Kanan stayed focused as they made it past security and into a different warehouse than the one they'd run into trouble in before, not that he could have told it was a different one at first glance. Dim lighting, stacks of near identical crates, he was fairly certain one could walk into an Imperial warehouse anywhere in the galaxy this time of night and see about the same thing he was seeing.
"I'll start this side, you take the other, stay quiet, check and see if the contents match the markings and tap your com if something looks out of place," Kanan spoke quietly, waiting for Ezra's nod before he moved off.
Kanan was tense, not really liking this sort of investigating, but there wasn't a whole lot of choice. Searching randomly just felt frustrating, opening crate after crate marked as uniforms or ration portions and finding exactly what they said. Everything initially seemed like maybe Ezra was right, it was just an ordinary shipment. The Star Destroyer could have been passing through anyway, it wasn't necessarily important. Something kept nagging at the back of his mind that there had to be something more though, and he stubbornly stuck to the plan, searching crates even as he kept a good portion of his attention on any Imperial activity and how far Ezra had gotten in his own search. Just as he was fitting yet another lid back on his communicator gave a quiet chirp. He looked up, finding Ezra's position easily. Ezra gave a shrug and motioned to the crate and Kanan nodded, heading over to him. It couldn't have been something obvious or Ezra would have indicated that, not just a signal that he didn't know.
Ezra was standing over a crate filled with… dirt?
"I didn't recognize this stuff, do you know what it is?" Ezra spoke quietly, and Kanan reached to grab a handful of the dirt, squeezing it in surprise.
"Rockfoam, it's a mineral deposit used in construction. It's lightweight and strong and insulates, but you usually just see it used on worlds where it's a mining byproduct. It's next to worthless and there's better alternatives. I don't know why anyone would take the trouble to ship it offworld." Kanan let the dirt drop back into the crate.
"Maybe they discovered a better use for it?" Ezra asked quietly, prodding at the dirt and frowning, then shoving his hand down deeper into the crate.
"Could be. What are you doing?" Kanan watched him.
"Smuggling trick, hide something valuable inside a shipment of something a lot less so, either because of taxes or because it's illegal," Ezra said, feeling around.
"I know that, but why would the Empire go to that much trouble?" Kanan asked skeptically, starting to turn to go back to his search, not wanting to waste any more time. He turned back immediately when Ezra made a muffled sound of surprise.
"I was thinking maybe not to hide it, but you said yourself it's used as insulation. This doesn't look like rockfoam." Ezra held out his hand, on his palm was a good coating of dirt sticking to his glove, but also a crystal. It looked almost clear, but looking closely Kanan could already see a tint of color starting to bleed into it even if it wasn't making direct contact with Ezra's skin.
"No, that's not rockfoam." Kanan couldn't keep the awe and surprise out of his voice.
Ezra rolled it to between his thumb and forefinger, holding it up to examine it. "Do you know what it is?"
"It's a kyber crystal," Kanan spoke with authority, even if he didn't recognize it, the small vibrations in the Force were unmistakable.
"Oooh," Ezra sounded impressed, then there was a pause. "What's a kyber crystal?"
"They're crystals that resonate with the Force, they were used to make lightsabers. I'll give you the full history of them once we get out of here," Kanan whispered urgently, glancing around. He could see at least a half dozen of the crates marked like the same as the one they were currently examining, as raw ore. He didn't know how many, if any, were hiding crystals, or how many the crates might hold. The rockfoam must do more than just protect them from damage or hide them, it must be working to hide them from being sensed. The question was, by accident or design?
"Should I grab the crate?" Ezra reached to get the lid, starting to fit it back on.
"No," Kanan spoke reluctantly, feeling terrible even if he knew it was the right answer. "If stealing too many blasters at once is risky, that would be insane."
Ezra looked like he wanted to argue but he nodded instead, fitting the lid back on.
"Lets get out of here," Kanan nodded to the exit. He wasn't sure if this was the information Hera expected to find on Lothal, but it certainly warranted a report as soon as he could get back and get it encrypted. No matter what the Empire wanted with kyber crystals, it couldn't be good.
Kanan had halfway forgotten about his promise to explain kyber crystals when he made it back to the ship. It wasn't until after he fired off the quick report and closed the transmission channel that he remembered. He stepped out to find Ezra already waiting in his room. Kanan blinked, scrubbing a hand over his face. After everything that had happened, after the adrenaline left over from the mission finally wore off he was left exhausted.
Ezra seemed to notice, smiling tiredly. "If you want to postpone the lesson until later I understand."
Kanan shook his head a little, going over to sit beside him on the bed. "I can try to at least give you the overview before I crash, so you know why they're important. Just don't expect any kind of formal lesson."
"I can live with that." Ezra flashed him a quick grin. "It alright if I take the other bunk again?"
"Go ahead," Kanan answered without even having to think about it. He didn't know why Ezra didn't just stay on the ship more often when they had things planned, but he didn't want to push. He probably valued his privacy and Kanan couldn't say he blamed him. He hadn't been expecting Ezra to be so good at sensing others on his very first try, but as strong as he was in that particular area he might have been picking up a sort of background radiation of emotion from the people around him for a long time. Even experienced Jedi had to guard against emotions from those around them if the emotions were strong enough, to be able to stay calm and centered even in the midst of a panic or riot. It was no wonder Ezra had packed up and moved out far away from any other minds.
"So why are these crystals so important? I know they were used for lightsabers before, but if there's no more Jedi what use are they?" Ezra asked.
"I can't know for sure, but besides resonating in the Force they're uniquely good at focusing energy. Other crystals will start developing stress points and fractures over time and heavy use, eventually becoming unstable, but not a kyber crystal. They're also extremely rare, they were only found on a few planets that I know of, and most of them aren't exactly hospitable. It takes intense heat and pressure to form them. Illum is a barren wasteland of ice and snow, Jedha is habitable but its crystals were formed by an ancient meteor impact. Lothal isn't anything like either of those," Kanan mused.
"So if they're looking for kyber crystals specifically even though they're so rare, it must be because others aren't suitable. Huh." Ezra was quiet for a long moment, then he reached into one of his vest interior pockets, pulling out the crystal from before. "It doesn't look like it would be that valuable."
"You kept it?" Kanan was startled. He never even saw Ezra pocket it, but he'd been distracted. He'd just assumed…
"Yeah. I mean odds are if they even notice, they'll probably think it was a mistake. Or they'll check their own people before they think someone might have broken in and swiped just one little thing, right?" Ezra turned the crystal over in his hand. "Is it changing colors or is that just the light?"
"It..." Kanan was distracted from his half formed chiding that taking a crystal was still too big a risk. "It's not the light, kyber crystals start out clear, but when they're close and touched by someone with Force sensitivity they kind of imprint on the person and change color depending on them. In an ideal situation a Padawan would go and find their own untouched crystal to make it their own like you're starting to, next best is finding one already touched but that's close enough to feel right to you. In a pinch though, you can learn to work with any crystal. You'll need to keep it close and meditate with it to get it to reach it's full potential."
"Then it's probably a good thing I swiped it, huh?" Ezra smiled tiredly, tucking it back away. "Since they're as rare and valuable as you say, I doubt you were planning to leave me your lightsaber and I may not get another chance at one."
Kanan opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. No, he hadn't been planning on doing that, he'd held onto it this long, and the risk to Ezra if he was found with it was a burden he didn't want Ezra to bear. But at the same time why had he been training him with a blade if Ezra was never going to get a saber of his own? All he really had was half-formed excuses as to why it had always seemed right at the time. Maybe if it had come to it he could have removed the second focal crystal from his own, but he'd never given it much thought.
"Doesn't really matter now, for now I'm too tired to think straight and I doubt you're much better. If you want a more coherent lesson on the weapons of the Jedi it'll have to wait until we've both had some sleep," Kanan finally said.
"Including how to build my own?" Ezra asked.
"Maybe." Kanan reached out, giving Ezra's shoulder a light push. "Other bunk's up top."
"That's too far away," Ezra whined, slumping further before heaving a theatrical sigh and hauling himself up with visible effort to make the short walk around to the ladder.
Kanan smiled in spite of himself. It settled into a comfortable silence, neither of them talking as they tugged off boots and hard armor parts. As Kanan closed his eyes, letting sleep come to claim him, his last half coherent thoughts were that he could get used to this.
"The two most common colors are green and blue, and after that's yellow. There are more colors than that, but most of them are rare enough that I'm going to skip them for now. We'll deal with them later." Kanan spoke slowly as he tried to remember how he'd learned about the colors, holding the holocron but not opening it yet. "Blue are Jedi who are action oriented, they prefer direct solutions, and frequently they tend to focus on their combat skills, trusting in their fighting ability to get them out of a tough spot."
Blue was easy enough to remember, he'd been overjoyed as a youngling when time and time again he would choose an unmarked practice saber and have it light blue until he finally received a blue crystal of his own. He wanted to be a hero of the Republic, charging in to save the day. Sometimes it was hard to think he'd ever been that cocksure and naive.
"Green is for the thinkers, the philosophers and healers. Those who's first instinct is to negotiate rather than fight. Not that they can't fight, but they'd rather solve the problem another way if they can. Yellow is for those balanced between the two, typically yellow sabers were for guards," Kanan explained. It was hard to think of the green blades without remembering his own master. She had been endlessly patient with her young padawan's never ending questions, a steadying presence even in the worst of times. Her loss still ached sharply even all these years later, even if he knew she'd have wanted her memory to be a comfort.
"Just those three?" Ezra asked, sounding genuinely curious. "It seems a little… limiting."
Kanan chuckled. "No, those were just the most common, and there was a great deal of subtle variation within each color range, and a lot of academic papers and theories about insights into people's personalities, and I'm just sticking to what was generally agreed on. My own grand master's saber was purple, and it's hard to say for sure what, if anything, that might have meant."
"Even if you weren't sure, what was your theory on why it was purple?" Ezra asked
"I'm not sure, I didn't know him well," Kanan said a little ruefully. It was an understatement, between the war and the council Mace Windu had little time for younglings, and he got the feeling it was out of a general annoyance at dealing with people who weren't yet ready to talk on his level. Then he sobered a little, remembering something he had left out. Not intentionally, but so much of his own early schooling had treated the dark side almost as a boogeyman, a fear to keep you in line but with no true conviction that it was actually waiting out there to destroy you.
"One of the theories was that as a master swordsman he was the only Jedi to successfully go to the edge of the dark side without ever falling over and letting it taint him. That his crystal reflected that, balanced between red and blue. I don't know how true that was, but I heard it often enough," Kanan explained.
Ezra looked confused, and Kanan didn't blame him. "The dark side? What's that?"
"It's hard to explain. It's something every Jedi learns about eventually, but there's not a lot known about it. When you reach for the Force in good faith, let it guide you, you're using the light side. But if you reach for it in anger, selfishly, with ill intent then you risk touching the dark side. It corrupts you like a poison. It's good at destroying and little else, but since it is good at destroying it will always be a temptation." It wasn't the answer Kanan had been given all those years ago, but Ezra could look up the cleaner answers on its own. "If you were given the option to destroy the Empire, to kill every man, woman, and child loyal to it. Would you?"
Ezra started to speak, then stopped himself, visibly torn. "I don't know. I want to say no, people can change, people can become better. I've seen people join the Academy because it's better than starving, or because they believed the good the Empire does outweighs the bad. And...I don't know. People can change for the worse too. But I've seen the bad the Empire does and I don't know if it would be better for more people if that just… stopped. I don't know what the right answer is."
Kanan reached out, squeezing his shoulder. "That's a good answer. Generally I've found the people who get into the most trouble are the people not even willing to consider they could be wrong. People who use the dark side carry red blades. I don't know how they get the crystals for them, some historians said they made synthetic crystals, some said they took untouched kyber crystals the same as the Jedi did, and some said they took crystals from defeated Jedi and corrupted them somehow to turn them red. Hopefully you'll never encounter a red blade, but you need to know."
"Red blades bad, got it," Ezra said with forced lightness, then he sobered. "There's not a chance I could..."
Kanan knew where that question was going and cut him off. "No, I don't know what the future holds for you, but at this point in time I'd know if you were dark at all, and you're not."
"Good," Ezra sounded relieved and Kanan was grateful for it. "Now that we've covered the philosophical parts, can we maybe get into how a lightsaber actually works?"
Kanan laughed despite himself, opening the holocron with an ease that made it tempting to forget what a struggle it had been only a few weeks before. The endless diagrams and circuit configurations and explanations of casing material strength to weight ratios were more than enough to keep them both busy for a dozen more lessons before he ever even opened up his own for Ezra to see for himself how one worked. No, Kanan knew, Ezra was the furthest thing from dark, he'd felt his light in the Force like a beacon when they'd meditated together, and now that he knew what to feel for being close to him was like basking in front of a heater on a chilly day. He'd taken this mission to spend time on his own, re-centering himself, but he was becoming more and more aware that the time he did spend alone now was less satisfying.
He tried not to think about when his time on Lothal came to an end and he kept his side of their bargain. Ezra deserved a chance at a normal life, and doing what he could to arrange that may not absolve him of past regrets, but it was the right thing to do. No matter how much it was going to hurt to let Ezra walk away.