Abandoned Loading Bay, Capital City Outskirts, Lothal
6 BBY (One Month Later)
Sweat carved clean lines through the grime on Ezra's face as he lowered himself into another push-up. Thirty-seven. Thirty-eight. His arms trembled, muscles screaming in protest, but he forced himself down again. Thirty-nine.
The loading bay had been abandoned long enough for rust to claim the equipment and dust to settle thick as snow across every surface. Perfect. No one came here, which meant no one would ask questions about the scrawny kid using cargo crates as makeshift weights or the shallow divots in the floor where he'd practiced the same footwork drill until muscle memory overrode conscious thought.
Forty.
He collapsed onto his stomach, chest heaving, tasting copper and salt. Solomon's memories supplied the workout routines, generic exercise programs he'd found online during his previous life, adapted now for a body half-starved and wholly unprepared for physical exertion. But Ezra's body was learning. Slowly. Painfully. But learning.
The smuggling job had gone better than expected. The ore convoy had been lightly guarded, the ambush point perfect, the execution clean. He'd walked away with enough credits to eat regularly for the first time since waking up in this universe. Real food, not scraps or expired ration bars. Protein. Carbohydrates. Nutrients that did more than just postpone death.
The difference was already visible. His ribs still showed, but the hollows in his cheeks had filled slightly. His arms had begun to develop definition beyond tendon and bone. Nothing dramatic, nothing that would intimidate anyone who looked at him, but enough that he could feel the change when he moved.
Still not enough.
He pushed himself upright, wiping sweat from his eyes, and moved to where he'd set up a pull-up bar between two support beams. His grip was steadier now than it had been a month ago, calluses forming where soft skin used to blister and tear. He pulled himself up once, twice, feeling the burn spread through his back and shoulders.
On Earth, Solomon had been average. Not athletic, not sedentary, just somewhere in the unremarkable middle. But he'd understood the principle: consistency over intensity, gradual progression, listening to the body's signals.
Ten pull-ups before his grip failed. He dropped to the ground, flexed his fingers, waited for the burning to subside. Then he did it again.
The physical training was necessary but insufficient. Strength mattered, speed mattered, endurance mattered, but they were tools, not solutions. What separated survivors from corpses in a galaxy ruled by the Empire wasn't muscle mass. It was awareness. Anticipation. The ability to see threats before they materialized and opportunities before they vanished.
The Force.
Ezra moved to the center of the bay and sat cross-legged on the dusty floor. The position felt awkward, foreign to both sets of memories he carried. Solomon had never meditated beyond a half-hearted attempt at mindfulness during a particularly stressful semester. Ezra had never sat still long enough to contemplate anything beyond where his next meal would come from.
But he'd watched Star Wars Rebels. He knew what Kanan had taught, what principles guided Jedi training even in the Empire's shadow. And more than that, he had access to something neither of his previous selves had possessed: certainty that the Force existed, that it could be touched, that it was already touching him whether he acknowledged it or not.
He closed his eyes and tried to remember how Kanan had explained it to the younger, more reckless Ezra in the show. Something about reaching out, feeling the connections between all living things. Vague mystical nonsense that made for good television but terrible instruction.
Yet when he exhaled and let his awareness drift outward, something responded.
Not dramatically. Not with visions or revelations or sudden enlightenment. Just a subtle shift in perception, like adjusting focus on a camera until background details suddenly became clear. He could sense the rats nesting in the walls, their tiny hearts beating fast with prey-animal nervousness. Could feel the weight of the building above him, decades of accumulated stress fractures and structural decay. Could almost, if he concentrated, trace the paths of people moving through the streets beyond the loading bay's walls.
The sensation lasted perhaps ten seconds before his concentration fractured and the world snapped back to its normal dimensions. But those ten seconds proved what he'd suspected: the Force wasn't just real, it was accessible. Untrained, undisciplined, but present.
He tried again. This time he focused on something smaller, more concrete. A bolt lay on the floor three meters away, standard industrial fastener probably dropped by workers years ago. Ezra fixed his attention on it, tried to remember how telekinesis looked in the movies, in the show, in all the Star Wars media he'd consumed back on Earth.
Nothing happened.
He adjusted his approach, thinking less about moving the bolt and more about connecting to it. Feeling its weight, its composition, the molecular bonds holding it together. Still nothing, but the quality of the nothing felt different somehow. Closer.
Minutes bled into an hour. The bolt refused to budge. Frustration built in his chest, hot and tight, making his breath come faster. He was doing something wrong, approaching this incorrectly, missing some fundamental principle that would make it all click into place.
Or maybe he was just weak. Maybe whatever potential existed in this body hadn't developed enough yet. Maybe he'd need years of training before he could accomplish even the simplest Force technique.
The frustration crystallized into anger, and in that moment of emotional spike, the bolt shifted.
Not much. Maybe a centimeter, barely enough to notice. But it moved. He felt it through whatever channel connected his will to the physical world, felt the resistance and the release when that resistance gave way.
His eyes snapped open, heart hammering. The bolt lay exactly where it had been before, no evidence of movement except his own certainty that something had changed.
He'd done it. Actually done it. Used the Force deliberately, not just passively sensing but actively manipulating physical reality.
The elation lasted exactly as long as it took him to realize he had no idea how to replicate the result. The anger had been the catalyst, but anger alone wasn't enough. He'd need control, focus, discipline.
Training. Real training. Not just stumbling around in the dark hoping for results, but structured practice based on actual technique.
The problem was that actual technique had been systematically destroyed across the galaxy. The Jedi were gone, their temples ransacked, their holocrons scattered or destroyed, their teachings reduced to legends and half-remembered stories.
What survived existed in fragments. The hidden temple on Lothal, yes, but he couldn't access that yet without drawing attention. Kanan Jarrus would arrive eventually with his knowledge, but that was a year away and Ezra needed to develop something now, before circumstances forced his hand.
Which left him with what he'd brought from Earth... a fan's knowledge of Star Wars lore, incomplete and filtered through entertainment media, but better than nothing.
He spent the next hour attempting to piece everything he could remember together. Jedi training exercises from the Clone Wars animated series. Techniques mentioned in novels he'd read, games he'd played, wiki articles he'd skimmed. Most of it was probably inaccurate or simplified for narrative convenience, but somewhere in that mess of information had to be principles that corresponded to reality.
Meditation seemed fundamental. Every Jedi shown onscreen spent time in meditation, and not just for Force training but for mental clarity, emotional regulation, tactical planning. If nothing else, learning to quiet his mind and extend his awareness would provide advantages even without flashy telekinesis or precognition.
Physical conditioning paired with Force awareness also made sense. The Jedi had been warriors as much as mystics, their combat styles blending acrobatics with augmented reflexes. He couldn't learn proper lightsaber forms without a weapon or instructor, but he could work on flexibility, balance, the kinesthetic awareness that would let him move efficiently in combat.
And perhaps most crucially, he needed to develop the passive abilities first. Sensing danger, reading emotions, feeling disturbances in his immediate environment. Those skills would keep him alive long enough to develop more active techniques.
The sun had shifted by the time Ezra emerged from the loading bay, painting the industrial sector in shades of amber and rust. His body ached pleasantly, the kind of soreness that came from productive exertion rather than injury or starvation. He'd pushed himself today, maybe further than was smart, but limits only expanded through testing.
He made his way back toward the tower, taking a different route than usual. Paranoia or prudence, hard to say which, but varying his patterns felt important. The Empire might not be actively hunting him yet, but that could change. Better to develop good habits now than scramble to adapt later.
Halfway home, passing through a residential sector that had seen better decades, Ezra felt it again. That subtle shift in awareness, the sensation of focusing on something previously invisible. Danger, approaching from behind, closing fast.
He dove left without thinking, rolling across cracked pavement as a speeder bike roared through the space where he'd been standing. The rider wore civilian clothes but the way he handled the bike screamed Imperial training. Probably a scout trooper on leave, or maybe just some thug who'd learned to ride in the Imperial military before desertion or discharge.
The speeder curved around for another pass. Ezra scrambled behind a duracrete barrier, breathing hard, adrenaline spiking through his system. No blaster. He'd left his salvaged pistol back at the tower, hadn't expected to need it for a simple walk home.
Stupid. Getting comfortable was how you died.
The speeder's repulsor engines whined as it decelerated. The rider dismounted, drawing a vibroblade from a hip sheath. "Thought you could steal from me, kid? Thought I wouldn't notice?"
Ezra's mind raced through possibilities. He didn't recognize the man, didn't remember any recent thefts that would justify this level of aggression. Mistaken identity, maybe, or someone settling a score on behalf of someone else.
Didn't matter. What mattered was that the man was armed, larger, and radiating the kind of casual violence that came from experience hurting people.
The Force whispered again. Not words, not even clear impressions, just a sense of trajectory, of motion before it happened. The man would circle right, trying to cut off escape routes, confident in his advantage.
Ezra burst from cover, sprinting left, using the barrier to block line of sight for precious seconds. Behind him, the man cursed and gave chase. But Ezra knew these streets, knew which alleys led to deadends and which opened into warrens of interconnected passages. More importantly, he'd spent the last month building up stamina that teenage arrogance alone couldn't sustain.
He ran until his lungs burned and his legs threatened mutiny, until the sound of pursuit faded and the narrow streets gave way to the familiar wasteland approaching his tower. Only then did he slow, pressing against a wall, gasping for air.
Close. Too close.
The encounter crystallized something he'd been avoiding: this wasn't a game or a story he could observe from safe distance. Every choice carried consequence. Every mistake could be fatal. The universe didn't care about his meta-knowledge or his second chance at life.
He needed to be better. Stronger, faster, more skilled. The physical training would continue. The Force training would intensify. And he'd need to acquire proper weapons, real equipment, not just scavenged scraps.