Captain Phantom, leader of Luna's army, here. Or would it be Master Phantom, seeing as this is a Star Wars story? Ah, I don't know. But I don't own Star Wars, as much as I wish I did. It belongs to George Lucas. All of the canon characters I've mentioned in here belong to George Lucas. Nakomi Swift, my OC, however, does not. Neither does the writing.

And you know what? It doesn't belong to you, either. But I encourage you to read this and review it, and I warn you that every other chapter will be a flashback. Thank you, good people of the internet. Captain Phantom out.

Even after seventeen years, it still feels like someone's trying to kill me.

I wake up in the middle of the night, trembling, reaching for a weapon that I no longer have. Dima says that I cry out. Sometimes for my master, sometimes for my friends. Occasionally, I'll beg for the man that might have been my murderer to stop. But lately, I've been promising to pay him in full for what he did.

Dima's offered to leave a light on for me. To keep me from waking in complete darkness and clawing at phantoms only I can see, because all to often these "monsters" turn out to be the door or the side table or the post of my bed.

"I just don't understand why you don't want a lamp in there or something," she muttered, winding bandages around my fingertips. "Tearing your nails out every night attacking the wall...don't you think you would stop of you actually saw what it was?"

I shrugged, glancing outside our meager home. At the spot where Hesid is buried, at the empty early-morning sky.

"I wouldn't be able to sleep with a light shining in my eyes," I said mildly.

"Well, we could—" Dima glanced up and caught my gaze, her face relaxing for a moment. Then she shook her head hard, annoyance pulling her lips back into a snarl. "Don't do that!"

"Do what?"

"You know what."

I pulled my hand away and stood up, pushing my chair back under the table.

"I'm not any good at it, anyway..."

Dima barked a laugh, gathering up the medical supplies. We both knew that what I had just said wasn't true. My methods were crude, because of the fact that I hadn't been trained during the crucial parts of my development, but my powers themselves were strong.

"Just keep your eyes to yourself."

"You never complain when I get a lower price from the raiders."

"Which reminds me. You need to stop doing that."

I didn't answer, just reached for my boots. They've been through a lot; made bigger as I grew, repaired after a shot from a raider's gun split my calf muscles, had rags stuffed in to cushion the toes that I frequently break. They're good boots. Maybe not the best-looking, but still.

"You're not going out today," Dima snapped at me.

"We need water."

"We can manage until your fingers heal."

"Hey, I've made a trip with worse than this," I argued. "There's no danger! Even the raiders leave us alone."

"Yes, they do," she agreed, lifting a couple of our water jugs. When she realized that I was watching her grimace at how light they were, she turned away. "But they're not what I'm worried about."

"Then what—" I had been clumsily doing up my laces, but suddenly, I froze. The tugging at my mind, a squirming within the very cells of my body, a song rising up through the depths of my being. Something within me, something that had been with me since birth, calling out to me. Telling me that something was very wrong. This feeling...I knew it. It was so familiar, and so sweet, that it brought tears to my eyes. No matter that the message it carried was sowing nausea in my stomach and agony between my temples. I thought that I had lost this ability, all those years ago, when he...

"Nakomi?" a faraway voice asked, concerned. I massaged my temples, blinking. Coming back to myself, like after I had a nightmare. "Nakomi, what's wrong?"

"I don't know," I muttered. "Something happened...something big..."

"I think you should sit down." Dima pushed me into a chair. I blinked up at her; I hadn't even realized I was standing. "You look like you're about to pass out."

I tried to stand up again, but she wouldn't let me. "Just stay there, I'll get you a glass of water."

"We don't have enough." As soon as she turned away, I got to my feet. "I need to go."

"Oh, no, you don't. When's the last time you had something to eat?"

"I—" My thoughts turned to our almost-empty pantry. The dried meat and stale bread that I had turned down yesterday despite my aching stomach, thinking of the woman that I lived with. I was young. I could bounce back from starvation, but she couldn't.

"That's what I thought. Dehydrated, starved, sleep-deprived...my goodness, Nakomi, it's a wonder you're not dead."

I flinched. Dead...

Sightless eyes staring up at the high ceilings of the Temple. Cauterized wounds. The war cries of a madman. Hesid clutching my hand, his frail body trembling with the effort of holding onto this world, fever fading from him as his heart slowed...

Dead. They're all dead.

Shouldn't I have been dead, too?

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that," Dima said softly, placing a hand on my shoulder. Guiding me, shaking, back into the chair. "We'll get you something to eat, honey. Something to drink. You can go back to bed, maybe you'll be able to sleep now that it's daytime. You can go get water from the Lars' farm tomorrow."

"Dima," I said slowly, "I felt something."

"What? Weak in the knees?"

"No..." I closed my eyes, searched for the remainders of that feeling that had somehow caused me to almost collapse. "Something...something crashed...into the planet. Onto Tatooine, not far from here. A ship? No. An escape pod—"

"What are you talking about?"

"The Force." I looked in her eyes, but this time, I didn't try to bend her to my will. "I felt it. It told me things."

She hesitated for a moment before replying. "Nakomi, all you felt was the consequences of putting your lunch back where you found it—no, don't even try it, I saw you. You haven't felt this Force thing in years. In my opinion, they just had you kids on drugs in that temple."

I gritted my teeth. It was real. It had always been real. My childhood fluttered in the back of my mind: making things fly across the room with a wave of my hand, jumping off of a balcony and floating to the floor like a feather, practicing with a sword woven of emerald light. Was all of that a drug-induced hallucination? No. Of course not.

"Then what's this?" I asked, gesturing to my eyes. The greatest weapons I have, as Dima once put it after I made an outlaw turn around and leave our home. It helps that they're a striking violet and thick-lashed; people actually want to look at them.

"You're persuasive." She helped me up and guided me to my room. "Luckily, so am I. Take of those boots."

I did as I was told, then crawled beneath the covers. Thin strips of sunlight slanted across the covers, despite the metal covering over the window. Dima set a cup of water and a plate with some food on it on the side table.

"I'm going to go see if that band of outlaws is still camped out over the ridge," she told me. "If they are, I might have to send you after them with your rifle."

She was joking, of course. I thought she was going to kill me when she caught Biggs and I aiming at the Lars boy from one of the hills around Anchorhead, even though he protested that the gun wasn't loaded and I said that he had talked me into it.

(That was the last time any of the kids from the settlement went anywhere near me. The rumor got around that my mother was Dingbat Dima, the only hermit crazier than Ben Kenobi. And, of course, I heard a couple of them telling each other that I had "freaky eyes.")

"Because I'm the best bounty hunter on this hemisphere." I closed my eyes. Dima's hand tucked a lock of dark hair behind my ear.

"I don't know what we'd do without your income. At any rate, stay here until I get back. I shouldn't be gone more than an hour."

I heard her leave. No engine thrummed to life; she had chosen not to take the Landspeeder. I wasn't surprised. Dima hated that thing and refused to ride on it unless it was absolutely necessary. And she never drove it, leaving that job up to me and my reflexes.

I forced myself to count to two hundred, by which time I guessed that she was too far away to stop me. Then I leapt out of bed, pulled on my boots, and tucked my hair up inside a helmet with a polarized visor. The rest of my ensemble, a loose-fitting white tunic and pale leggings, would protect me from the sun while keeping me cool. Grabbing my rifle off of its place of honor on the wall and slinging the strap around myself as I walked outside, I glanced first at Hesid's grave, feeling the sorrow that the years hadn't dulled, then in the direction that Dima would have taken.

"I'm sorry," I murmured, getting into the Landspeeder and starting it. "But this...is too important for me to leave alone."

I was gone before her shouts of fury could reach me.