed the threshold, I gestured behind me. 

The darkness that I was plunged into was heavy, nearly suffocating as I couldn't see my own hand in front of my face. I was alone with nothing but the sound of insects slithering about.

Yeah, my escape attempt was going about as well as I expected.