A/N: Loyal readers, I thank thee for waiting for more than 2 weeks. I wouldn't say I have totally beaten the writer's block but I am surely fighting it. Its a vicious loop to be honest, 'you take a break from writing because of writer's block, the break makes you not write even more, and despite that, if you muster courage and try to write again but writer's block strikes again and loop repeats'.
Well, this is kinda an eternal struggle in writing so I can just brace up and keep writing and hope the readers love the story and keep supporting. Now, off you go, hope you enjoy the chapter!
___
I looked at the dical droid hovering in front of with the kind of expression usually reserved for soone claiming the Earth is flat or that NFTs were a sound investnt.
"Are you saying that I'm twelve years old?"
The droid's optical sensors refocused with a soft, rhythmic whir. "Hm? Oh yes, quite correct. You possess a remarkably healthy physiology for a twelve-year-old human male. Your dietary intake must have been quite rigorous to avoid any significant nutrient deficiencies. I must comnd your commitnt to caloric balance."
I blinked. Then I blinked again, slowly, as if that would sohow reset the reality of the situation.
"Wait, hold on." I held up both hands, palms out. "Are you really sure? Because last I checked, I was ten. Like, firmly ten. I've based my entire internal tiline on being ten."
The droid tilted its head in that peculiar, bird-like way droids did when processing unexpected input. Its photoreceptors dimd slightly, mimicking a look of mild pity.
"Oh. That is... regrettable. Perhaps your guardians provided you with incorrect birth records? Such clerical errors are surprisingly common in the less-regulated sectors of the galaxy."
I stared. The droid stared back—as much as a collection of servos and lenses could stare.
"Give that," I snapped.
I reached out and plucked the dical scanner from the droid's manipulator arm before it could lodge a formal protest.
The display lit up under my thumb, scrolling through diagnostic data in neat, clinical rows. Bone density analysis. Dental developnt markers. Hormonal profiles. tabolic rate. Now, I didn't have a degree in—whatever the hell the equivalent of a dical degree is in this galaxy—but months of self-experintation and poking around in biological systems had given enough knowledge to parse dical readouts at a graduate level. I was basically the House M.D. of my own body, minus the Vicodin and the antisocial personality disorder.
Every single marker pointed the sa way.
Bone density: consistent with twelve years of age, margin of error plus or minus six months. Dental developnt: tracking along the sa curve. Hormonal markers: indicating early-stage puberty, right on schedule for a twelve-year-old boy.
What the hell.
"This has to be wrong," I muttered. "Run it again."
"I assure you, young sir, my scanners are properly calibrated and updated to the most current software version. I perform maintenance twice daily and—"
"Just scan again, you overpriced toaster."
The droid made a sound that might have been a sigh if droids had lungs. "Very well."
It extended the scanner again, running another full-spectrum pass from head to toe. The sa hum, the sa sequence of lights. I watched the data populate in real-ti, praying for a glitch, a software bug, a sudden cosmic shift in the laws of biology.
Identical results.
I looked at the droid. "Do you have a backup scanner?"
"I do possess a secondary unit," the droid admitted, sounding almost defensive. "Though I must clarify it is not as sophisticated as my primary scanner. It functions adequately, but lacks several of the finer diagnostic features that—"
"Great! I would love a second opinion then."
The droid retrieved a smaller, slightly older-model scanner from a nearby storage compartnt and perford another scan with what I could only describe as wounded professional pride.
I checked the readout.
Sa values. Sa age estimate.
One scanner could be a fluke. Two scanners with identical readings across multiple independent paraters? That wasn't a malfunction. That was data. And the data was telling I was a liar.
A dozen thoughts crashed through my head at once, none of them making any sense.
I was born in 19 BBY. Empire Day. The day Palpatine declared his shiny new dictatorship and the galaxy went to hell in a handbasket. It was currently 9 BBY, which ant I should be ten years old, not twelve.
Math doesn't lie. Except apparently my bones did.
"You know what," I said slowly, handing the primary scanner back. "You're probably right. I must've just... rembered the wrong birth year. mory is a fickle thing, right?"
The droid accepted the scanner with a satisfied, smug chirp. "An understandable error, particularly for children from less administratively rigorous regions of the Outer Rim. Cognitive developnt at your age can be quite haphazard."
"Yeah. Sure. Keep telling yourself that."
I reached for the backup scanner, figuring I could use it for so side-projects.
The droid's manipulator arm twitched. "Ah—young sir, that unit is the property of House Organa dical inventory. I will need to file requisition paperwork if it goes missing, and the process to acquire a replacent involves several forms and at least two weeks of processing ti—"
"Just tell Senator Organa I borrowed it indefinitely."
"But the forms—"
"Senator Bail will handle it."
"The administrative protocols—"
"Protocols are just the chains of bureaucracy that a true revolutionist aspires to defy," I said, sounding way more like a political manifesto than a preteen.
The droid sagged slightly, its optical sensors dimming in what I assud was total resignation.
"Very well. I shall... inform the Senator."
"Great. Thanks for the checkup. Five stars on Yelp."
I turned and walked out of the dical suite before the droid could lodge any further protests about inventory managent or the sanctity of requisition channels.
The hallway outside was rcifully empty.
Twelve years old.
What the actual hell was going on?
--
[A Few Monts Later]
The grass crunched under my boots as I put distance between myself and the villa, heading toward the open landing area where we'd parked the Scythe. My brain was still stuck on an endless loop of twelve, twelve, what the fuck do you an twelve.
I had thought of a couple of possible reasons for this age mismatch. The most obvious one was simply that I had always been smudging my age by 2 year since the very start. Like think about it, this universe was already a goddamn soup of canon and Legends material. A'Sharad Hett had been running around Tatooine like he owned the place, which he definitely shouldn't have been if we were strictly following Disney's howork. When you start mixing tilines like that, minor details were bound to get smudged. Maybe Ezra's birth year had shifted to accommodate so Legends event that rippled forward. Butterfly effect and all, but make it galactic.
Verifying this would have been simple if I hadn't left that Ezra's parent's datapad on my workshop back in Lothal. It had a lot of photos, videos and stuff from Ezra's childhood, tistamped too. I an, there has to be one or more recordings of my 'parents' ntioning my age right?
I kicked a loose stone and watched it skitter across the field. Even if I was twelve instead of ten, what difference did it actually make? I was still trapped in a body that needed a booster seat to see over a steering column. Still legally a child by every standard in the galaxy. Still couldn't walk into a cantina without getting the "where are your parents?" look.
Though twelve did put right at the starting line for puberty.
I groaned out loud, startling a nearby bird-thing into flight. Puberty. The word alone was a curse. I was already dealing with enough hormonal chaos from sharing headspace with a preteen body; the last thing I needed was random erections and voice cracks added to the pile. My adult mind had better be able to override that garbage, because I absolutely refused to go through the "middle school awkwardness" phase a second ti. I've already survived the era of bad haircuts and acne; I'm not doing it again for the plot.
The Scythe ca into view ahead, sitting on its landing struts like a black tal bird of prey. I'd gotten so used to seeing it that I'd almost stopped noticing how aggressively sinister it looked compared to Bail's polished civilian ships. It was like parking a stealth bomber at a garden party.
I reached the access panel near the ramp and pressed the button.
A soft beep. Then a prompt flashed on the small screen: ACCESS KEY REQUIRED.
I stared at it. "Oh, co on."
I stared at it.
"Oh, co on."
I hadn't actually gotten around to hacking the ramp's access port yet. Half because it had never been necessary—if anyone was inside, we just opened it from within. The other half because we'd mostly left the ramp down anyway, since who the hell was going to steal a ship parked in middle of Tatooine's Desert or at a senator's private estate? Well, a lot of people in the first case but I never left it unoccupied for long there.
It was honestly wild how few ships in this galaxy bothered with actual locks. Most freighters and starfighters relied entirely on the security of whatever spaceport or hangar they were docked in. The idea of soone hotwiring your YT-1300 never seed to cross anyone's mind. Personal vessels sotis had ignition keys or ramp codes, but it was rare. Then again, this was a stealth operations ship ant to park in shady alleys across the galaxy while its owner went murder-hunting. An access key made slightly more sense here, not that it helped them when I borrowed it indefinitely.
Not that it mattered much. Locks are basically just puzzles for people who can feel the tumblers moving with their mind. I think one of the many reason the Jedi ever had the legal power to take Force-sensitive children from their families was because of this.
I an, imagine being a Senator and knowing a Jedi could just think your bedroom and safe open. The 'taking the kids' thing was probably just a bribe. 'Here, have so legal perks and a fancy temple, just please stop breaking into our bedrooms.' It's a weird way to run a civilization, but hey, that's politics."
I closed my eyes and stretched out with my senses. The locking chanism blood into focus behind the panel—a series of bolts and magnetic seals, all of them perfectly visible to my perception. I reached into the chanism with a gentle, ntal push, sliding the internal release.
The ramp hissed and began to lower.
I opened my eyes, ready to step inside, and froze.
Two creatures were standing in the corridor.
They looked like soone had described a rabbit to a taxidermist while drunk, then crossed it with a rat for good asure. Long ears, twitching noses, fluffy tails, but with these weird scaly patches along their backs and beady red eyes that caught the Alderaanian sunlight. They'd clearly been mid-scamper when the ramp opened, because both of them were frozen in place, staring directly at .
We made eye contact.
I looked at them. They looked at .
"What," I said slowly, "the hell are you two supposed to be? So kind of rejected Pokémon?"
The two things let out high pitched squeaks that sounded like a rat getting stepped on, then turned and bolted in opposite directions.
"Oh no, you are not."
The Scythe had more holes, maintenance panels, and exposed wiring than a junkyard puzzle box. If those little bastards got into the walls, I'd be fishing them out for the next three days while they chewed through sothing expensive and probably explosive. Bail's crew had been kind enough to let the ship sit untouched, but I doubted that courtesy extended to "please, let the local wildlife redecorate the hyperdrive."
I raised a hand and the Force snapped out like a lasso. Both creatures' feet left the floor as I yanked them backward through the air, their little legs scrambling at nothing. "I am not spending the next three hours fishing you assholes out of the ventilation system. Do you know how many credits this ship is worth? More than your entire extended family tree, you furry little shits."
"Gotcha."
I gestured, reeling them in like the world's ugliest catch of the day.
They hung there in front of , spinning slowly, squeaking in panic. Up close they looked even worse, like soone had described a chinchilla to a blind sculptor who hated beauty. The scaly patches on their backs had this oily sheen that caught the light, and their teeth were way too big for their mouths.
"For a planet that's basically a postcard for natural splendor, you two are a serious design flaw," I said, leaning in. "Did Alderaan's ecosystem just give up when it got to you? Like, alright, we've done the beautiful swans and the majestic grasslands, let's just mash together whatever's left in the biowaste bin and call it a day?"
The one on the right squeaked indignantly. Or maybe it was begging for rcy. Hard to tell with nightmare fuel.
Then I heard it.
A wet, slurpy noise that no living creature should ever make in polite company.
My eyes tracked down to the creature's rear end just in ti to see it release a puff of purplish gas that looked less like a fart and more like a chemical weapons test. It hung in the air for a split second, shimring in the sunlight like so twisted special effect, and I realized with absolute horror that it was drifting directly toward my face.
I tried to hold my breath. I really did.
I was too late.
The sll crashed into my nostrils and suddenly I was having a religious experience. I could see God. I could see the Force. I could see every bad decision I had ever made in two lifetis flashing before my eyes in high definition, and at the end of the tunnel there was just this purple cloud of pure cosmic judgnt waiting to tell that nothing I ever did would matter because entropy always wins and the universe is just a fart in the void. My entire existence condensed into a single point of suffering and that point was my nose.
Vasha. Think of Vasha. Her scent, that faint mix of engine grease and whatever floral soap she used, the way she slled after a shower when she walked past in the apartnt. Anything but this.
I clung to the mory like a lifeline and felt my grip on reality slowly return. Unfortunately, my grip on the Force did not. The telekinetic hold I'd maintained on the two creatures slipped as my concentration fractured, and they dropped like stones.
They hit the ramp with a pair of aty thuds. The one on the left scrambled up imdiately and shot off into the tall grass like a fuzzy bullet, disappearing in seconds. The other one, the purple assed war criminal, bolted back up the ramp and vanished into the dark corridor of the Scythe.
I stumbled backward, gagging, waving my hand in front of my face like that was going to help. It didn't. The sll had already bonded with my soul. I was going to need a full decontamination shower. Maybe two. Maybe just burn my nose off and start over.
"What the hell do they feed you?" I wheezed at the empty ship. "Hutt shit combined with nuclear waste?"
From sowhere inside the Scythe, a distant squeak echoed back.
I stared into the dark entryway.
"Hanz," I muttered. "Get ze flamnwerfer."
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