Awakening

Notes:

Hey ya'll!. It's not often I geek out enough over a fandom to write a fic but when I do, I do. This is a Self Insert from our world into the Star Wars universe.

Star Wars is not, has never been, and never will be mine. But one can dream.

He woke with a gasp, arching in the air with wide eyes. There was searing fire in the back of his skull; it led down to his neck and shot off into the length of his spine. The muscles in his face tightened, and the veins at his temple bulged. He felt his chest constrict and the heat rise under his skin. When his vision blurred, he finally collapsed on his back, heaving raggedly.

After some time recovering, of which he's sure he blacked out a few times, his eyes flit around in search of clarity. He was lying supine, his body molding into the material beneath. The only light source framed the window shadings that spanned the height of the wall opposite of him; He could see a table and chair at the foot of the bed; a glass cabinet pushed against the adjacent wall; and the outline of a metallic door less than a meter right of it. A room, plain and spartan with muted colors. The way he liked it.

Except, he'd never go for white anything unless it was bandages nor would he have ceilings that were nearly 5 meters high. It was too big, too clinical, and the lack of shadows made him feel vulnerable. There was no place for him to hide in this stranger's room. That he was also bereft of any clothing didn't help his nerves and his memory was shot. He remembered going to the bar, not getting as sloshed as he liked, and then home to stumble into his bed, alone. He was certain of those facts if somewhat confused on their order. If he was drugged and kidnapped, it was either pathetically done because he was neither shackled or disoriented from drugs; or expertly done in which case his kidnappers fore went the restraints because they didn't expect him to run.

At that thought, his brows furrowed. If they didn't expect him to run, that meant they had some leverage. Uneasily, he shifted onto his feet and promptly did a double take. His eyes shot down the length of his body.

Breathless, he exclaimed, "What?!"

He was blue. A glacial pale blue that ran from the tip of his nose to the end of his toenails. Even his cock was blue, he realized with a strangled cry. Then he examined under his arms, over his shoulder, and his nether regions. He was blue all around and thoroughly. Grimacing, he pressed the heels of his palms against his eyelids until they ached.

Squashing down his heightened emotions, he took a deep breath. Being shanghaied by kidnappers who left him unshackled and painted him blue? It wasn't the worst thing to happen to him by far. Panic would only make him drop his guard. He needed to catalog his location, assess the threat, and establish a plan to neutralize them, whomever They are.

With the bed sheet wrapped around his waist, he stalked to the window shadings and nudged them to the side. For a long moment he just stared, struck; then another minute went by and then another. Finally, an eternity later when he's sure his eyes haven't deceived him, he no longer denies the sight before him. The facts were like this:
He knows he's not dreaming. He never remembers his dreams; only vague impressions and they've never been this physical. Not solid like the glass under his palm, or clear like the spots of light dancing in his eyes, or keen like the heat of the sun on his skin.

He wasn't drugged either. He feels clear headed and steadier than he has in years. Like he was born anew; 6ft 5 inches tall and 237 pounds of compact flesh. There was a shade of rippling energy under his muscles waiting to be released. The tightness of old scars was gone, as was the phantom pain in his left knee. Still, something had to be inducing this kind of hallucination.

A large vessel flies past and his eyes lock onto its strange shape. He tracks it as far as he could see until another one lands in his sights.

This was way more than dreams, drug induced hallucinations, or insanity combined. His kidnapper, if he was even kidnapped, must be outrageously and criminally wealthy. They must also be absurdly ambitious or plain crazy to build an entire futuristic looking city as part of an elaborate conspiracy. That or this was some secret off the grid mega-metropolis hidden from the world by the government, like Wakanda.

"Shit." That summed up his world perfectly. He felt the thread of a cold ugly thing in the pit of his belly. Quickly, he tracked his eyes over the room once more, picking up details he had skimmed over. From his vantage point, there was another door in the far-left side of the bed, closer to the other entrance. He made his way to it and it opened for him automatically. The lights flickered on, revealing the interior to be a bathroom. It was nearly as large the bedroom, clean, sparsely furnished, and seemed to carry the standard utilities. He spotted a full body-sized mirror and crept closer, slack jawed.

He wasn't just blue. His whole eyes were ruby red, completely obscuring the whites that he's sure should be there. There was an unnaturally faint glow to them, and he had no pupils to speak of. He pulled down the skin under his left eye and peered closer. He couldn't even see the rim of a contact lens.

Just what the hell is this?! He thought.

A persistent beeping punctured the silence, startling him. Rushing back into the bedroom he found it originating from a flat circular disk no bigger than his palm. It laid innocuous on the table. Black, smooth, and made of a metal he couldn't name. The beeping continued in conjunction with a string of little vertical dashes that emitted blue light every time it chirped. Seconds later, the object fell silent before soft voice broke through:

"Uh, Good morning Sector Ranger Kirin, sir. This is Junior Ranger Orn Taa with a mission directive. You're ordered to report for duty at 0800 hours tomorrow for your debriefing." More hesitantly, the voice continues. "You're superior wanted to let you know your thin ice, sir, for not comm-ing in your days of absence…until then sir."

Silence reigned once more. Kirin; was that his kidnapper's name? Or...was that this body's name? Was he really trapped in this alien body...living in a foreign city too advanced to be part of the world he knew?! Was he in the future?!

There was no stopping the ocean of dread enveloping him now. Not even his years as a senior ranking special forces officer was going to stop it. All his instincts screamed at him to fall back into his training, but he folded into the ground and landed on his backside. Clutching his head, he chanted.

"No fucking way, no fucking way, no fucking way! This is a dream! I'm actually fucking dreaming this time!" Beeping from the disk erupted once more. He chucked it across the room, screaming, "Fuck!"

The outburst of violence broke him out of his hysteria. He closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and sunk into a meditative state. His anger drained away, his muscles relaxed, and his mind focused on one thing. Calm. In, out, in, out, in, out. Until he could only hear the faint thumps of his heart and the distant noise of the world outside. Once calm, he abandoned the sheet covering his modesty and moved across the room with a new determination. He began sweeping the room, turning over every inch. He looked for wires, hidden cameras, hidden mics, any and everything. In his perusal he found a rectangular flat device slightly larger than his hand. It looked like a tricked out mini iPad with added props. In his hands, it was light and cool to the touch.

Grazing his fingers along the surface, a plane of light jetted out in front of his face. Fumbling with it momentarily, he held it an arm's length away with the screen facing the ceiling. There was a plethora of text, videos, and 3d objects floating in the holographic display. They hovered above the device, circulating in a slow counterclockwise fashion. He poked his finger through one such hologram and it moved out of formation to enlarge in front of him. It was the moving image of an alien; a brown fleshed, high dome-headed alien with eyes the size of golf balls stuck to the sides of its head. Its fingers were webbed, crossed, and it stared back at him. A line of text passed underneath the creature.

"...in other news, Senator Tolgro of Benkal suffered a case of hypoxia when the oxygen levels…"

He watched perturbed as its lips warbled out the words in English. Huh.

Just when it would start to sink that he was no longer part of his own world, something would make him doubt it. Stashing his find, he continued to work through the room, making more discoveries. The walk-in closet pulled a sigh of relief from him. He quickly disregarded the black and grey uniforms lining the rack and pulled on the necessities in the darkest colors he found. It was a paltry sum; but one can't have everything. Once done, he finished with a dark jacket and black boots. They fit perfectly.
His greatest bounty were the metal weapons he pulled out from behind the uniforms. One was gun-shaped and seemed impossibly thin for a proper case of bullets. It was half the length of his arm and colored in black and chrome. Maybe a stun gun. Another was a baton the length of his arms and lined with metal ridges. They came along with two bound cards. One was metallic with a chip and the other had his present image and details.

He absorbed the information. He was Kirin. Kirin, a Sector Ranger with the Corps of Rangers. Whatever that meant.

Storing the bounties on his person, he decided to venture into the next room. The bedroom door automatically slid open for him, disappearing into a crevice. The hall was dimly lit, and he inched his way towards the light, taking measured steps until he entered a much larger room. He made quick work scoping it out and when he was done, he allowed his guard to relax. Just a little because one can never be sure.

He got a better view of the incredible sight of the city from glass panels taking the height and length of a wall. Towering monoliths pierced the skyline like collective renditions of the Burj Khalifa; each with its own distinguished design. They dotted beyond the horizon. The sky was a chaotic symphony of vessels, both large and small, traveling at neck-breaking speeds seemingly intent on their own destruction. He could make out the tracks that marked their routes and they seemed to follow a pattern. In the distance he could see a massive domed structure that appeared to be the center point of the region. Equally impressive, was the complex north of it; Temple-like with five spires atop. This, he thought in awe, was a technophile's wet dream.

It took effort to peel his eyes away from the sight and even then, he kept glancing back.

Finally, he pulled out the mini iPad he stashed away and grazed its surface. Just as before, an abundance of texts and objects littered the air above it. He began to manipulate them; one after the other, enlarging what he could see, and feasting on information about impossible things. City planets, hyperspace, Galactic senate, the latest cleaning droids, an explorer spaceship, and millions upon millions of 'sentient' species. Blue, red, four sets of eyes, winged, covered in fur, horns protruding out skulls, creatures with webbed hands, or razors for teeth. All sentient, and they could speak English. Information after information enraptured his attention. His hand moved intuitively as though it had a mind of its own. Muscle memory, he thought and wondered if he inherited the previous host's memories. He paused. Nope, nothing.

At some point he activated an input tool and was prompted to enter some text. And there he ran into his first dilemma; the symbols looked like hieroglyphics. He was dismayed until an idea came to him.
With a few false starts, he rolled eyes at his hesitation. Finally, he spoke.

"English space alphabet." No change.

"Alien English." Nothing. Now he was starting to feel like an idiot.

"Languages and their alphabets." The rotating sphere of data scrambled and was replaced by scores of texts and images with more still appearing. There must be billions of them.

He tried again. "The most spoken language and its alphabet."

Only a chunk of files remained now, but it was still an overwhelming number. He tapped on a file at random.

It read: 'Galactic Basic and Aurebesh: Language for Tots.'

Can't get much simpler than that, he decided.

Hours later, after Kirin had gathered the nerve to venture out of the apartment; double checked that he had his gun; and ensured that he could get back in, he began his foray into the world outside.

It was a testament to the years he spent in both the armed and special forces that he was able to keep his expression inscrutable in the face of reality. To the Coruscanti going about their business in the plaza, he appeared unfettered and confident in his stride. He wagered, he probably cut an imposing figure, dwarfing those he came across; his red eyes were disconcerting to say the least. Many overlooked him, but curious glances were still thrown his way now and again. Ignoring them, he continued to circle the square, observing.

The baseline humans around him made up the majority, but he could identify other sentients by species now. Zabrak, Twi'lek, Miraluka, Mon Calamari, Bothan, Togruta, Arkanian; and many others he tried to catalog from the info—data pad. Too many. Too many species, too many languages, too many planets, too many star systems. The whirlwind of information had made his head spin, so he had contented himself with a rundown of the essentials.

Aurebesh, the galactic writing system for galactic Basic, he memorized in under 47 seconds. Then, he learnt it backwards. The next 10 minutes were spent enunciating each letter by listening to a human recording, which color him surprised, coincidentally matched English consonants and vowels. That little tidbit opened the world—galaxy—for him. He took to transcribing Aurebesh to English and back; and then, it was smooth sailing deciphering texts. Now, he could read.

Reading led him to researching how to handle the gun, or blaster tucked in his pants. Then to look up "Sector Rangers", learning about the Corps of Rangers, Coruscant, and the galaxy. He was also able to somewhat determine his place in it.

He was either a Pantoran or Wroonian. Both species were near human and blue-skinned from the texts and images he looked over. But he didn't think he was either of them. Nothing he read or saw showed that they shared his eyes. But he was looking at a small sample and he hadn't met anyone yet so he couldn't assume. None-the-less, there was a surging denial that he was either species. A deep undeniable truth that he was something else. It made him feel a pride that wasn't his own.

Deciding to move forward, he determined it was time he left. The scrap of knowledge he obtained and his proficiency in Aurebesh would have to do. He needed more information yesterday and holing up in the apartment with a data pad wasn't going to cut it. He had to see for himself.

Since he couldn't fly one of the vessels, nor was he willing to risk his neck, he decided on a public transport. It proved to be interesting and mildly troublesome after some back and forth with a droid that kept harping at him about a credit chip. Deciding to chance it, he finally presented it with the metallic card bound to his ID. A quick scan later and he was on his way. A transport took him to the Senate district, where presently, he made his way to the one place he had a connection.

50 meters ahead of him stood the Judicial Department's headquarters; the primary law enforcing power of the Galactic Republic. He noted its grey and white exterior; it wasn't the most remarkable and tallest landmark in the Senate district by far. Built not far from a collective of speeder lands, it neighbored the Offices of General Affairs and Public Works. Various patrol speeders, their riders, and security droids milled about in the front of the building. What was meant to be the promising hand of authority, was overshadowed by the Senate building. But it was here that the Judicial Department oversaw multiple agencies, one of which is the Republic Office of Criminal Investigations or ROCI. ROCI oversaw the Corps of Rangers, his agency.

And somehow, he needed to access it.

A cool breeze fluttered against his skin and he glanced in the sun's direction. It hung low between a burst of red and orange. There were a handful of hours left until sunset. With a last considerable glance at the Judicial building, he turned and left.

After filling himself with greasy, rubbery sustenance of dubious origins from a food stall, he decided to take a risk. He was back in his apartment standing in front of the comm-link. The waning sunset reflected off its surface.

The idea came to him when he considered obtaining information from another sentient. Back at the district, he hadn't been willing to approach the Judicial building with the multitude of bodies hanging out on the steps. Though he was confident that he could speak Basic, it wasn't a task he looked forward to. It's one thing to make mistakes talking to a droid; it was another with a policing sentient. He could bullshit, but going in blind? That's a no-no. He couldn't afford to garner any bad will with the police.
As Junior Ranger Orn Taa said, he's on thin ice.

So far, she or he was his only point of contact with the Corps of Rangers and they were his best bet. He had the contact; he had the access if his ID-chip was any indication; and maybe he had a set of resources he could tap into. He assumed a Sector Ranger would be prepared for anything.

At this point he could only work with assumptions and trust in his ability to take care of the rest. He would treat it like a mission. An improbable, uncertain mission without a set of parameters and with an indefinite length of time. He's had plenty of those before.

So, steeling his nerves, he stood in front of the comm-link with a facade of confidence. He manipulated it until he found what he wanted. Then, he clicked Orn Taa's image.

The comm-link chimed, and a hologram sprung forth. He exhaled.