Chapter Text
[Daimyo’s Palace, Tatooine]
To be fair, Boba hadn’t meant to take over a planet. His brothers were going to tease him forever over this, and it wasn’t like none of them had ever conquered a planet before. They just never had to deal with the results.
“This is going to take so long to clean up,” he grumbled, kicking the Hutt-sized throne he’d inherited. “Gonna need some backup.”
“What are you going to do, call your mom?” mocked Fennec, who was inspecting what was left of Bib Fortuna.
“Nah, my little brothers should be enough to handle this.”
“You keep talking like your siblings are so badass, but it’s not like they’re the Army of Light or anything.”
“Wait for it.”
***
[Previously | Tatooine]
Boba clawed his way over the rim of the sarlacc pit and rolled over in the sand. His baby cousin owed him for this. Introduce me to the Hutts as a bounty hunter, she said. Everything will be fine, she said. Instead she got a metal bikini and he got digested. He should know better than to take a Force-sensitive’s word at face value.
Luckily for him, Jabba’s guards had disabled his jetpack but left his armor on ‘so that he’d last longer’. The beskar had blocked most of the sarlacc’s acids, though the paint job was ruined and he could still use some bacta around the edges. He lay on the sand until the night sky started to lighten, then heaved himself upright. He should see if he could contact his Tusken friends for a lift out of here.
***
[Meanwhile | Yavin ]
Anakin strode through the halls of Yavin’s ancient temple, describing his latest mission to Madame Nu. “… And then the mayor’s son asked if I was evil! Do I look like a Sith to you?” Madame Nu raised an eyebrow at his crimson-and-black armor, topped with an equally black cloak. “… What?”
*
Anakin found his son in the hangar, true to form; he was rummaging in the engine compartment of an X-wing. A comm beside him blared what could loosely be called music.
“Hi, buir!”
“Luke … what is that racket?”
Luke popped his head out of the starfighter to look at hi comm. “Oh, that’s ‘Color Theory’, by the Weed-Smoking Girlfriends.”
“It sounds like someone being murdered.”
“There’s a lot of symbolism in it.” Luke ducked back into the engine. Anakin sighed.
“Artoo, am I old?”
“Do I look like a karking medbot to you, meatbag? ” the droid chirped. Anakin was about to reply when the Force rippled around them. Luke popped up again.
“That feels like Leia getting into trouble again.”
“She takes after Padme that way.”
Luke laughed at him. “Ani’buir, all three of you are like that. I’d better get this girl flightworthy before Master Garen comes looking.”
Anakin picked up a hyrdospanner to help. “These new-fangled starfighters are so unreliable.”
“Please don’t start about your relic of an Aethersprite.”
“The Aethersprite is a classic. I’ll convert you to my side eventually.”
“Good luck with that, buir.”
***
[Meanwhile | Endor ]
Sneaking through the jungle in silver-and-gold armor wasn’t the easiest thing in the universe, but Din made it work. It was supposed to be a simple artifact retrieval; other beroya sometimes teased him for only taking ‘easy’ jobs, but he had an ad to take care of (this is the Way).
Grogu got into enough trouble as it was.
Din had stuck a tracker on the kid after the thing with the mudhorn. It was highlighted in his HUD now, in the middle of a village of locals. He activated the translator on his helmet and crept closer.
“We should stew it. No, roast it!”
“It’s so cute, though.”
“The village is hungry, who cares if it’s cute.”
“It’s wearing clothes. ”
“Tree crabs cover themselves in bark, and we eat those.”
Din couldn’t let that discussion continue. He hefted his spear and stepped out of the trees, walking straight through the village towards Grogu. A few arrows bounced off him; these Ewoks had nothing that could piece his kute, let alone his armor. One slash of his vibroknife opened the net which Grogu was tangled in.
“I take my eyes off you for five minutes and what happens? You end up on the menu.”
“Patuu?”
Din unfolded his birikad and secured Grogu in it. The Ewoks had backed away and were muttering to each other. “The shining warrior – is he a spirit? Is he a god? ”
He could sort-of see how they’d think that – his armor was polished beskar, with his buir’s golden sunburst on the pauldrons, the kyr’bes over one and the mudhorn above the other. But his millions of uncles would never let him forget it if he got mistaken for a deity. He linked the translator to his vocoder and said, “I am no god, I am Mando’ad. This is my child.”
The Ewok who had been arguing before poked his neighbour. “You wanted to eat a baby, Oglop!”
“Shut up, Wicket, how was I supposed to know?”
Din levelled a glare at them. “Children are the future. This is the Way.”
“Pa-patu!”
***
[Tatooine – Mos Pelgo]
Boba woke up to someone tapping on his helmet. “Hey. You alive in there?”
“I’ve been worse.” Boba shook himself off. It was going to take days to get all the sand out of his armor. He looked around the Marshal’s office where they’d holed up. “Come here often?”
“Not if I can help it. I owe you one for picking me up off the sand. Fennec Shand.”
“Boba Fett.” They clasped forearms.
“Shit’s gone down while you were asleep. Jabba the Hutt is dead; rumor has it one of his dancing girls strangled him with her own chains.”
Really, Leia?
Their host, Cobb Vanth, put in, “Word is that Bib Fortuna has taken control of Jabba’s palace and is angling for the title of Daimyo.”
“That sleemo? Urgh, that’s going to make it a pain to get my ship back.”
“So,” said Shand, “Are you one of those Mandos who never show their face?”
“Nah, but even if you don’t know my name, my face is pretty well known.” He took off his helmet; Shand studied him, and shook her head.
“Never seen you before in my life.”
Vanth started to open his mouth; Boba elbowed him and muttered, “Don’t tell her, this is gold.” Then to Shand, “You don’t spend much time on the holonet, do you.”
“I don’t have time for that stuff. And come on, there’s no way a face like that is famous across the galaxy. You look like you got chewed on by a sarlacc.”
“So, funny story…”