SW Gray Tales 35: Premonitions III

My brain did a hard reboot.

"Wait, I'm crying?" I asked, my voice raspy. I brought a hand up to my face. Sure enough, my cheeks were wet. "Why am I crying?"

Vasha's brow furrowed even deeper. "I don't know, sparkplug. I came in and you were just sitting here, completely still, with tears rolling down your face. I thought... I don't know what I thought." She looked genuinely distressed, which in turn made me feel like an asshole.

"Oh. Uh." I scrambled for a plausible excuse that wasn't 'I was visiting the star-ghost of my past life inside my own brain.' "Must have been a bad dream. Super realistic. There was... a really sad loth-cat. It lost its favorite toy. Tragic stuff."

She stared at me, her expression shifting from concern to deep, profound skepticism. One of her lekku twitched. "A sad loth-cat."

"A very sad loth-cat," I confirmed, nodding with as much conviction as I could muster.

She let out a long, slow sigh, the kind that said, 'I know you're lying, but I'm too tired to call you on it right now.' She gently wiped a tear from my cheek with her thumb. "Alright, you weirdo. Just... don't go having tragic animal dreams without me. I'll fight the dream monster for you."

"Deal," I said, my voice cracking slightly.

She gave my hair a final, gentle ruffle before pulling away, leaving me with the lingering warmth of her touch and the fresh awkwardness of having been caught in a moment I couldn't explain.

I decided that was enough. Enough philosophy, enough metaphysics, enough soul-searching for one day. My brain felt like it had run a marathon through the fifth dimension. Time to wrap it up.

...

...

I jolted awake for the second damn time in as many nights, heart slamming against my ribs like it was trying to punch its way out of my chest. Same breathless panic. Same disorientation where I couldn't tell if I was in the shop or back in that fucking cellar.

Except this time, Vasha was right there.

Her arm was still draped over me, her lekku tangled with mine, her breath warm against the back of my neck. No cold empty space. No frantic search across the mattress. Just her familiar weight and the steady rhythm of her breathing, same as it had been five minutes ago when I fell asleep.

So why did I feel like I'd just run a kilometer uphill?

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to shake the feeling. It wasn't a dream I could remember—it was like waking up in the middle of one I'd already forgotten, with only the emotional hangover left behind. That same awful, nameless dread that made my skin crawl and my pulse race. And weirdly, the first thing my brain latched onto in the panic? Vasha. Always Vasha.

I lay there for what felt like forever, willing my heart to slow the hell down. Eventually, when the adrenaline started to fade but the unease wouldn't, I carefully peeled myself out of her grip. She barely stirred, just mumbled something unintelligible and rolled onto her side, still half-asleep.

The shop was dark and quiet except for the low hum of the power converters in the back room. I shuffled to the kitchen area—more like a corner with a sink and a rusty old water dispenser—and filled a cup. The cool water helped, but my hands were still shaking slightly.

This was the second night. First time I could write it off as stress or bad spice rice. But twice? In a row? Something was definitely wrong, and I had zero clue what it was. No vision. No warning. Just this... feeling. Like I'd missed something important, but I couldn't remember what.

I leaned against the counter, staring into the cup. Is this what Force premonitions felt like? From what I remembered of the holos and comics, they were supposed to be more like... videos. Clear images of something bad happening. Not this vague, emotional fog with no context. Maybe it wasn't the Force at all—maybe my brain was just misfiring after two years of pushing Hyper Perception too hard. Or maybe it was just stress. Or maybe I'd finally cracked under the pressure of pretending to be a kid while feeling like an adult trapped in one.

But then why did it happen again? And why did it always center around her?

I shook my head, trying to clear the thought. It couldn't be a premonition. Premonitions were supposed to be clear, weren't they? Like when I instinctively shoved that soldering iron away from Vasha—there was no vague feeling, just a sudden, crystal-clear sense of danger. This was different. This was raw. Like someone had reached into my chest and twisted, but left no evidence behind.

Maybe it was just the Empire's new tax bullshit messing with my sleep. Maybe it was the weird spear-axe I bought today—some kind of cursed artifact leaking bad vibes. Or maybe I was just imagining things because I'd been thinking too much about protecting Vasha lately.

I finished the water and set the cup down, rubbing my face. Whatever this was, it wasn't going away. And the worst part? I couldn't even tell Vasha about it. How do you explain to someone that you keep waking up with your heart trying to escape your chest, when you don't even understand why it's happening yourself?

I glanced back toward the bed where she was still sleeping peacefully. Just seeing her there, safe and sound, helped a little. Not enough to make the fear go away completely, but enough to make it bearable.

I padded back to bed, sliding carefully under the covers so I wouldn't wake her. She shifted slightly, her arm finding its way back around me in her sleep. I let out a slow breath, trying to match her rhythm.

I didn't know what the hell this was. I didn't know why it kept happening. I didn't know if it meant anything at all.

--

Morning came late.

Or maybe I did.

Hard to tell in Capital City, where the sun shows up about as often as an honest politician. Everything outside the depot looked like a grayscale depression filter had been applied—buildings half-covered in rust, sky sitting at a solid tier-five pollution level, and the sound of some poor bastard already yelling at a cargo droid for being ten seconds late. Classic.

I didn’t feel tired exactly. Just... slow. Emotionally sluggish. Like my brain was still buffering from last night’s episode of "Panic Attacks, but Make It Existential."

Vasha was still asleep beside me, wrapped around me like a warm, sleepy octopus with perfect lekku placement. Which, under any other circumstances, would’ve been cause for a little internal celebration. But right now, the warmth felt heavy. Too close to comfort, not enough distance for clarity.

I gently disentangled myself, slipped out of bed without waking her, and padded barefoot toward the workshop side of the depot. The floor was cool against my feet—probably because the heating grid was being temperamental again. Add that to the growing list of things I wasn’t emotionally equipped to fix right now.

I spent some time meditating, the old way, without any force bullshit or anything. Just me and my mind, and the utter silence of the morning.

Deep breaths...deep breaths....

Dammit. It wasn't helping.

My head felt very ...clogged, if i were to say so with lack of correct words to describe the feeling.

My mind kept going back to the feelings of last night and the night before that, the palpatations and pounding in heart.

I couldn't concentrate for fucks sake. I tried diverting my mind to more interesting stuff, like the ridiculously exciting inner world I'd stumbled into. The raw, fundamental nature of the Living Force; the binary star system of a mashed-up soulscape living rent-free in my head… it was all there, a cosmic playground of questions begging to be answered. A place full of metaphysical puzzles and poetic existentialism and possibly the Force equivalent of a nuclear reactor meltdown.

But I kind of felt a strange sense of overwhelming-ness. Using hyper-perception made me aware of myself more than I normally was, but it also asked for a level of focus, espesicially when I am using it to look into myself and the very nature of Force.

My brain kept defaulting to a two-second loop of static. Not the good kind either. Just fuzzy noise and background dread.

That same unshakable unease from the past two nights hadn’t gone anywhere. Like the Force equivalent of a corrupted file you can’t delete. I kept trying to reason my way around it—maybe it was just sleep deprivation, or the ambient paranoia of living under an empire run by raisin-faced cryptocrats—but the feeling didn’t fade. It lingered. Sharp and quiet. Always just under the surface.

I stopped trying to force my interest. I’d seen enough anime to know that poking that kind of thing recklessly usually ended with dramatic screaming and a character design overhaul. I didn’t have a guide. No old space wizard to tell me what the blue one meant. No datapad with “Mental Architecture for Force Idiots” scribbled in the margins.

The stars were there. Waiting. But diving back into that void while distracted, tired, and still mentally reeling from whatever eldritch crap had crawled across my emotional radar last night felt like a bad idea. Like flying a speeder with half the engine duct-taped together. Something was gonna catch fire, and it was probably going to be my frontal lobe.

So, like any self-respecting overthinking Force-adept with imposter syndrome and insomnia, I avoided the problem entirely.

I went to build something.

The shop was exactly as chaotic as I’d left it: tangled cables, blinking motivators, three open toolboxes I kept forgetting to close, and a power coil in the corner still sparking quietly like it resented being born. Everything here had a purpose, even if half of it was to act as moral support for the half-functional junk on the shelves. It didn’t ask questions. It didn’t whisper cosmic riddles or radiate ancestral trauma. It just sat there, waiting to be turned into something useful.

That was what I needed. Not wisdom or visions. Hell, not even answers at the moment.

I just needed something simple and straightforward. Screws, wires, and measurable results without any soul-diving or force lectures. Just a task with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

And also, preferably, something that could shoot people.

I wasn’t paranoid, I told myself. I was preparing. Two back-to-back nights of waking up like I’d just survived a ship crash were enough of a warning—even if they didn’t come with a handy holovid of doom. Whether it was some weird artifact backlash, my brain leaking side effects from Hyper Perception, or a subtle Force premonition that hadn’t learned to use its words yet, it had put a very specific urge in my chest:

I needed a weapon.

The spear-axe thing I’d bought? Yeah, no. That wasn’t a real weapon. That was a glorified USB drive for warrior memories from a Force cult that didn’t even label their training arcs properly. Last time I “used” it, I got tossed into a full-sensory beatdown and woke up with a phantom stab wound and no practical skills gained. It was like downloading a kung fu tutorial and getting jumped by a professional instead.

Cool artifact, great potential, awful short-term ROI. Besides, the damn thing was taller than me. Looked impressive, sure, but it wasn’t going to help in a back-alley mugging unless I had time to deliver a monologue first. To satiate my inner feeling of insecurity, I wanted something actually useful.

After much thought, I decided that melee was out, at the very least for now.

I didn’t have the muscle mass to swing anything heavier than a frying pan with confidence, and even then, only if the target stood still. Could I stab someone if I had to? Sure. Aim for soft parts, hope they scream first and stab second. But that wasn’t a plan. That was a panic button.

If not melee, than ranged it was.

And the Empire—credit where credit’s due—did a great job making sure people didn’t carry weapons that came into the categories of blaster and stuff. At least not openly. Blaster sale and possession were banned in Capital City under some “civilian compliance doctrine,” which basically translated to “only stormtroopers and corrupt security goons get the fun toys.” So, no store-bought boomsticks for me.

But that didn’t mean I was out of options.

Because this galaxy, for all its sleek starships and fancy sabers, still had a physics for good ol’ fashioned kinetic energy.

Guns, or more like its Star Wars equivalent - Slug-throwers.

But I didn't have gun powder and off my mind, I could maybe find some chemicals that were available and could be possibly used to make compounds that had similar nature to that. Highly combustible in small amount, but it was still dangerous, both personal safety wise as well as chances of getting into ISB's radar.

But that wasn't all there was, was it? Like they say, when in Rome, do as Romans do. I was in sci-fi universe, the least I could do was create weapons that would suit the occasion.

The kind that launch hunks of metal at terminal velocity using electro-magnetism instead of combustion. Gauss tech. Coilguns. Railguns if you’re feeling spicy and suicidal with your power grid.

A railgun was out in my case for being too power-hungry. The small power cells we stocked couldn’t handle the continuous current load required without melting into an expensive fire hazard. But a coilgun—essentially a gauss weapon with sequential magnetic coils that accelerated an peice of metal to high velocity—was way more doable. Still dangerous, still punchy, but within range of our existing parts.

And unlike plasma weapons, I didn’t need exotic components or hyperreactive fuel. Just some good copper wiring, decent capacitors, a reliable trigger circuit, and some form of projectile. Preferably ferromagnetic, but I could make do with anything dense enough to do damage. Bolts. Bearings. Screws. Improvised ammo. That was the fun part.

Not to mention, room temperature near-superconductive electro-magnetic material used in repulsar-tech and small-size power cells holding damn lot of electricity meant that my Guass Gun is gonna get a big fucking upgrade compared to its Earthly brothers.

Hell Yeah