Chapter Text
"We are born when we learn who we are, and we can only learn by being tested. Adversity is the crucible, honor is the way, and enlightenment the reward" - attributed to the First Manda'lor
Boba didn’t like Geonosis. Boba didn’t like Buir’s contract either. But, as Buir said, a Mando has to eat.
Buir didn’t like it when Boba left the ship, but the dar’jetti alarm had gone off. It was an automatic alarm that would go off when Buir didn’t check as planned. Buir said that baj’buir inisted that there was a dar’jettii alarm because contracts could go super bad, and backup was always a necessity. Buir had taught Boba about it on their last trip to Hutt Space. Boba was supposed to put the ship on autopilot back to Kamino after three misses in a row. This was the first miss, but there had been a jetti, and talk about the contract ended. Buir had said that was always the most dangerous part of any contract. Bad clients would try to stiff the payout.
So Boba wasn’t breaking Buir’s rules but getting off the ship and sneaking into the hives. Boba hadn’t taken the speeder or used Buir’s official passcodes at all! Boba had just snuck aboard an offworld food shipment meant for non-geonosians and gone into the Hive. Totally legit and very safe!
And ka’ra it’s a good thing that Boba did.
Mace Windu found Genosis exhausting.
He didn’t want to be here. The world had ceded from the republic and it was run by a hive mind that really, really hated Jedi. He knew this because he could read, and he could feel, and there were several million workers busy transmitting their hatred of the Jedi and all the non-geonosians to anyone who could feel it.
Jedi should not hate, but he was the master of Vapad, so he wrapped that hate around his exhausting using it (rather than letting it use him) to make him fast enough to respond to the most deadly mandalorian in the known galaxy.
He didn’t really need the speed. Fett was good, but Mace Windu was better and had the Force. The Force was letting him meet aggression with aggression. He could feel Fett’s grim satisfaction as another Jedi fell under Geonosian guns. The undercurrent of cold, vengeance that dripped from Fett in the Force was amplified by the wild emotions of the area. The longer he fought Fett, the longer Dooku had to run, the more Jedi were harmed.
The Force had told him at least twice where to strike to end Fett. Fett’s grim determination to fight to the death told him that he’d given the Mandalorian enough chances. His wrist twisted to the correct angle for a merciful death, when the Force screamed
On the edge of the battlefield was a child. A child with a voice loud in the Force, screaming horror and fear not at the battle, but at him. At what he was about to do. At the death he would deal. A shatterpoint swelled.
Mace Windu did not have time for this shit. He swung, twice.
Boba remembered the stories about how you unsettled the Jedi. Using all your being to shout and scream and overwhelm them with feelings. And Boba had lots of feelings about the Jedi that was totally going to behead Buir.
Alpha had helped refine the technique.
“Look bob’ika, it’s like this. You can just throw your emotions all over the field. But the good stuff? You aim them. You think about the person you’re trying to overwhelm. You visualize what they’re about to do. You give them nightmares. And when they’re trying to deal with the crazy person who is sending them a vision? You strike.”
“What if I don’t have a weapon?”
Alpha laughed. “You’re a weapon. Everything about us is a weapon. Didn’t you weaponize those big brown eyes to get Prime to get us that vid?”
Boba nodded, because Alpha was bigger and he was right. Boba had been ultra cute just to get the vid.
So in that moment, Boba overwhelmed the Jedi with the purple kad with infinite sadness-fear-horror-love-injustice that the Jedi was about to orphan a poor, defenseless, innocent child.
But it was a jedi. So they cut off Buir’s hand and sliced off the sen’tra.
Boba was totally justified in screaming for help when Buir crashed face first into the blood soaked sands.
Valk was supposed to be leading a jet-pack company, not a bunch of ground pounders under the fucking bleachers of this fucking death pit. But -17 wanted “sensible boots on the ground” and “someone who can keep that idiot Bacara from getting shunted to the outer rim the first time he makes it clear that natborns are morons”. And apparently that was Valk.
Which was why she was the first on the scene when Boba pulled some serious psy-ops and convinced the Head of the fucking Jedi order to not kill Prime.
That didn’t mean Prime wasn’t a pancake. She took multiple pics with her cam to post when she was on board Republic. Because if anyone deserved to have a jet-pack accident, it was Prime.
She sent Bacara and his minions off to collect the Prime and marched over to loom above the tiny, pitiful form of Boba Fett crying like it was the end of the fucking universe. Windu was trying to be comforting, which is tricky when you’re under fire and a jetti talking to a Mandalorian. Impossible really.
“Sir!” she saluted even as her troops set up a parameter, “Permission to escort the bounty hunter and child out of the arena?”
Windu turned to her with a look that clear said, “Yes, fuck yesterday” and she nodded.
Her troops were muscling Prime out of the way, and so she scooped up Boba, Prime’s hand and Westar.
Nevermind, this was the best assignment ever.
In the relative privacy of the undercity, while the troops shooting anything that buzzed, she said Boba, “So, back to the ship.”
“Yes please!” cried her oldest, youngest brother. “And dad too! We got a med kit on the Won.”
“Um, that’s a hard no,” she answered, checking her HUD and confirming pickup in 30 ticks. “-17 wants you topside, so you’re coming with me. I’ll send some vod to get the Won and keep the bugs off.”
Which just set Boba off moaning like he was dying. But too bad! Valk was going to record this, post it on a pay-for-view only Holonet portal, rake in millions of credits, get Boba and the Prime topside, and then make Bacara babysit them both.
Missions, accomplished!