The second my feet hit the pavent outside the Bridger house, reality smacked in the face like a drunk Jawa. Lothal's sky was huge—this stupid, endless blue that made feel like a speck of dirt on a windscreen. And everything else? Too damn much. The air slled weird. The sunlight stabbed my eyes. Even the ground felt wrong under my stolen kid-sneakers.
I vaulted the busted back fence (turns out Ezra's tiny body was spring-loaded) and landed in an alley that reeked of engine grease and hopelessness. Welco to Lothal's sad suburbia—rows of durasteel shoebox houses with wilted plants out front. The kind of place where nosy neighbors counted your laundry cycles and called the Imps if you sneezed suspiciously.
Bad news: people here knew the Bridgers. Knew their kid. And a seven-(maybe eight? Who the hell kept track down in Murder Basent?)-year-old Ezra suddenly slinking around weeks after his rebel parents got space-napped? Yeah, that scread "Please arrest ."
So, stealth mode: activated. I stuck to the shadows like bantha crap on a boot, darting between alleys, my heart trying to break out of my ribs every ti a speeder buzzed past. Goal? The market district. More people = more chaos = less chance of soone noticing one grimy kid with a death wish.
The deeper I went, the sketchier it got. The houses gave way to stacked prefab blocks—basically giant tal prison cells with worse plumbing. The air turned thick with oil fus, questionable at sizzling on street vendor grills, and the unmistakable stank of too many bodies in too little space.
Noise hit like a wall: speeder engines whining, rchants yelling over each other, so drunk Twi'lek belting out a song that had to be a war cri. A Gamorrean shoulder-checked into a puddle of sothing that glowed. Stormtroopers patrolled in pairs, their white armor gleaming under the sun like over-polished trash cans.
Nope. Needed a quieter route.
I ducked into an alley that promised less sensory assault—just so trash bins, a leaking pipe, and blessed silence.
Then he appeared.
At the far end, backlit like so budget villain in a holo-drama: human, teenaged, built like a sack of bricks. Greasy hair, dirt-streaked face, and the kind of smirk that said "I've stabbed people for less than your shoes."
Oh, hell no.
I spun to bail—
—and nearly face-planted into a second guy.
Devaronian. Tall, green, and holding a vibroknife like he was debating whether to rob or just skin for fun.
"Ooooh," he crooned, grinning with teeth that could've chewed through durasteel. "Lookit this, Drokk. We got ourselves a baby tooka in the wrong alley."
Drokk (because of course that was his na) cracked his knuckles. "Pockets. Empty 'em. Do it fast, maybe we let you keep your fingers."
My brain short-circuited. Fight? With what? My stellar karate skills (zero) and a Force connection that mostly just made one with the floor? Run? They had cornered like a loth-cat in a trash compactor.
"Uh…" I forced a dumb-kid grin. "Don't got any credits, mister. Just… looking for my mom?"
Drokk sighed. The Devaronian tapped his knife against his palm. Tchk. Tchk. Tchk.
Yeah. They weren't buying it.
Plan B.
I yanked out the handful of credits I'd scrounged from the Bridger house—and yeeted them into the air like I was starting the world's worst pinata party.
"CREDITS! FREE CREDITS!" I screeched, as coins rained down.
For half a second, both idiots stared. Then instinct kicked in—their eyes locked onto the shiny, their brains shorting out like faulty droids.
Now.
I ducked between the Devaronian's legs (turns out being tiny has so perks) and bolted, arms pumping, lungs burning. Behind , Drokk howled sothing uncreative about my ancestry.
Didn't look back. Just ran like the Empire itself was on my ass—straight back into the market's beautiful, beautiful chaos.
I kept moving, making myself small in the crowd—easy when you're a scrawny kid and the market's packed tighter than a Hutt's waistband. Every few steps, I'd catch a whiff of sothing wild—spicy street at, engine grease, body odor from species I didn't even have nas for. My nose had given up trying to process it all about three alleys ago.
Then I spotted him—a Besalisk chanic with four beefy arms deep in a speeder's guts, cussing out a pit droid in what sounded like soone choking on gravel.
Damn.
Imagine dual-wielding lightsabers with that setup. Dude could go full Grievous and still have two arms left to scratch his ass. Sha that clanker got smoked—I would've loved to loot just one saber from his collection. Bet he wouldn't even notice.
I dodged around a gaggle of Rodians haggling over what looked like stolen power converters. Up close, they weren't the sleek, cool bounty hunters from the holos—more like walking catfish with worse skin conditions. And the sll—like a seafood market left in the sun.
No more alleys. Learned that lesson the hard way. The last shadowy corner I'd glanced down had two sketchy dudes doing a handoff—one cloaked, the other twitchy as a mynock on caffeine. Twitchy made eye contact. Twitchy did not like being seen.
My suburban-Earth brain short-circuited. Back ho, the sketchiest thing was Mrs. Henderson calling the cops if you walked on her lawn. Here? Kids probably vanished daily, and the only notice was a half-assed "Missing" poster slapped over last week's Imperial propaganda.
The crowd dumped into the market proper, and—
Holy shit.
Sensory overload. Glowing signs flickering in languages I couldn't read. Stalls selling everything from fried mystery at to live—were those eels? The air was a punch to the face: spices, sweat, ozone from overloaded wiring. A Gran rchant screeched at a droid, waving a wrench like he was auditioning for a horror holo.
Perfect. In this chaos, I was nobody. Just another grubby street rat. Ti to scout for food—
Then I saw her.
Blue.
Very blue.
Twi'lek, back turned, arguing with a fruit vendor like the fate of the galaxy hung on the price of ilooruns. Her lekku swayed as she gestured, the movent hypnotic. Outfit was practical—tight tunic, fitted pants—but damn if it didn't highlight everything. My traitorous brain, currently trapped in a body that still believed cooties were real, did a backflip.
She half-turned, and—
Double damn.
Sharp features, full lips twisted in a scowl. Not so cantina dancer—this one had "I will stab you" energy. And yet, my idiot hormones, undeterred by prepubescence, went ding!
Then my eyes adjusted, and suddenly the market was full of them. Green ones laughing, lavender ones in outfits that'd make a Jawa blush—
Nope.
I physically shook my head. You're seven. SEVEN. Your voice hasn't even cracked yet, you little gremlin.
The injustice burned. Here I was, surrounded by alien beauty straight out of a teenage nerd's sketchbook, and my body was still years away from being able to do anything about it. Not even a hint of peach fuzz.
I exhaled through my nose.
Survival first. Puberty later. Maybe by the ti I hit growth spurts, I'd have figured out how to talk to won without sounding like a malfunctioning protocol droid.
And, soday, maybe reach a height where I could actually look a Twi'lek in the eyes without her patting on the head like a lost puppy.
Wait a second.
Why was that a bad thing?
An idea sparked in my brain. A terrible, wonderful, audacious idea. The kind of plan an adult would get slapped—or arrested—for attempting. But I wasn't an adult, was I? Not on the outside. On the outside, I was a small, grimy, pathetic-looking kid.
A weapon. I was a weapon of mass adorableness.
I needed food. I needed a safe place to crash. I needed an ally. And right there, arguing over the price of ilooruns like the fate of the galaxy depended on it, was a potential solution.
But first, recon. I couldn't just walk up to anyone. This was Lothal, not Disneyland. For all I knew, she was a bounty hunter who filleted annoying children for fun. I needed to know if she was safe.
This was where my little basent project ca in.
That first Force experience had been like sticking my head in a fusion reactor—an overwhelming, unfiltered tsunami of sensory data that nearly erased . But weeks of being bored out of my skull in a dark hole had forced to practice. I couldn't replicate the full-blown dissolution, thank god, but I'd learned to do sothing else. Sothing smaller. More controlled.
I'd practiced on the stormtroopers patrolling outside. By focusing, I could send out a tiny pulse of that sense, just for a fraction of a second. It wasn't mind-reading. It was more like seeing emotional static. The troopers were easy; their "vibes" were simple—waves of boredom, a dull hum of superiority, the occasional spike of irritation. It was like seeing the color of their mood without knowing the thoughts behind it. Crude, but effective.
So, I focused on the blue Twi'lek. I took a deep breath, channeled that feeling, and let out a single, targeted pulse.
The feedback was instantaneous. Not a flood, just a clear, concise impression. No malice. No deception. No danger. Just… tired determination. A healthy dose of frustration aid squarely at the Weequay fruit vendor. And underneath it all, like a warm pilot light, a steady flicker of compassion.
Good enough for .
Ti to deploy the ultimate cheat code: Weaponized Cuteness.
My posture changed. Shoulders slumped. Head tilted down. I summoned every ounce of "lost puppy" I could muster. This wasn't about being a perv—okay, maybe a little—this was about survival. This was a Charisma check, and I was going to crit this motherfucker.
I didn't walk towards her. I trotted. A pathetic little shuffle-step that scread "I am small and harmless and probably haven't eaten in days." The crowd seed to part for , a sea of legs and robes giving way to the tiny, grimy kid on a mission.
I reached her, my heart hamring against my ribs. Her back was to . Up close, I could see faint, swirling patterns on her lekku, almost like tattoos. My stupid monkey brain briefly short-circuited again.
Focus, Alex. You are a professional child.
I reached out with one grubby hand and gave the fabric of her sleeve the tiniest, most pitiful tug.
She didn't notice, too deep in her price war.
I tugged again, a little harder.
"Hey!" she snapped, spinning around, her face a mask of irritation, ready to chew out whatever pickpocket was trying their luck.
Her gaze swept the space where an adult would be. Finding nothing, it traveled down.
And down.
And down.
Until it landed on .
Her expression was a journey. It went from "I will end you" to "Oh, a child" in the span of a heartbeat.
I unleashed my ultimate attack. Big, watery eyes? Check. A lower lip that trembled just so? Check. A look of pure, unadulterated awe? Oh, you bet your sweet space-potatoes.
My mouth opened. My plan was perfect. My execution was flawless.
And then my weeb soul, long-dormant and utterly unhelpful, hijacked the controls.
"Nee-san," I blurted out.
The Japanese honorific for 'big sister' echoed for a split second in the alien air, a remnant of a life spent watching too much ani, a word that had absolutely no business existing in this galaxy.
FUCK. WRONG UNIVERSE.
Panic flared, hot and imdiate. I had to salvage this.
"...Y-you're so beautiful," I stamred, the Galactic Basic feeling both clumsy and blessedly normal on my tongue. The stamr wasn't even faked; my face was burning.
The silence that followed was thick enough to cut with a vibroknife. The Weequay vendor just stared, his snout twitching. The Twi'lek's annoyance had vanished, replaced by a look of profound, analytical confusion.
"Nee... san?" she repeated, tasting the foreign syllables. Her voice was lodic, and the sound was so out of place it was almost comical. She tilted her head, her indigo eyes narrowing, not with anger, but with the quiet curiosity of soone who's just discovered a droid that speaks in riddles.
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