Darkness is all Morgan sees as he comes to. With a parched throat, aching wrists from being bound and only his ears to tell him what’s going on, you might forgive him for trying to speak.
The guard did not, and with a harsh “Silence, slave!” he was knocked back unconscious again.
Regaining consciousness the second time was no more pleasant than the first, now with a painful bump on his head and a splitting headache, he stayed silent.
“The guard is gone. Speak, if you can.” A not immediately hostile voice whispered. He liked that voice, it was speaking softly.
“Whe- Where am I?” A coughing fit overtook him as other voices urgently tried to shush them. Morgan ignored them, mostly out of confusion.
“From what I can guess, we’re on a shuttle. Where that shuttle is going, I have no idea.” The nice, soft, voice told him.
“Both of you, shut it. Do you want the guard to come back?” A third voice demanded, just as quietly. Morgan’s stomach did a flip as the shuttle turned. ‘Wait, did he say shuttle?’
“Shuttle? You mean a bus?” Talking was making his throat worse. The others shushed them again, even more incessantly than before.
“What’s a bus?” The soft voice asked curiously. A much louder voice broke in, barking. “What did I say about talking, slaves?”
Just before darkness claimed him, just before both of them were knocked unconscious, he got the faint sense the soft voice was laughing. Laughing and laughing, then sudden silence.
“ETA to spaceport 6A in five minutes.” Morgan woke up again, delirious. Not remembering what happened the first two times he made noise, and not caring besides, he spoke again.
“What spaceport? Where are we going?”
“Where are we going, it asks?” A level voice mused. Without waiting for a reply, the man continued.
“Well, I’m going to the cantina the moment my shift ends, spending half my paycheck so Kat will pretend to love me. You, on the other hand, are going to hell. Or, more accurately, as close as you’re ever going to get.” He seemed to read the confusion off Morgan’s face, laughing again.
“Korriban.”
He needed no guard to knock him unconscious that time. The head trauma, shock and delirium seemed perfectly happy to do it for them.
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‘Waking up like this is really starting to get annoying.’
Morgan shook his head. His second thought was more panicked, looking around.
‘What. Where am I? What’s going on?! what the fUCK IS GOING ON?!’
Heads whipped around to look at him. Morgan flinched, realizing he had shouted that last bit at the top of his lungs. Oops.
“Easy there, everything’s alright.” A soft and reassuring voice murmured from behind. Morgan twisted, stars briefly dancing in his vision. He gave the one that must be Soft Voice an empty glare. “Liar.”
Soft Voice shrugged unapologetically. “Yes, but it got you to focus on me and snapped you out of a panic attack.” Morgan blinked, seeing Soft Voice was, in fact, a hulking eight feet tall devaronian. He shook his head again, ignoring that oddity.
“How long have I been out?”
“About a week.” Soft Voice answered promptly.
“A week?”
“Hmm. They brought you here a couple of hours ago. How do you feel?”
Now that he thought about it, pretty good. No headache or nausea, no sore throat or bump on his head. No pain of any kind, really. He felt great. Saying as much to Soft Voice had the giant shrugging. “Must have given you kolto.”
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“Right, kolto.” Morgan parroted, unimpressed.
He stood, looking up at the ceiling. He gave that a look to make sure it also understood how utterly done he already was with the situation. Noticing the ceiling was quite high up he gave the room a cursory look, spinning slowly. It seemed much like a military bunk room, not that he had any experience with those, and was filled with cots. The beds were stacked ten high, giving the room a strange three dimensional feeling.
“Alright, that’s enough. Cut the simulation.” The ceiling, beds and other objects in the room, of course, did not reply. “Wake up!” Pinching himself, and then slapping himself in the face when pinching didn’t work, he got slightly more desperate. “Whatever mushroom induced hallucinogenic coma this is, I’m done with it! Wake up!” Slapping himself a couple more times to make sure, he finally noticed that Soft Voice was looking at him funny.
“You’re not dreaming.” Soft Voice informed him carefully. Like one might talk to an injured animal. Or a crazy person.
“Well of course you would say that.” He bit back. Morgan finally noticed how all the red wearing people were holding weapons, tensions high. It took precedence over freaking out. For now.
“If I was gone for a week, do you know where we are? What we’re doing here?”
“Ah, yes. That. We’re currently on Korriban, the main training planet for the sith. Seeing as we’re all slaves and have no training, we were not sent to the main academy.” Soft Voice spoke calmly, making soothing hand gestures. “We were sent to a training camp, of sorts. If we survive our training to the Overseer's satisfaction we will be promoted to acolytes and sent to the academy proper.”
He shot Morgan a fleeting look before sweeping his eyes across the room. “The Overseer didn’t seem very hopeful many of us would make it.”
Soft Voice grabbed a uniform and weapon from Morgan’s locker, under his bed, then motioned him to follow. Morgan was quiet as they walked, silent freaking out and trying not to stare at the enormous alien. “If you want any hope of surviving for more than an hour with the Overseer tomorrow you’ll need to catch up.”
Soft Voice stopped at an empty training room, weights, treadmills and a sparring ring dominating much of the space. He threw Morgan the gear and made no move to leave as he numbly started changing out of his hospital garb. He got about half way, his shirt thrown in a trashcan by the door, before catching sight of his stomach.
‘Really? I get transported - isekai'd, whatever - to another world, or universe, get enslaved - helpfully reminded to him as the collar around his neck pressed cool steel against skin - and I'm still fat?’ Delirious laughter filled the room, before he tried, with some success, to fit in the standardized, too small uniform.
Finding a mirror in front of the weights, and seeing Soft Voice was looking at him curiously, he found he looked much like an overweight, harried man stuffed into a cosplay costume four sizes too small. In a word, ridiculous.
He flexed his legs, finding strong muscle pushing against fabric. ‘At least they didn’t take my muscles. Nice thing about being fat, I suppose. Your body never limits muscle growth and you always hit your protein goals. It’s almost scary how quickly overweight people build muscle, assuming they try.’
Soft Voice interrupted his pity session by loudly clearing his throat, throwing one of the weapons. He turned to see Soft Voice looking at the weapon on the floor, nodding at him to pick it up.
Doing so, and pressing the red button on the handle, a crackling sound filled the room. Soft Voice grinned. “Want to start sparring with the shock function on?”
Morgan looked down at the weapon, flicking the button again. Then he whipped his head up, looking upon a charging devaronian raising a saber poised to strike. Morgan panicked, swore, and dove to the side. He dropped his weapon in the process, landing painfully on his knees.
Soft Voice, still far enough to course correct with ease, tapped him gently on the head. “So you have no fighting experience to speak of.”
“Of course I don’t!” Morgan half yelled, brushing his painful knees and standing. Adrenaline overcame his fear and confusion, rounding on the giant. “You do?”
“Before I came to this place? No.” Soft Voice lied easily. “But I learned, and now you must learn.” He took a stance and motioned Morgan to mirror him, who complied with shaking hands. “Now, this is the first set of kata’s. It’s for the form known as Shii-Cho, invented for lightsaber combat. You better learn quickly, little Mad Mouse. You’re a week behind.”
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Dropping into his bed hours later, the bunk just under Soft Voice’s, every part of his body begged him to sleep. Nevermind the impossibility of being in a different universe. Nevermind being able to use the Force, if only once and in desperation. His body was tired and bruised, and nothing mattered nearly as much as sleep.
But before he surrendered to unconsciousness, before he could pretend this was all a dream he forced himself to pray. Not that he was religious - outside of some minor fascination on the topic - but because praying is what you do after hours of a giant devaronian - an alien - drilling you to fight with a saber. In an alien place, with hostile and unknown aliens all around him. With aliens!
And tomorrow would be worse, Soft Voice had promised. He’d described how training with the Overseer filled half the day, painfull hours of instruction where every failure could mean death. How they would be given the other half to do as they please, to fight and study and train.
‘To whomever, whatever, might be listening. Please return me home. Please. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to. Please.’ He cried, barely noticing he wasn’t the only one. It came as little comfort.
No one answered. No one fulfilled his wish. And they never, ever, would.