The door clicked shut behind Nari, and the weight of Obi-Wan's attention settled over me like a wet blanket.
I stayed where I was, leaning against the wall, trying to look casual despite the fact that I was pretty sure my ribs were held together by bacta and sheer spite at this point.
"Internal injuries," Obi-Wan repeated, his tone so dry it could've sucked the moisture out of the air. "That was your explanation?"
"It worked, didn't it?"
"It worked because Nari doesn't know you well enough to recognize a blatant fabrication." He crossed his arms. "I do."
Fair point.
I sighed, pushing off the wall and immediately regretting it as my ribs screamed in protest. "Yeah. I figured."
"What happened, Ezra?"
I hesitated, trying to figure out how to explain something I didn't fully understand myself. "I don't know. I woke up, tried to expand my senses to get a read on the area, and my head felt like someone drove a railroad spike through my temple. Next thing I know, everything in the room's airborne."
Obi-Wan was quiet for a moment, his masked face tilted slightly as if he were studying me. "Show me."
"Show you what?"
"Try again. Use the Force. Something small."
I glanced around the room, looking for a safe test subject. My eyes landed on the canteen that had gotten launched earlier, now sitting on the floor near the corner.
"Alright. One levitating canteen, coming right up."
I reached out with the Force, trying to do what I'd done a hundred times before. Just a simple pull. Basic telekinesis. The kind of thing I'd struggled with for months until I could barely wobble a spoon.
The canteen shot into my hand like it had been fired from a rail gun.
I caught it on reflex, my fingers closing around the metal just before it could slam into my palm hard enough to bruise.
"Uh."
Arachnae chirped excitedly from the bed, her optical sensors flaring bright.
Pi-pi-piing!
"Yeah, that's... not normal," I said, staring at the canteen. "That's not what I was going for."
"Try again," Obi-Wan said, his voice calm but edged with something I couldn't quite identify. Concern, maybe. Or fascination.
I set the canteen down on the floor and stepped back. This time, I focused harder, trying to be gentle. I imagined the canteen rising slowly, carefully, like I was lifting a soap bubble.
It rose.
But it didn't stop. It wobbled violently in the air, spinning and jerking like it was caught in a magnetic field having a seizure. I tried to hold it steady, but the harder I focused, the worse it got. The canteen shook, rattled, and then—
Crack.
The metal crumpled inward with a sharp, grinding sound, the sides collapsing like I'd just crushed it in a vice. A moment later, it tore completely in half, the two pieces clattering to the floor in a twisted, mangled heap.
I turned to Obi-Wan and gestured wordlessly at the wreckage.
See? This is what I'm talking about.
He stared at the destroyed canteen for a long moment, then let out a slow breath. "Your control is... unstable."
"Unstable?" I repeated. "Obi-Wan, I've never been able to do this. Ever. My telekinesis was a joke. I could barely make a spoon wobble. Now I'm accidentally crushing metal like I'm channeling Vader."
Arachnae chirped again, scuttling down from the bed and over to the broken canteen. She poked one of the pieces with a manipulator arm, then looked up at me with what I could only describe as pure, unadulterated fascination.
Piing?
"No, Arachnae, I'm not doing it again," I said. "I just broke something."
She chirped insistently, nudging the piece toward me.
Pi-pi-piing!
"I said no."
She tilted her head, her sensors dimming slightly in what I'd come to recognize as her version of pouting.
"Don't give me that look."
Obi-Wan cleared his throat, drawing my attention back to him. "Ezra. Sit down before you collapse."
I realized I was swaying slightly on my feet, the adrenaline from the demonstration starting to wear off and leaving behind the dull, persistent ache of my injuries. I limped over to the cot and sat down, Arachnae immediately scuttling up next to me and curling into my side.
Obi-Wan pulled up a supply crate and sat across from me, his elbows resting on his knees. Even through the mask, I could feel the weight of his contemplation.
"Your sense of self is disturbed," he said finally.
I blinked. "My... what?"
"Your sense of self. Your presence in the Force." He paused, as if searching for the right words. "When I reach out to you, there's a... discontinuity. Like a signal that's been scrambled. Your Force presence is stronger than it was before, but it's erratic. Unfocused."
"Okay, but what does that mean?" I asked, trying to wrap my head around what he was saying. "Are you saying I'm broken? More broken than usual?"
"Not broken. Disturbed." He leaned back slightly. "The effort you expended during the healing was extreme. You pushed yourself beyond your limits, burned through your reserves, and died in the process. Your body recovered, but your spirit—your presence in the Force—is still... recentering."
I frowned. "So you're saying I'm out of alignment? Like a car with bad suspension?"
"In a manner of speaking, yes."
"And that's causing the power surge?"
Obi-Wan tilted his head thoughtfully. "Possibly. It's not unheard of for exhaustion to affect one's connection to the Force. When you empty your reserves completely, your body may refill them more efficiently. More... abundantly."
"So I'm like a battery that got drained and now it's charging back up with more capacity?"
"Perhaps." He didn't sound entirely convinced. "Though I must admit, I've never seen a reaction quite like this. The Force is vast and unknowable, Ezra. There are aspects of it we remain ignorant to, even after centuries of study."
I sat with that for a moment, turning it over in my mind. It made a certain kind of sense, but it also felt incomplete. Like there was a piece of the puzzle I was missing.
"Meditation may help," Obi-Wan continued. "If your spirit is still settling, then centering yourself could accelerate the process. It may also help you regain control."
"Yeah, that tracks," I said, nodding slowly. "But here's the thing that's bugging me—since when does exhaustion make you more powerful? I've been drained before. I've pushed myself hard. But I never woke up able to crush metal with my mind."
Obi-Wan was quiet for a long moment, his masked face unreadable. "I don't have an answer for you, Ezra. This is... uncharted territory."
There was something almost vulnerable in his admission, a rare crack in the calm, wise master facade. He didn't know. And that, more than anything, made me realize how far outside the normal bounds of Jedi experience I'd wandered.
"Great," I muttered. "So I'm a walking science experiment."
Arachnae chirped softly, pressing closer against my side.
Piing.
I reached down and scratched the top of her head. "Thanks, girl."
Obi-Wan shifted, his attention moving from me to the wreckage of the canteen still lying on the floor. "We'll monitor your condition. For now, rest is your priority. And meditation, when you're able."
"Yeah, yeah," I said, waving him off. "I'll sit in the lotus position and contemplate the nature of existence later."
"See that you do."
There was a beat of silence, and then Obi-Wan's voice took on a different tone. Less teacher, more... strategist.
"Nari," he said. "How long have you known him?"
I snorted. "About a week. Give or take."
Obi-Wan's mask tilted slightly, a gesture I'd come to interpret as surprise. "A week."
There was a pause.
A long one.
"I assume," Obi-Wan said slowly, "this occurred at the same time you… stole an Inquisitor transport."
I opened my mouth to argue that it was more like commandeering an abandoned ship, then closed it. Whistled softly, eyes drifting to the ceiling like this was all very interesting new information.
Obi-Wan exhaled through his nose. "Ezra."
"What?" I said, perfectly straight-faced. "You asked how long I've known him."
"You neglected to mention that you rescued him," Obi-Wan replied, voice flat. "Or that the Inquisitors were here because of him."
"I didn't forget," I said quickly. Then, after a beat, "I mean. I forgot to mention it."
""Ezra."
"What? It worked. We got away clean, and I even set up a fake trail to make them think Crimson Dawn was behind it. The Empire's probably tearing itself apart looking for Lando Calrissian right now."
Obi-Wan let out a long, weary sigh that seemed to come from the depths of his soul. "Anything else you forgot to mention?.'"
"Technically, no."
"Of course, I totally believe you...." He rubbed his masked forehead with one hand, the gesture so deeply exasperated that I almost felt bad. Almost. "I swear, Ezra, I age faster when you're around."
"Nah," I said, grinning despite the pain in my ribs. "It's all this sand, the blazing sun, and your distinct lack of face moisturizer."
He didn't respond, just sat there in what I could only describe as the physical embodiment of resignation.
Arachnae chirped again, her tone distinctly amused.
Pi-pi-piing!
"See?" I said, gesturing at her. "Even Arachnae agrees with me."
"Force give me strength," Obi-Wan muttered.
The room settled into a comfortable quiet, the kind that comes after you've aired out all the big problems and are just sitting with them for a while.
Then something shifted.
I couldn't put my finger on what it was exactly. Maybe it was the Force, maybe it was just my paranoia kicking back in after being offline for too long. But the air felt different. Heavier. Like the calm before someone drops a conversational bomb.
I pushed myself up from the cot a bit too quickly, my ribs sending a sharp reminder that they were still very much broken.
"Damn," I said, stretching carefully. "I feel totally damped up laying in this crusty-ass room for so many hours. I'm thinking of heading outside, get some fresh air."
Obi-Wan's masked face tilted slightly, and I could practically hear the amusement in his voice. "Oh? Are your injuries better now?"
"The outer stuff's mostly sealed up thanks to the bacta," I said, prodding gently at my ribs through the armor. "It's the internal bruising and bone fractures that are still being bitches. Bacta can't do much for those. Might have to see a doc when we get back to Anchorhead, but I'm good enough to work at least."
"Hmm. Not as bad as it could be, then."
I was halfway to the door when his voice stopped me.
"Ezra."
Fuck.
I knew that tone. That was the "teachable moment" tone.
"After doing anything significant," Obi-Wan continued, his voice taking on that patient, measured quality that every master uses right before they make you sit through a lecture, "one should give a few moments to contemplate their actions."
I could feel where this was going like a freight train barreling down the tracks.
"So tell me," he said. "Did you learn something from all this?"
Ugh.
I sighed, turned around, and sat back down on the cot with all the enthusiasm of a kid being told to do his homework.
Arachnae chirped softly, her sensors dimming in what I'd come to recognize as sympathy.
"Yeah," I muttered. "I learned something..."
"... I'm overconfident," I said, the words coming out more bitter than I intended. "And reckless."
I flexed my fingers, remembering the weight of the vibro-blades in my hands right before Hett shattered them like cheap toys.
"When we moved into that camp, I broke formation. You went left into the fog, and I should have stayed close, watched your back. Instead, I went hunting." I paused, the memory of Hett's lightsaber igniting still fresh. "Then when I found him, I didn't fall back. Didn't call for help. I just... engaged."
"Like an idiot," I added. "Got my ribs broken and my shoulder dislocated for my trouble. If you hadn't been there, Hett would've cut me in half."
Obi-Wan was quiet for a moment, letting my words hang in the air.
"Those are certainly mistakes you made," he said finally. "But they are symptoms, not the disease."
I frowned. "What do you mean?"
"You're focusing on the actions themselves," Obi-Wan said, leaning forward slightly. "Breaking formation. Engaging alone. Not retreating. These are all tactical errors, yes. But what caused you to make them?"
I opened my mouth, then closed it.
What had caused me to make those calls?
"I thought I could handle it," I said slowly. "I've been training with you for weeks. I've learned Resonance. I've got gear, gadgets, armor. I felt... capable."
"Capable," Obi-Wan repeated. "And when you faced Hett, what did you discover?"
"That I wasn't."
"No." His voice was firm. "You discovered that you had underestimated your opponent. You saw a man with a lightsaber and assumed you knew what that meant. You didn't account for experience, for skill, for the difference between sparring and combat."
He stood up, pacing slowly across the small room.
"You treated the encounter like a test you could pass with the right tools," he continued. "But Hett was not a test. He was a warrior who had survived the fall of the Jedi Order, who had spent years honing his craft in one of the harshest environments in the galaxy. He was not there to evaluate you. He was there to kill you."
I swallowed hard.
"You're not stupid, Ezra," Obi-Wan said, his tone softening slightly. "You're intelligent, resourceful, and you have a gift for adaptation that I've rarely seen. But intelligence without wisdom is dangerous. Resourcefulness without humility leads to overreach."
He stopped pacing and turned to face me directly.
"You've been succeeding," he said. "You escaped Lothal. You survived Tatooine. You found me. You've learned techniques in weeks that take others years. And each success has fed a belief that you can handle whatever comes next."
"But I can't," I said quietly.
"Not yet," Obi-Wan corrected. "But you will. If you survive long enough to learn."
He sat back down on the crate, his posture relaxed but his attention fully on me.
"The lesson here isn't 'don't break formation' or 'don't engage alone,'" he said. "The lesson is to recognize when your confidence has outpaced your competence. To understand that there will always be someone faster, stronger, more experienced. And to have the wisdom to know when to fight and when to retreat."
I sat with that for a moment, turning it over in my mind.
He was right. I'd been riding high on my wins, treating the galaxy like a game I could min-max my way through. But Hett had been a cold, hard reality check. I wasn't the protagonist. I was just some guy with meta-knowledge and a death wish.
"Yeah," I said finally. "I get it."
Obi-Wan nodded. "Good. Because next time, I may not be there to save you."
"Next time, I'll try not to need saving."
"See that you do."
There was a beat of silence, and then something occurred to me.
"Wait a sec," I said, narrowing my eyes at him. "What were you doing when Hett was beating my ass? That guy was using Force enhancements pretty liberally. Didn't you sense him?"
Obi-Wan's masked face remained perfectly still.
"Oh," he said, his tone completely neutral. "I had encountered another Force-sensitive Tusken who seemed to have been trained by Hett."
I blinked. "You... what?"
"He was quite skilled," Obi-Wan continued, as if this were the most normal thing in the world. "Knew Teräs Käsi, which was surprising. It's a nearly lost martial art. Hett must have taught him."
I stared at him.
He stared back.
Or at least, I assumed he was staring back. Hard to tell with the mask.
"So you're telling me," I said slowly, "that while I was getting my ribs rearranged by a Jedi Warlord, you were off fighting his... apprentice?"
"Student, more accurately. But yes."
"And you didn't think to mention this earlier?"
"You were focused on your own lesson," Obi-Wan said calmly. "I didn't want to interrupt."
I squinted at him suspiciously, but his posture remained completely relaxed. Straight-faced bastard.
"Teräs Käsi?" I said, latching onto the term. "You mean the martial art?"
Something pinged in the back of my mind. A memory from my old life, fuzzy and half-forgotten.
Masters of Teräs Käsi.
The fighting game. On the PlayStation. I'd played it once at a friend's house, back when I was a teenager. It had been janky as hell, but the lore had been interesting. Something about an ancient warrior named...
Arden Lyn.
Oh fuck.
Oh fuck.
If Teräs Käsi existed here, and if this timeline was a Legends-Canon hybrid, then Arden Lyn existed. And if she existed, that meant her whole squad existed. The Emperor's elite Force-sensitive enforcers, trained in a martial art specifically designed to kill Jedi.
As if my day couldn't get any worse.
I mean, at least she was hot in the game. Silver linings and all that.
Obi-Wan tilted his head slightly. "You know of it?"
"Yeah," I said, trying to keep my voice casual. "It's a practically lost martial art, right? Designed to counter Force users?"
"Indeed. I'm surprised you're familiar with it."
I felt my mood shift at the word familiar, my mind snapping first to the practical takeaway—women trained to kill Jedi were very much not to be underestimated. Then, inevitably, it derailed, dredging up a half-buried memory of the same friend who'd introduced me to Teräs Käsi lore also introducing me to some deeply cursed Arden Lyn–Mara Jade fan material. I shoved that thought back into its mental box before it could do any more damage.
Obi-Wan's mask tilted further, and I could practically feel his confusion. "Ezra, are you... alright? Your emotional state just fluctuated rather dramatically."
"Oh yeah, totally fine," I said quickly. "Just... you know. Remembered something."
"Remembered what?"
I sighed, running a hand through my hair.
"Okay, so, funny story. I maybe had a Force vision about this too."
Obi-Wan went very still.
"A Force vision," he repeated.
"Yeah. Well, more like a... premonition. Possibility. Whatever you want to call it." I waved a hand vaguely. "There's maybe a squad of Force-sensitive people being trained by an eons-old Dark Side user who was resurrected by Darth Sidious. Her name's Arden Lyn, and she's basically an ancient Sith assassin who knows Teräs Käsi."
Silence.
Complete, total silence.
I glanced at Obi-Wan. He hadn't moved. Hadn't said a word.
"It's all a maybe," I added quickly. "Could be true. Could be nothing. Force visions are weird like that."
More silence.
"Obi-Wan?"
"Ezra," he said finally, his voice very, very calm. "When you say 'resurrected by Darth Sidious,' you mean the Emperor."
"Yep."
"And this... Arden Lyn. She's training a squad of Force-sensitive assassins."
"That's the gist of it, yeah."
"For the Emperor."
"Presumably."
Obi-Wan stood up slowly, his movements deliberate and controlled.
"And you're only mentioning this now," he said.
"In my defense," I said, "I only just remembered it because you brought up Teräs Käsi."
He turned away, walking toward the door. He stopped just before reaching it, his hand resting on the frame.
"Force give me strength," he muttered.
"Hey, it's just a maybe!"
"A maybe," he repeated, his tone flat. "Like how the Inquisitors showing up in Mos Eisley was a 'maybe.' Or how Hett being a Jedi Warlord was a 'maybe.'"
"Okay, fair point."
He let out a long, weary sigh.
"We're discussing this later," he said. "In detail."
That meant we'd most likely never discuss it. But I had to keep up the show.
"Sure thing, boss."
He opened the door and stepped out into the corridor, leaving me alone with Arachnae and the wreckage of the canteen.
Arachnae chirped softly, her sensors flickering.
Piing?
"Yeah," I said, scratching her head. "I think I just broke him."
---
A/N: Damn, consider me surprised seeing the book be in top 20 yesterday. I would have given you guys an bonus chapter if I had one. But sadly, I am barely breaking in on advanced chapters on Patreon these days due to a self-study sessions eating up my RAM.
Chapter lengths are all going over 3k words atleast, even when I try to keep it smaller. Don't know if its a good thing or not lol.
Don't forget to donate stones btw! They are a big motivation to continue writing!
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