After their game, the twins went to their workout, a basic conditioning and flexibility block led by a training droid.
The routine sat somewhere between gymnastics and CrossFit if Caleb had to describe it—short runs, rolls on padded mats, hanging holds, controlled landings off low platforms. All of it scaled down for small bodies with long limbs and growing joints.
After that came fuel for the body.
One thing Caleb missed every morning was coffee—specifically cold brew coffee. The Jedi leaned hard into purity; energy drinks and stimulants stayed off the menu for younglings. He understood the logic, but as soon as he reached an age where he could make his own choices, he fully intended to track down a cup of black cold brew. He felt sure it existed in a galaxy this big. It had to.
If the galaxy far, far away truly lacked coffee… he didn't want to think about it.
The twins headed for breakfast. The refectory smelled like warm grain, steamed vegetables, and brewed caf—simple food, heavy on fuel. Now that they were seven, Aavruun and Krawruuk had an extra line in their daily routine: kitchen duty. Basic cleaning, wiping tables, stacking trays, hauling crates from storage. Work sized for small hands and growing Wookiee frames.
The Jedi used manual tasks to drill discipline and responsibility into their younglings.
Caleb approved. In his last life on Earth, people dragged themselves through jobs they hated, chased distractions afterward, and then wondered why their heads buzzed with fog and teeth-grinding anxiety. Others simply refused to work at all and rode the system through welfare, leeching off everyone else.
In his eyes, the world's biggest problem came down to one thing: people refused to spend their days on honest work that actually left them satisfied and fulfilled.
First came the depressed and anxious group—checked out, drifting, dead weight. Then came the greedy crowd who wanted reward without work, even if it cost other people and tore up everything around them.
He'd made his peace with the flip side of that. Without people who stayed hungry and restless, there would be no greed. Without greed, no conflict. Without conflict, no wars. And without wars, there would be no place for someone like him. He loved being a warrior, a fucking Marine.
Now, in a galaxy with a mystical Force, he planned to put every ounce of effort into what he did. Every scrubbed floor, every run around the courtyard, every drill in the practice hall felt like another brick in the foundation for the fights waiting down the line.
Horan handled their meal plans. The human caretaker moved between tables with a datapad in hand, dark eyes flicking from face to face as he cross-checked species charts and nutrition profiles. He tried to keep food in a range younglings would actually eat, shaving a little off optimal nutrition in exchange for fewer untouched trays. Most of the children shoveled it down without a second thought.
Here in the refectory, he built plates with clinical precision. Kitchen droids followed his orders, sending out trays loaded with balanced portions first and taste somewhere after that.
Aavruun and Krawruuk pushed it further. About a year ago they had pulled Horan aside near the serving line. Aavruun remembered standing there with fur still damp from training, pointing from his own tray to the datapad. The twins, with their tightly rationed datapad time, had already dug through medical files and nutrient tables. They had a rough list of what best suited Wookiee bodies: high-protein, high-fat mixes, dense complex carbs, heavy fiber, enough minerals to feed long bones and fast-growing muscle. They asked Horan for the most nutritional configuration possible, taste second.
Krawruuk backed him with a short, sharp rumble that carried all the way through the line.
Since then, the twins' bowls hit the counter heavier and thicker, colored by whatever combinations ran highest on Horan's charts. Some mornings the mash leaned bitter from greens and seed paste; other days it carried a faint sweetness from fruit pulp or root starch. Every mouthful landed solid and useful.
Their eating habits were just one of the ways they chased an edge.
In his last life, Caleb believed that people who reached the top of anything—research, sport, war—did it because they were willing to do what others wouldn't do.
Extra drills. Blander food. Earlier mornings. The twins leaned into that idea so hard their reputation followed them. Among caretakers and younglings alike, Aavruun and Krawruuk had become "those Wookiees"—the training fanatics whose schedules always seemed full, whose fur stayed damp with sweat more often than it stayed dry.
As they walked through the refectory line, Aavruun felt irritation spike. A smaller boy in front of them shuffled forward at a crawl, shoulders slumped, tray dragging against his chest. The thought slid through Caleb's head on instinct: get the fuck out of my way. For half a heartbeat he pictured lifting the kid by the back of his robe and tossing him past the stacks of cups.
A steady wave of calm rolled along the Doppelganger bond from Krawruuk's side, easing the urge before it reached his muscles.
That became another problem the twins were learning to manage: Wookiee rage and anger, real and immediate. On Earth, sometimes you wanted to punch someone and knew you were being unreasonable. In a Wookiee body, that feeling hit like someone had turned the dial up to ten.
Aavruun and Krawruuk had done some research and it turned out Wookiees were biologically wired to be fucking angry.
From what they pulled off Temple datapads and from a few blunt healers, Wookiee bodies carried a higher baseline of stress hormones than humans. Heart rate stayed higher, muscle fibers packed in thicker, and their nerves pushed toward full-force responses. On Kashyyyk that made sense. The homeworld threw drops, predators, and toxic wildlife at you from the moment you could walk. Hesitation meant teeth in your throat or a fall through the canopy. A species that survived that kind of place learned to hit hard and fast, then sort everything else out afterward.
Healers called it "enhanced arousal response" and "species-typical combat activation." Aavruun translated that as built to snap. Small irritations spiked fast and hot. The same wiring that drove a Wookiee to tear slavers apart also flared when someone blocked a hallway, wasted time, or refused to pull their weight. The anger came with a clear physical edge—heat across the chest, tight jaw, claws wanting a target.
Wookiee culture stacked structure around that. Howls in the trees, sparring circles, hard labor, climbing drills—channels that bled the charge away. Old clan notes talked about teaching cubs to pour that surge into building, training, and hunts so it fed strength and never spilled into pointless damage. The Jedi healers framed it in Temple terms: strong emotional currents meant a strong duty to steer them.
Aavruun felt all of it up close, and so did Krawruuk. A slow line in the breakfast queue, a youngling dragging their feet, a kid whining about chores—the urge to shove or roar rose inside both of them at once, carried through muscle and through the Doppelganger bond. Dumb people, Karens, Felicias, lazy people, the kind of person who begged to be punched; Aavruun and Krawruuk both found that breed extra irritating.
The bond helped. When Aavruun's temper climbed, Krawruuk often pushed a heavy wave of calm or dry amusement across the link, pulling the spike back down. When Krawruuk rode the edge, Aavruun answered with steady breathing and focus. Biology loaded the gun; training, culture, and their shared link decided where the shot landed.