A/N: Sorry for the long wait, I've got some shit going on, I'll try to be better about writing every day, even if it's just a sentence, so hopefully I can get these chapters out a bit quicker.

This chapter is less of a single narrative, and more of a series of snapshots occurring over the course of the two years leading up to the events of TPM. Still, there's important shit in here, I promise it isn't filler. These are plot points I need to cover. Hope you enjoy!

Hank the junk scooter hummed as I sped across the nighttime dunes. Since my fateful encounter with Nyra six months ago, I had made several upgrades to it, and it was -much- more sophisticated a machine now than it was before.

I had cannibalized the repulser-lifts from three other hover crates, and replaced the stabilizers to ones with greater range that actually belonged on a speeder bike, so balance was no longer an issue. I managed to weld together a load bearing frame and a trailer hitch which were strong enough to hold cargo, and replaced the probe droid hover lift I had been using with a proper speeder engine. Over the last six months, I had gradually replaced almost the entire makeup of the scooter to the point it was pretty much unrecognizable from its humble beginnings.

It was a bit of a 'grandfather's axe' situation (father replaced the head and I replaced the handle, but other than that it's completely original!) but because the changes didn't happen all at once, I still thought of it as Hank. It looked like a wheel-less hovering Harley, and I was able to attach a chain of three connected hover crate trailers to the back and haul them without issue.

The part that I was most satisfied with was that I was now able to outrun and outmaneuver the occasional raider or bandit, which meant my custom built, from-the-ground-up creation was actually better than the speeders other people used.

My Thor gun, Hank mk1, and several other creations of mine had always been effective and usable, but they weren't ever objectively better than regular equipment other people could just buy. Sure they were creative, and they had strange uses that might catch people off guard, but at the end of the day they were junk. Lovable, workable junk, but junk nonetheless.

Hank mk2 was different. It straight up outperformed other speeders. And every time I was in a jam and got out of it by being faster or more nimble, I grinned like a loon at the fact that I, a fucking slave could build something that was better than what their money could buy.

It just tickled my funny bone. Checked a feel-good box in my chest. It made me feel like iron man.

And speaking of getting in jams, I had ran into ALOT of trouble over the past six months. Many people wanted to know where the "Water Jawa" was getting his product, but with Hank Mk2 and the force as my ally, I managed to avoid them.

Not feeling comfortable with hiding our money in the city where anyone with a blaster could get past the womp rats, we had moved our money and blasters to the Crystal Cave, which I had set up with a moisture vaporator and homemade maintenance droid. It produced about twelve keg sized jugs of water a week, and drew power from a bank of cells that had about 2 weeks of power for the vaporator and the droids. I had set up a hidden solar station elsewhere in the wastes, which I used to recharge the cells used in the power bank.

At first the locals had been a problem, but with regular gifts of water and showing them how to use the solar bank, they had begun to appreciate my presence, and I hoped that if anyone ever was stupid enough to follow me all the way into the wastes, I could count on them to be the enemy of my enemy. I never allowed them to follow me anywhere close to the cave, liberally using the force to avoid their attempts.

From the way they kept their distance from me, and from the emotions I sensed, I'm pretty sure I was reaching Cryptid status among them.

When I was in the city or in the canyons of the wastes, there was a lot of cover and my notice-me-not cloak made it so I was pretty much untraceable. The only problem with it was that it's range was limited, so out in the dune sea, those that were far away could make me out, and once they had eyes on me it was much more difficult to trick their attention. I had to duck behind cover to break their line of sight before the cloak affected them again, and I had taken to collecting grenade sized rocks and dropping them behind me, then using the force to blast up heavy plumes of sand to obscure their vision.

They hadn't yet realized they weren't actual grenades, and I sincerely hoped they never figured it out.

A humorous consequence of this was that they wasted a large amount of time casing out weapon shops that sold grenades, because I had to be getting them from somewhere right? They even came into Watto's shop once to inquire about the model of Hank mk2, with Watto obviously not recognizing the model and declaring it a custom job.

Then they had wasted even more time questioning the body shops and mechanics in the area, which again led them to only dead ends.

I had anonymously contacted the buyers of the water through the network of slaves and merchants we were a part of, and made my deliveries in the middle of the night. So far only one person snitched, and I had luckily sensed the ambush, escaped, and never sold to them again.

Eager to hang on to their source of cheap water, everyone else kept their mouths shut.

About a month ago the raiders stopped pursuing me as doggedly, so I'm pretty sure they've given up. There's only been token engagement in the dune sea since.

It had only been six months, and we already had nearly half of what we needed to free one of us. The fact that if things kept going at the rate they were, we would meet our goal roughly 10 months before the Boonta eve classic where it would all go down was exhilarating. Hell, if something good happened and I stumbled into some extra cash, I might not even need to race at all!

Of course I still would race, the Jedi would need their parts after all, and I couldn't just not beat sebulba's smug cheating ass and finally rub his nose in the stench of his defeat, but it was the principle of the matter. I wouldn't be freed without my knowledge through someone else's schemes, but by my own efforts. This would be an equal exchange, not a charity.

Finally reaching the city wall, I was pulled out of my musings as I cast out my senses to see if anyone was watching.

Once I was sure I was unseen, I used the force to secure Hank mk2 in its tarp and buried it under the sand. I had already performed my deliveries and returned the carts and my earnings to the cave, so all that was left was to return home.

As I walked through the nighttime streets of mos espa, I lamented the fact that I would have to wake up in as little as 3 and a half hours to go to work. I only did this once a week when I had enough water, but it was still a total bitch to deal with the next day at work. Today was especially tough, because I had seen a Krayt dragon roaming the dune sea and had to wait for it to pass before I dared drive home. I would seriously suffer from lack of sleep tomorrow.

I had been religiously practicing the Matukai training Nyra gave me every single night, but so far it hadn't made any difference to the amount of sleep I needed. One of the exercises she laid out in the document was to call upon the force and have it with you when you were calming down to fall asleep.

The force was supposed to enhance your body's ability to recover mentally and physically, as well as cataloging memory more effectively and efficiently.

Eventually this would compound and develop into the ability to sleep like an hour a week and be totally fine, with no medical difference from someone who got eight uninhibited hours every night.

The only problem was that training your bodies ability to 'sleep with the guidance of the force' was something that took a ridiculous amount of time and dedication, and most people's bodies didn't start 'getting it' until like five or so years into the training.

Apparently the Jedi didn't bother with this, deeming a healing trance efficient enough for their purposes, which Nyra claimed in her writings didn't supply all the benefits of proper sleep, and caused REM sleep deprivation in Jedi who overused it as a substitute, as healing trances were more like a temporary coma than actual sleep. The upside was that a healing trance could be learned much quicker, most people successfully pulling it off after a month of training.

Which, while interesting, didn't help my current situation at all. Until my body started figuring out how to subconsciously 'enhance my sleep with the force', I was stuck needing eight hours a night just like everyone else.

I sighed. Work was gonna be a bitch tomorrow.

Spoiler alert: it was. I basically had to use the force to enhance myself just to get up to my baseline level of competence. The entire day was a moving meditation, but instead of my Matukai exercises Amu and I had been doing every night, it was just regular work.

There were several times where Watto said something to me and I didn't register at first, or when I openly used the force a few times to snake wires or loosen bolts like I do at home and Amu caught me and frantically reminded me of where we were. Luckily Watto didn't catch me any of these times, but it was a close thing.

Amu gave me the 'this can't go on, we WILL be talking about this later' face, and I knew there would be an argument later tonight. I sighed.

It was almost at the end of the day when a subtle hint sounded in the force like a tinkling bell. I was out in the junkyard fetching a droid part when it happened, and I followed the feeling to its source over at one of the totaled ships that had been recently dropped off. It was a compact stunt fighter that had been mangled to the point that it was nearly in half, and most of the surviving parts had already been stripped away. From what I could tell, the original shape of the fighter had been boomerang shaped with two oversized cylindrical engines at the halfway point of the wings.

The structural frame had been made from two types of metal, a lighter, slightly more flexible alloy for the body and wings, but a tougher, more durable metal for the engine housing. The main cabin area had been thoroughly destroyed, but a quick check showed both engine frames were perfectly straight.

That was odd! If the ship collided hard enough with an object that it basically folded in half, wouldn't the engine housing also be bent? But it wasn't… what was it made of?

After a few tests, I realized I hit the jackpot! It wasn't just regular durasteel, it was a Quadanium alloy! It was relatively high percent too, about 30% Quadanium to 70% durasteel!

Quadanium was ridiculously durable and had a stupidly high heat resistance! It wasn't legendary like beskar or anything, but to a desert junk rat like me, it may as well have been!

I quickly deleted the scan results and ran in to talk to Watto, and began speaking in huttese. "Watto sir? I was wondering if I could start cutting up that folded stunt fighter for its frame?"

He waved his hand dismissively, responding also in huttese, "If you want to. It's frame is a bit soft for a fighter, and I've stripped everything I need off of it so I was just going to let the Jawas take it, but if you think you can get some ingots melted, go right ahead".

Yes! He hadn't realized the engine cylinders were made of a tougher alloy! "Alright." I responded easily, desperately not showing my enthusiasm. "I'll see what I can separate and hawk the rest of the junk to the Jawas."

Watto nodded and waved me off dismissively.

Once I was out of sight I quickly began separating the tougher engine segments from the rest of the wreckage. When I was done I had two large cylindrical tubes of stupidly strong metal, and perhaps it was a coincidence, but they were the exact same size as the engines from Anakin's pod from the phantom menace! With engine walls this tough, I could power my engines with fucking dynamite and it still wouldn't deform. These would be the base of my pod racer!

With the extra strength of the engine walls I could compress the fuel to create a far more violent combustion, getting more bang for my buck fuel wise! While this would normally be too dangerous to risk with normal materials, with Quadanium alloy it would be fine! This also would explain why canon Anakin could have a lot of his fuel leak and still win the race! This must be what he used!

I had the droids load up the engine cylinders and the rest of the junk that couldn't be melted down. But as I drove the flatbed out to the place where we usually met the Jawas, I made a quick stop by the back of the slave quarters to drop off the very first components for what I hoped would be the fastest pod racer ever built!

After we went home I did my Matukai exercises tiredly, working through the motions with a wooden staff Nyra had left for me. She had even recorded holograms of the different motions, so Amu and I could make sure we were learning the correct moves. There were three sets of holograms with different katas on them. First, there was the regular exercise forms, which were geared towards working out, not fighting, so they didn't have much use in combat. These were the kind she had me do in person on the day that I met her. The second type was the unarmed forms, which dealt with hand to hand combat, and Third was staff forms, which is what I was doing tonight.

After I was done, I sat in front of my mother, ready to endure a talking about staying out too late. Instead of a lecture, she picked me up and carried me to my room. "Your head looks like it's bobbling on a spring." She commented with an exasperated laugh, "We'll talk in the morning." She said. I sighed in relief.

I was unconscious before I was in my bed.

While we did talk about doing things differently, multiple times, it would always circle around to the fact that we couldn't really do it any other way. Hank was kid sized and people thought I was a Jawa, and having a human partner would make me far more easily identifiable.

Amu and I would get into a lot of fights about it over the next few months, but we never really came up with an alternate plan to make extra money that was as viable and relatively risk free as our current one. I wasn't cutting into the hutt's profits so they never sent anyone skilled after me, I never killed any of my pursuers so nobody put a bounty on me for revenge, and I was so slippery and skilled that even the most desperate raiders only gave token efforts, and I could sense that they didn't actually believe they would catch me, they just hoped to maybe get lucky.

Despite that, I could tell it burned at Amu's conscience that I, the child, was doing was she believed was her, the parent's, responsibility. I could feel the guilt and worry every time I came home, and we would spend the next day meditating and 'discussing' alternatives. Honestly this was probably the biggest rift between us. Still, even with all this I was never able to sense any resentment or anger towards me. She never blamed me, she always loved me, but she absolutely hated that I was putting myself in danger. She hated the situation that forced me to to risk my life for her.

But at the end of the day, she always was able to let those feelings calm, to let them go. When I asked her how she was releasing her emotions into the force so effectively, she told me something I'll never forget.

"I'm not releasing my emotions into the force Anakin." She said calmly.

I blinked in confusion. "But you feel so… serene! When I get mad or really worried I get all prickly for hours, how are you so… at peace?"

She smiled with a quirked eyebrow. "Well. I'm glad I come across so calm and collected Ani, but I'm not banishing my feelings or tossing them away."

I was even more confused. She must have realized, because she hummed in contemplation the way she did when ordering her thoughts about something complicated.

Finally she seemed to come to a realization. "Emotions, specifically negative emotions… are like tools."

Um what? Tools?

She continued. "Fear is a useful tool. It alerts you to threats and danger. It quickens your reactions. Anger is a useful tool. It alerts you to injustice. It gives you the courage to act in a tense situation. But just as a tool like a hydrospanner can also be used as a weapon to harm others, or when used carelessly can harm ourselves, so can our emotions harm others and ourselves. Their main purpose is to be helpful, but they can easily get out of hand. Fear and anger are useful. Panic and rage are not. When I feel an emotion strongly, I evaluate if it is helping or harming. If my fear or anger has fulfilled its rightful purpose, I am thankful to it for alerting me, resolve to act if I can, and let it settle down until it's needed again, before it grows into something unmanageable. I suppose the best way to put it would be… putting it back in my tool belt, instead of continuing to brandish it in my hands."

"Huh. Damn." Was my elegant response. "Wait, you actually thank your fear? Thank your anger?"

She nodded and smiled. "My body and mind are performing well, why would I not be grateful? And you would be surprised how calming gratitude can be. I say in my mind, 'thank you fear, I am aware of that threat now. I can now act on this knowledge.' And let it slide back into the background. I can still feel it, like the weight of a tool on my hip, but I am not using it unwisely or cruelly. In a world where we can control little about our situation, we must have control over ourselves. And control of emotion is not the same as the absence of emotion. To function properly, we must have mastery of our tools, not forsake them. Our emotions will always be with us. How they affect our actions, is up to us."

"Wow…" I said. "Thank you! I'm going to try that!"

She nodded, and gave me a hug, "I'm so glad I could help… Just be careful alright? I die knowing there's little I can do to help you when you're out there on the dunes."

I was at a loss for words, so I did the only thing I could do. I nodded, and hugged her back with all my strength.

Honestly, her ways may not have been Jedi like, but they were real. Nothing about them was based on second hand parroted theory, but were crafted and forged from actual experience of someone going through real hardship. Over the months I learned as much as I possibly could from her, and I became a more calm and effective person because of it. When she taught me, it was like a mental block was relaxed, and spiritual concepts from the Matukai writings that I was struggling with seemed to just click and become clear.

Once I realized this, I vowed within myself that even if I joined the Jedi, I would find a way to regularly talk to her and hear her wisdom. I would sneak out of the temple and use a public com station in the fucking undercity if I needed to, but I would contact her. Regularly. She was my Mother, and her wisdom wouldn't lead me down a wrong path. Attachment and connection were two different things, and I wouldn't be convinced otherwise.

Before we knew it, the next Boonta Eve had come and gone, and there was less than a year before the fateful day. I had raced, but I hadn't tried to win, just to finish, which I succeeded at. I placed 14th out of 25, which sucked, but at least I placed. The entire time was practically torture, as I had to hold myself back from what I really wanted to do, catering to the pods limits, which once again were shit. It made me think dreamily to the masterpiece I was crafting in secret at home, which I wished I could be using right now.

Still, Watto gave us a little bonus for placing, which considering the amount we had stored away wasn't that impressive, but we made sure to spend it so he wouldn't get suspicious, which was nice.

It had been about a week since the last Boonta Eve, and I was entering the crystal cave for the second time that night, storing the empty jugs and trailers safely in the cave for the week. I sat in my usual spot near a large crystal formation to take a quick breather before heading out again, before noticing something strange.

Growing in the damp sand was a little green plant, wrapped around the Crystal to absorb its light. I couldn't place it for a second before I realized that it was a pallie plant! Normally when we got 'pallies' they had been ground up into a paste and stretched with grain fillers, but with the bonus from Watto we had bought a sack of the actual fruit from Jira, one of the slave grannies that sold them.

Unlike the ground up ones, which mixed the bitterness of the seeds with the sweetness of the fruit, buying the fruit itself allowed you to eat the sweet fruit while spitting out the bitter seeds, which I had been doing at this spot for the past few days. I hadn't realized that pallies, who need a lot of sun, would be able to grow in such a dim environment, but I guess light is light at the end of the day. I smiled. Other than being able to eat pallies for free, maybe this could be another source of income!

After I was rested enough, I headed back out towards home.

I stood on a stool by the kitchen counter, separating pallie fruits from their seeds in order to make some juice. It was a rare day off from work, and I wanted to do something fun for Amu.

It had been six months since I first saw the pallie plant in the crystal cave, and after half a year of waiting, we finally got a crop of ripe fruit to try! I'm honestly happy they are a vine fruit, not a tree, or else it probably would have taken years before bearing fruit.

Done with my extracting, I sat down and methodically mashed the now seedless fruits in a bowl on the floor with a japor club. As I worked, I thought about the progress I had made in the year and a half since I got here.

My racing pod was more than halfway done, and while there was a definite resemblance between it and and the movie version, there were slight differences that made my version better in my opinion. After working in Watto's junk shop every day and using it as a sort of moving meditation (cus what the hell else am I gonna do at work) I've started being able to connect with machines with the force. I can see and work on the inside of complex machinery without opening it up, and can even do more risky experiments and have a rough idea if it will blow up in my face or not, and be able to specifically sense where in the machine the problem is and a general instinct on how to fix it, all before I even fire it up! It streamlined the process so much that I was able to make major advances just by tinkering. I of course recorded and reviewed the results of me fucking around, which makes it science. Pretty sure that's how that works.

Basically, at the end of the day, my pod will be the best fucking racer on the face of the planet. Maybe even the whole galaxy. Which, to be fair, isn't exactly a high bar to reach. Civilized trillionaire scientists from the core don't exactly spend their time strapping rocket engines onto lawn chairs to see who whut go faster an' not 'buy the depp'.

If they did, they probably could make a better pod than me, but since my competition is a bunch of rednecks, I'm gonna absolutely smoke all of them.

As I continued mashing the pallies into juice, Amu came back from her trip to the market. "That's an interesting color." She commented, and I nodded.

Unfortunately for my plans of selling them, the pallies grown in the Crystal cave had a different color inside than regular ones, which would draw suspicion on where we got them. While the usual inside of a normal pallie was a pinkish red that reminded me of beats or pomegranate juice, these cave grown ones had a much more mild amber color. I had briefly tasted one before I started juicing and it was still really good, maybe a tiny bit less sweet with an undertone of mintyness which was refreshing. They also were larger and more juicy, but that was just because they grew in a humid environment.

After I was finished juicing, we strained the fibrous pulp out of the juice, and chilled it in the Star Wars equivalent of a fridge, called a conservator.

Later, when it was good and cold, we poured ourselves glasses, and drank.

Almost simultaneously, both Amu and I let out sighs of appreciation, then laughed at each other at the coincidence. It was surprisingly different from regular pallie juice, which was rare enough to have. It was sweet like apple juice, with a bit of prickly pear tartness and a hint of mint and citrus. Compared to what we usually had to eat, a unique tasting fruit juice was an unparalleled luxury that just felt wrong and disobedient in the best way possible. The fact that we had made it ourselves under the nose of a slave master who had no idea made it taste that much better. It was our juice. No one else's. And Fuck was it good!

I hummed in appreciation as I took another sip. Idly I voiced my thoughts, "Hey… I wonder if we could make booze outta this?"

Amu let out a snort of laughter and shook her head in disbelief. "Anakin! No!" She said reproachfully, though the effect was ruined by her laughter.

I shrugged and laughed it off, taking another sip. Oh well. Just a thought.

It had been a few hours since we had drank the juice, and I had an absolutely excruciating headache. Amu had one as well, but she was either taking it like a world class champ, or her headache wasn't as bad as mine was. Voices whispered indistinctly at the edge of my perception, and it felt like the force was pounding into my mind like a wedge into a log.

Y'know, I kinda regret eating the strange force mutated fruit now. Looking back, that probably should have been a red flag.

The sound of screaming, lightning, praying, chanting, lightsabers clashing, blasters firing, and a million other sounds seemed to meld together in one painful cacophony that clashed against each other in my mind like dark and light. Thousands of sermons and speeches and clashes by Jedi and Sith alike, made incomprehensible by their overlap. Why do they fight? Why does the dark hate and covet the light?! Why does the light fear and condemn the dark?! Why can't they settle?! Why can't they be one?! It's painful! Can't the conflict ever stop?! This isn't right! This isn't fair!

The pain reached new heights, and my mind was overwhelmed by incomprehensible visions as I lost consciousness.

The next day, I woke up feeling like I'd been half digested by a sarlacc. Light was too bright and sounds were too loud, and I could barely remember what I saw in the visions I had while I was unconscious. It was like trying to watch a piece of old film that had been recorded over several different times til it was incomprehensible, as if the force had been stuffing multiple visions into my head all at once.

I hobbled over to the fresher and activated the sonic scrubber and noticed that my sweat had a slight amber glow that reminded me of the crystals from the cave.

As the day went on and I sweated more, the effects of the crystal juice wore off as I sweated it out. By the next morning, my sweat didn't glow at all, and I had slept normally. I theorized that there were parts of microscopic crystals in the fruit, and I had just passed them. And while logically this should mean I should probably steer clear of eating/drinking any more of it, I had been having a problem lately. I had nothing to train my mind against. My rudimentary shielding had been torn like wet tissue by the visions and my mind itself had been strained. This was the perfect opportunity to train my mental strength and willpower!

Over the next few months, with Amu's tentative approval, we drank some of the juice every few days. Amu drank a full glass, as the effects were a bit muted for her for some reason, where I only consumed a shot glass worth.

Before the discovery of the Durindfire pallies, I had not made much progress training my mind.

Nyra's training guide had said that having a strong image allowed for a quicker development of mental strength, and she shared that the image she used was a boulder. The image that I had been using was durasteel, however after getting strained so much from the visions I realized that it was far too limited an image. One day as I was pondering this at work, I realized that Watto's mind was a bit unique feeling in the force.

I had always chalked it up to him being alien and having some kind of unique brain chemistry that prevented mind tricks, but now I reconsidered.

Perhaps a toydarians resistance was more of an unconscious minor force ability. After all, even a non force sensitive has the force flowing through them, and there are many other races like Wookiees or the Yinchorri who show minor force like abilities despite true force sensitivity being extremely rare among them.

Watto's mind was strange in that it seemed flexible as a rubber band, but also at times tough as an old tire, bouncing and swaying away at attempts to mind trick, but always rebounding back to its original shape.

Observing this made me realize that my mental image needed to be more creative and intricate than simply saying 'metal is stronk'.

I imagined a material that could change and grow, but could also firm up and defend. When my defense was relaxed, my mind would be flexible as water, open and ready to accept new concepts and learn new things, but when tensed would be stronger and more unbreakable than bescar.

It was a fantastical material that didn't exist in reality, but it didn't need to. It only needed to exist within my mind to be effective, and effective it was. I needed to increase my mental defense without becoming too stubborn and uncompromising. When relaxed, I would embody all the flexibility and plasticity of a young child ready and able to learn, but could easily 'tense' my mind into an unbreakable existence impossible to destroy or alter.

When I took shots of the Durindfire juice, I was able to test and train my mental resilience, and later on, I even sometimes managed to untangle individual visions from the flood of information.

All the times I had managed to access a single comprehensible vision, it was honestly pretty random. The only similarity between the visions was that each one featured someone connecting with the force. Was it easier to connect with other force sensitives?

A seasoned Jedi meditating. An untrained smuggler unconsciously sensing danger and guiding their blaster shots. A child playing with a ball by making it levitate. An ancient pure blood sith obliterating their enemies with lightning and fury. Every vision was a different person, at a different time. None of them had connected with each other yet. A few lucky times I was able to witness battles between force sensitives, and what little I was able to visually track fucking terrified me. I didn't realize just how limited the fights shown in the movies were, with their non superhuman actors and finite effects budgets. That's not to say the movie duels were bad by any stretch, but they were just that. Movie duels. Choreographed dances with props between amateur swordsmen playing a part.

Real saber duels between masters were fought at an incomprehensible, superhuman level of speed, agility, and skill that made the fights that once seemed so spectacular to childhood me look like something put on by the ember island players.

However, it all changed when one day, I saw something I never would have expected. The scene that entranced the earth.

Luke Skywalker's run on the Death Star.

I had been thinking about the scene, wondering how it would look in reality as opposed to on the television screen, and it seemed to magnetize to my mind through the force, coming easier than any other vision before! I saw it as if I was in the X wing right along side Luke. Feeling his wingmates wink out as they were killed, feeling the oppressive darkness behind us coming from… me?

No! Not me! With how much I have changed and plan to change it's pretty much impossible that this scene will play out exactly like this! Which means I'm viewing the main timeline, the one without me. The one with canon Anakin.

The future is always in motion, but normally isn't seeing specifics about the future difficult? I could only guess, but I'm pretty sure it's because I have actually seen it before, instead of just speculating or asking the force a question about an uncertain future. I know exactly what I'm looking for, so it's easier to get a vision about it. So while I won't necessarily be able to find out new information, I'll be able to refresh my memory on the scenes I do remember, and be telling the absolute truth when I tell people I 'saw it in a vision'. This was huge!

Considering my current circumstances, the next scene I wanted to observe was the fight between Maul, Qui Gon, and Obi Wan. Something weird was interfering though! It was like something was attempting to blur my sight, or cloud it somehow?

Was it the veil of the dark side? Was it interfering because it was too close to the present? A part of the sith grand plan that was close to being executed? I'm not sure...

But the advantage of having actually seen the events I was looking for pulled through for me again, as I finally saw the fight by imagining the flashy way Maul pulls out his saber.

Though this vision was particularly blurry and obscured, I could still make out most of the details. And may I just say? Maul was terrifying. Even through the blurry dreamlike quality of the visions his malice and bloodlust were overwhelming, and his blade work was horrifyingly fluid and deadly. While much of the actual sword movements were different from the movie, there was one that remained the same.

Maul smashing Qui Gon's face with his hilt, and running him through while he was stunned.

Obi Wan's scream as he saw—

Suddenly, I felt a dark presence drawing near to me in the force. It was stronger than Nyra, than Maul, stronger than anything I'd ever felt, and it was almost on top of me! Quickly I banished the single vision, letting it dissolve into a cacophony of indistinct and overlapping points in time once again, then throwing up my stealth aura and desperately hiding myself in the force. It seemed to do the trick, and the last thing I sensed from the presence was a mix of intrigue and frustration before it dissipated entirely.

Holy shit.

HOLY SHIT!

I didn't dare speak the name or even focus too hard on how his face looked. I was still under the influence of the Durindfire juice, and I didn't want to get drawn into a vision that… the future emperor… could track.

My heart pounded in my ears and sweat beaded on my skin as I trembled in shock and panic. He… almost got me. He almost got into my FUCKING HEAD!

Oooooooookaaay, not doing that again for a while, not as long as I enjoy NOT being a vegetable.

I managed to calm myself eventually, waiting until the effects of the juice tapered off, and then started planning. If I could have successfully seen a vision of Darth Sidious, and confirm the accuracy of my visions by exactly 'predicting' other events, I could have easily unmasked him to all the Jedi!

However, as I just experienced, that was much MUCH too naive. When his presence drew close to me, I felt like my life was legitimately in danger. He wouldn't have just known my location, he would have had direct access to my mind, and I have absolutely no delusions about which one of us would come out on top in a mental battle.

Sidious is so fucking dangerous that if I make a single mistake I'm dead.

Above all else, I can't let it spread that I know his identity until I'm ABSOLUTELY sure I can actually do something about it, preferably with a fucking SQUAD of Jedi masters at my back. And I won't be able to convince them without proof! So I'm back to square 1.

All I know is this. The longer he's in office, the more influence he has and the less chance I have at fighting against his hold on the galaxy. If there was a way to destroy the Sith right here right now, I'd do it, even if it left me in a child sized Vader suit to do so. It would be well worth the sacrifice.

FUCK! I wish I had more time! If I could have risen to the rank of respected Jedi Master -before- the Naboo crisis I would have so much more to work with! Why do I have to be a fucking child when arguably the best window to revealing his bullshit is already close at hand!

I breathed deeply, calming myself down. I needed to focus on one thing at a time. Freedom from slavery first, THEN saving the galaxy (cuz I'm one of the idiots who lives in it) second.

Don't center on my anxieties. Keep my focus here and now, where it belongs.

I looked at the calendar on the wall.

Just a few months left.

A few months 'till freedom.

I stood at my desk, working in the droid shop tirelessly, practically counting down the minutes. To an outsider looking in, there was nothing to differentiate this day from any other day like it. I breathed steadily and deliberately to hide my nerves from Watto. It was only 3 days till Boonta eve, and not just any Boonta eve, but THE Boonta eve.

I felt restless and even a little irritated that I still had to work in this shop, kinda like a kid having to attend the second-to-last day of school before summer break. Although, I had to remember that this wasn't a guaranteed outcome. The next few days were absolutely up in the air!

The actions I would take in this upcoming week would earn us our freedom. We had the money. We had the tools. We had the pod, and hell if it wasn't the fastest damned pod ever fucking built. We were set. The plan was set, All that was left was the execution.

Adventure and opportunity await, all I needed was to not fuck it up. To not choke.

Well… and for the universe to cooperate by sending us Qui Gon Jinn and Obi Wan Kenobi. Even so, I had back up plans if the Jedi didn't show up. I have Nyra's comm number after all, if the whole Jedi thing doesn't work out, she's the plan B. We would be free, one way or another.

But hell, I wanted to be a Jedi. I could do so much more for the future as a Jedi than I ever could as a Matukai. Jedi didn't just have combat power, they had societal power. Political power. They were recognized as powerful and skilled across the entire galaxy, and inherently trusted to frankly ridiculous degrees by pretty much the entire republic, at least on an administrative and governmental level. It would give me the freedom and influence to remove the threats that wished to bring the galaxy to heel. Freedom and power go hand in hand, and I need large amounts of both.

I paused, cautiously sorting through my desires. Did I lust for power? Hmmmm. Perhaps I did, I admitted to myself. But it wasn't power for powers sake, and it wasn't for the sake of dominating others or gaining any kind of superiority over them. I just want to live, love, and protect what's mine without anyone else being able to fuck it all up. That's it. I want a safe and secure society in which I can relax and adventure to my hearts content. Peace! Freedom! Justice! Security! And not just for me, but for my family and friends! Those aren't bad things! I nodded. Not bad things at all. I only wish for the strength to protect my people.

I was suddenly overcome with a strange sense of deja vu, but after a few moments of failing to remember, I dismissed it.

Alright. My path is true, or at least true enough, to avoid madness at least. In engineering there's a concept called "close enough" after all. Now all I need is—

My head shot up and my eyes widened as my thoughts were interrupted by what I was sensing.

On the edge of my range of detection was a bright, powerful signature. Slowly, but steadily and purposefully, it made its way through the streets towards here, hardly ever stopping, and never taking a wrong turn.

The presence was vibrant and lively, yet tempered and patient, and had a massive depth to it that could only mean they were a force sensitive, and a powerful one at that, more powerful than almost any I had ever sensed, my close shave encounter with Sidious being the only exception.

Without meaning to I reached out, and briefly received an impression of a sunlit clearing in a lush leafy forest, with the smell of dew and loam in the air. The presence pulsed in mild surprise and intrigue, and I hastily retreated, embarrassed at being caught.

Holy fucking shit. I'm like, 99.999% sure that's Qui Gon Jinn.

It's happening.

It's happening!

It's fucking HAAAPPPENNIIIIING!

Holy shit me! Calm your geek heart and quit Ricking out! I'm Anakin fucking Skywalker! I can do this! Be cool!

mmmmmmHoly shit on a stick this is easily like 10,000 times cooler than meeting any celebrity at a Comic-Con!

As he got closer to the store however, I was distracted from his presence by the two people with him.

The first was most likely Jar jar, he felt as non force sensitive as you can get, and was anxious, curious, simple, and fairly miserable under the dry heat of Tatooine.

However, the final member of their group was who gave me pause.

With every presence I've ever sensed, they've always been hardened and insular in some shape or form, no matter how good they were as a person. Nyra felt like a solid boulder, hard and unyielding. Mother felt like a well crafted piece of handmade leatherwork: artful, patient, and skilled, but also tough, weathered, and as cautious and rationed with her trust as she was with our water. Even Qui Gon Jinn, from what I could currently sense, was guarded and dangerous, like a predator calmly basking in the jungle sun.

OST: Across the Stars

The third and final member of the group was awe inspiring. While she didn't have the same depth of power or sheer quantity as Qui Gon, or any other force sensitive for that matter, the quality of her force presence didn't lose out to the Jedi master's one bit. It was bright, generous, and felt like an impossibly clean and cool oasis in the festering greasy oil pits of darkness that were the force presences of the mos Espa inhabitants.

While other's presences were stagnant and selfish, hers was kind and generous, as even as I could feel her misery at the heat and her fear for her situation, her presence still seemed to unconsciously reach out to those around her in compassion, even now wondering idly how their situations could be helped.

As they entered the shop and I could sense them more clearly I was further stunned by her. Not by her looks, though she was quite beautiful, but by the clarity and wonder of her soul. While Qui Gon Jinn was like a jungle and Mother was like leather, Padme was like a river of cool clean water. Enriching wherever she went, making her lands green and her people well, I briefly felt the power of her destiny, how she would change the fate of worlds, could shape the spiritual landscape of the very galaxy itself, and even with all that position, power, and potential, she still, even now, took no thought for what people could do for her, but what she could do for people.

If ever there was a presence of a true queen, this was it. Her presence, her soul, was both stunning in its beauty and foreign in its gentleness. Unhardened. Unpoisoned. Never in a million years could such a soul be brought up on Tatooine. Tatooine was harsh and unforgiving, and tended to make people that matched. Compared to us, she felt otherworldly. Angelic.

As Qui Gon turned to Watto to talk about the parts they needed, I found my voice. "H-hello" I stammered like a fool.

Padme turned to me, and smiled politely. She didn't even know me, I was a complete and total stranger to her, and I could sense that she gave me just as much room in her regard as anyone else, even the Jedi beside her. I could clearly feel that she knew nothing about me, but didn't view me as a desert rat, a slave, a tool, an obstacle, or anything of the kind.

She looked at me and saw a person. A being. It was her default way of viewing others. She saw me, a stranger, a slave, and saw someone just as important and deserving and worthy of happiness as herself, an actual fucking Queen, and it absolutely floored me.

"Hello, I'm Padme. How are you?"

"Uh, Um, I'm Anakin" I responded, and promptly realized that that wasn't what she fucking asked me. "I'm doing fine! Quite uh, fine indeed." What the fuck am I saying? qUiTe FiNe InDeEd?! What am I, some moron at a tea party? I needed to salvage this! Girls like honesty right? "N-now that uh, you're here I mean" I finished.

FUCK!

Not expecting the flattery, she laughed, which sounded wonderful, "Why thank you, Its a pleasure to meet you too Anakin."

Oh.

Oh man.

end OST

A/N: I gotta tell ya, I had a great time writing this last part.

Padme: Views people as, y'know, -people-.

Anakin: I am confusion!

Conversely, I'm not sure about the almost confrontation with Sidious. I feel like I could make it better, but I'm not quite sure how. We'll see the other side of it next time.

I'm planning an interlude chapter next to cover what Nyra, Qui Gon, Obi Wan, and Darth Sidious have been doing the past two years, and then diving into episode 1 in the chapter after that.

While some of y'all might want me to spend a lot of time on the Phantom Menace, I'm pretty much only going to focus on what happens differently, and breeze past everything else. Aside from the character interactions between SI Anakin and other people, and the plot differences and butterflies, we'll be going at a pretty fast pace.

Sorry if I end up skipping someone's favorite scene or character or something, but I feel like if you want to experience a scene unaltered just go watch the movie lol. You don't need me to write it out for you.

Also, while the force mutated fruit seem kinda strange, there are many precedents set for different herbs, plants, and substances greatly affecting one's perception/connection with the force, so I figured it wasn't too weird. I promise they are plot relevant, they are one of the first plot points I ever came up with for this story, and that was WAY before i learned about the cerveza cristal memes. The fact that it all worked out like that is a happy coincidence lol.

I'm excited for next time! See y'all then!

Ciao!