SW Gray Tales 18: A Thoroughly Surprise Twi'Liek

A/N: Sorry for the delay. I had ended up sleeping in the evening and woke up feeling like I was put in a tomb for a hundred years so took a bit of time to get my bearings straight.

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Vasha shoved the apartment door shut with her hip—hands full of cheap greens and yesterday’s bread—then nearly dropped the whole bag on her boots.

There was a droid in her hallway.

A whole, upright, chrome-and-copper protocol droid, hands politely folded, photoreceptors glowing soft amber.

“Lady Vasha, I presume?” it said in that plummy, upper-class accent they all came with. “Welcome home. Master Ezra has been asleep for approximately two hours and instructed me not to wake him. May I fetch you a glass of water?”

Vasha blinked.

She looked at the droid.

She looked past the droid to the couch, where Ezra was sprawled like a crash-landed starfighter—mouth open, one arm hanging off the cushion, tiny snores rattling louder than the old air circulator.

She looked back at the droid.

“Uh… what?”

“Hydration is important after a long workday,” the droid added, helpful as ever. “Chilled or room temperature?”

“Hold up.” Vasha set the groceries on the floor before she actually did drop them. “You’re the KT unit from the scrap bin. The one with the melted vocab lattice and the… the fried motivator. I left you in pieces on the workbench.”

“I was reassembled, thoroughly tested, and brought to operational standard,” the droid replied. “Master Ezra performed the repairs. He said—quote—‘Tell Vasha I got bored.’ End quote.”

Vasha rubbed her lekku like that might reboot her own brain. “He’s seven.”

“Oh? Is Seven his nickname? I should update that in my memory.,” the droid said, reminding Vasha of the droid model’s obliviousness.

Still, she stared at the droid again. No scorch marks, no dangling wires. Even the chest plating was buffed to a soft satin sheen. She circled it once, looking for the catch—like maybe the arms would fall off the second she touched it.

They didn’t.

“Okay,” she muttered. “Okay. This is fine. This is… Tuesday, apparently.”

Ezra snorted in his sleep, rolled over, and nearly slid off the couch. Automatic reflexes: Vasha darted forward and caught him before he hit the deck. Kid didn’t even wake up; just smacked his lips and kept drooling on her sleeve.

Vasha stood frozen for a full five seconds, groceries still at her feet, Ezra drooling on her arm, and a fully functional protocol droid waiting patiently for her response.

This is fine. This is normal. Seven-year-olds repair high-end droids all the time.

She exhaled sharply through her nose, then carefully maneuvered Ezra back onto the couch, tucking the scratchy blanket around him. He didn’t stir, just curled into it like a tooka in a sunbeam.

She turned back to the droid.

"Alright," she said, crossing her arms. "Let’s start simple. What’s your designation?"

"DT-73, at your service, ma’am," the droid replied smoothly. "Though Master Ezra suggested I might consider a ‘less serial-number-y’ name if I wished."

Vasha pinched the bridge of her nose. "Of course he did."

DT-73 tilted its head slightly. "Would you prefer ‘chilled’ or ‘room temperature’ for your water, Lady Vasha?"

She waved a hand. "Forget the water. Show me your diagnostics."

The droid obliged, extending an access port from its wrist. Vasha grabbed her datapad from the workbench, plugged in, and scrolled through the logs.

Her eyebrows climbed higher with every line.

Power distribution? Optimal.

Vocabulator matrix? Repaired and recalibrated.

Motivator circuits? Replaced with scavenged but high-quality parts.

Memory core? Intact, with no corruption.

She looked up at DT-73. "This is… actually fixed."

"Indeed," the droid agreed. "Master Ezra was quite thorough."

Vasha’s gaze flicked to the couch, where Ezra was now mumbling something about "stupid resistors" in his sleep.

How in the seven Corellian hells…?

She had seen him tinker before—kids messed with gadgets, sure—but this wasn’t just tinkering. This was professional-grade repair work. The kind that took years of training. The kind that she struggled with sometimes.

And he’d done it in one day.

Her lekku twitched.

[Ezra's Pov]

I woke up feeling like I’d been run over by a landspeeder. Twice.

Long evening naps were a bitch—left you disoriented, your mouth tasting like stale ration bars, your limbs stiff as if you’d been crammed into a storage locker. I groaned, rubbing my eyes with the heels of my palms, and stretched until my joints popped.

Then I heard it.

A robotic voice, polished and obnoxiously cheerful, clattered through the apartment.

"Lady Vasha! Lady Vasha! Master Ezra has roused himself from sleep!"

My brain short-circuited.

What the kriff—?

I blinked, vision still blurry, and instinctively scanned the room in panic. A figure loomed in the doorway—tall, bluish-brown, with curves sharp enough to carve stone. Arms crossed, one hip cocked, lekku draped over a shoulder.

Oh.

Vasha.

I rubbed my eyes again, willing the fuzziness to clear. Her face was a perfect mask of neutrality, but I knew that look. That was the "I’m not mad, just deeply concerned and possibly plotting your demise" look.

My throat went dry.

"Uhh… hi, Vas," I croaked, voice still sleep-rough. "H-how was your day?"

Fuck. Why was I stuttering? I hadn’t done anything wrong.

…Had I?

Her eyebrow climbed slowly, like it was scaling a cliff. "My day?" She tapped a finger against her lips, mock-thoughtful. "Let’s see. Woke up. Kissed my adorable child goodbye. Went to work, where three astromechs tried to electrocute me. Came home to find said child had somehow rebuilt a protocol droid from scrap parts." She leaned down until we were nose-to-nose. "So. How was your day, Ezra?"

I swallowed.

DT-73, the traitor, chose that exact moment to chime in. "Shall I prepare a nutritional supplement for Master Ezra? His caloric intake appears insufficient based on—"

"Not now," Vasha and I said in unison.

The droid fell silent.

I sat up, wincing as my back protested. "Look, I can explain—"

"Can you?" She straightened, arms still crossed. "Because I’d love to hear how my seven-year-old—who, last I checked, couldn’t even reach the counter without a step stool—managed to rebuild a droid that three senior dock techs wrote off as scrap."

I opened my mouth. Closed it.

Shit.

This was the problem with doing impossible things—eventually, people noticed. And Vasha wasn’t just people. She was sharp. Observant. And, right now, very, very suspicious.

I could lie.

But the droid was standing right there, polished and fully functional, and my hands were still streaked with grease from working on it.

So I went with the next best thing: deflection.

"I got curious," I started, voice smaller than I wanted. I kept my eyes on the blanket, picking at a loose thread. "You’ve had that droid sitting there forever. And I’ve been reading. A lot. Your datapad, the repair manuals you leave lying around. Stuff about circuits, motivators, all of it."

I chanced a glance up. Vasha was still crouched in front of me, arms resting on her knees, watching me with that unreadable look. DT-73 stood silently beside her, thankfully keeping its vocabulator shut for once.

"Yesterday," I continued, forcing myself to slow down, "when I was looking at it… something weird happened. I started seeing things. Not with my eyes. Like… pictures in my head. Flashes." I gestured vaguely toward the workbench. "I saw how the circuits were supposed to look. How the power flowed when it worked. Clean, bright lines. But then I saw breaks. Tiny cracks. Burnt spots. Dozens of them. Like a map of everything wrong."

Vasha’s lekku twitched slightly.

"I didn’t tell you this morning," I mumbled, rubbing my thumb over a grease stain on my palm. "Didn’t wanna worry you. Or make you think I was… I dunno, hallucinating. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The pictures kept showing me where the breaks were. So I started tinkering. Just fixing one tiny thing, then another. Found spare parts in the junk box. And…" I shrugged, looking up at her. "One thing led to another. It turned on."

Silence.

Vasha didn’t move. Her eyes flicked from me to DT-73, then back. The story sounded crazy, even to me. Visions? But the proof was right there—a droid that had been scrap, now standing in her apartment like it had just rolled off the assembly line.

"Pictures in your head," she repeated slowly, testing the words.

I nodded.

She exhaled through her nose, rubbing her temple. "Kid, you’re telling me you hallucinated a repair manual?"

I winced. "Not… hallucinated. More like… remembered. But not my memory. The droid’s. Or—or how it was supposed to be."

Vasha stared at me.

I could practically see the gears turning. She wasn’t the type to jump to Force sensitivity or mystic nonsense. Her best guess would probably be some weird psychic thing from a bad holoflick. Or maybe she’d just chalk it up to me being me—the same kid who’d apparently learned to read Basic in weeks and could recite ship schematics after skimming them once.

Finally, she let out a sharp breath and shook her head. "Unbelievable."

I tensed.

Then she reached out and flicked my forehead.

"Ow!"

"You," she said, standing up, "are way too smart for your own good."

I blinked. That… wasn’t anger. Or panic. Just exasperated acceptance.

DT-73, sensing the tension easing, finally spoke up. "Shall I—"

"No," Vasha and I said at the same time.

The droid shut up.

The tension in the room eased slightly, but Vasha still looked like she was trying to solve a particularly complex puzzle. She exhaled sharply, then turned to DT-73.

"Alright, protocol droid," she said, hands on her hips. "Run a full self-diagnostic and give me a summary. No fluff, just the facts."

DT-73 straightened. "Certainly, Lady Vasha. Primary systems: operational at 98.7% efficiency. Secondary systems: nominal. Vocabulator matrix: fully restored with a 99.2% accuracy rating in over six million languages. Motivator assembly: replaced with scavenged but high-grade components, currently functioning at 96.4% of factory specifications. Memory core: intact, with no corruption detected."

Vasha exhaled sharply through her nose, then turned and walked to the kitchenette, grabbing a glass of water. She took a long sip, set it down, and leaned against the counter.

"Okay," she muttered, mostly to herself. "Okay. This is happening."

I sat up fully, swinging my legs over the edge of the couch. "You’re not… mad?"

She gave me a look. "Oh, I’m mad. You were working all day on a droid that could’ve electrocuted you if you’d messed up the power routing wrong—"

"Not just day," I admitted before I could stop myself. "Night too. I, uh… waited till you were asleep."

I didn't want to lie about small things if I could.

Vasha’s eyes narrowed. Then her voice dropped into that tone—the one that meant I’d just stepped in bantha dung. "Ohhh. So you stayed up all night working on a droid that could’ve fried you like a ronto steak. You didn’t tell me. And now I’ve got a fully functional protocol droid in my apartment that I know the dockyard wrote off as scrap." She rubbed her temple. "But am I mad about the how? No. Because apparently, my kid is some kind of tech savant with a photographic memory for circuit diagrams. Oh and how could I forget about the genius part."

I bit my lip. That was… close enough to the truth to work.

Vasha pushed off the counter and walked back over, crouching in front of me again. "Listen, Ezra. You’re scary smart. Like, ‘should be in some fancy academy getting tested by scientists’ smart. But we don’t have that luxury. And I need you to promise me something."

I nodded, bracing myself.

"No more secret projects," she said firmly. "If you’re gonna take apart a droid, you tell me first. If you’re gonna stay up all night, you warn me. And if you start seeing ‘pictures in your head’ again, you talk to me about it. Got it?"

I swallowed. "Got it."

She flicked my forehead again—gentler this time. "Good."

Then she stood, stretching her back with a sigh. "Alright. Now that we’ve established that my kid is a genius and I’m officially too tired to process this properly—DT-73, was it?"

The droid perked up. "Yes, Lady Vasha."

"You’re on dish duty tonight."

DT-73 hesitated. "I… do not have integrated cleaning protocols."

Vasha smirked. "Guess you’re learning."

I snorted, then covered my mouth.

Vasha shot me a look. "Don’t think you’re off the hook, glowworm. You and I are having a long talk about boundaries tomorrow."

I groaned.

DT-73, ever helpful, added, "Shall I prepare a list of discussion topics?"

Vasha and I both turned to stare at it.

The droid wisely shut up..again.