Chapter Text
Boba silently wondered how much longer he’d be able to crawl around in vents. It'd been one of his favorite tricks growing up, but now that he was 15 it was getting much harder to shimmy through just anything.
Thankfully, the Death Watch headquarters had vents that were just big enough for Boba to fit and just small enough for no one to consider it a security issue. The place was massive and mazelike, it used to be a museum before Kyr'tsad came along and transformed it into their base. Lucky for him, Boba had been blessed with an absolute nerd of a ba’buir that had filled the family archive with near useless documents all throughout his life, which for whatever reason included blueprints for the original museum.
(Jango once caught Boba with his head stuffed in a book and laughed a little bit, saying something about the bookworm gene skipping a generation. Boba asked him how that worked, considering Jango was a founding and Boba was his clone, but Jango just replied by asking when Mando’ade had ever cared about that.)
It was all almost a spontaneous decision on Boba's part, flying to Manda'yaim on his own, landing in Keldabe on his own, crawling in the vents of the headquarters on his own… He had done his research though. Pre Vizsla was there, he would have the Darksaber. Boba would be able to sneak in, challenge Pre to a duel before any of his guards noticed the stranger in the walls, and then become the first true Mand’alor in decades after Tor Vizsla gained possession of the Darksaber through foul play.
He just had to make it through these vents.
Boba was honestly pretty surprised he was still alive as the duel started. Kyr'tsad was not above killing children, it was not above disregarding the traditions surrounding the title of Mand'alor. But the others in the room had allowed him to challenge Pre, and soon the two were circling each other slowly.
The Darksaber seemed to call for Boba even in the hands of Pre Vizsla. If Pre felt it, he didn't comment on it. Didn't react. It was funny, Boba thought. The galaxy was so obsessed with bloodlines. The auretiise of New Mandalore established a monarchy to appeal to the Republic, to give Mandalore a “real” political system, and even Clan Vizsla, an ancient family, hadn't taken in a single foundling since before the establishment of Death Watch. And yet here, the Darksaber, in the hands of a direct descendant of its creator, had chosen a simple Vhett.
Not that Boba was a farmer or anything.
As Pre awkwardly twirled around the Darksaber it became clear he didn't know how to use it. Clearly he'd imagined the blade of plasma would handle like a normal kad. In contrast, Boba wielded a slugthrower, a gun, one most similar to a pistol blaster, an old thing he'd picked up to add to his collection of guns that’d been growing over the course of the war. The knockback was considerable and reloading the bullets was harder than recharging a blaster, but Boba knew how to use them. Five years of Jedi getting too close for comfort had taught Boba firsthand something Mando'ade had known for years, guns worked very well against lightsabers.
It didn't take long for Boba to shoot Pre directly in the neck, the bullet tearing through his windpipe and knocking the man to the ground. Pre couldn't even attempt to deflect the thing, not that a ‘saber could deflect a chunk of metal. When he went down, Boba kicked off his buy'ce and shot him again in the head, not bothering (not wanting) to look down. The man had to stay dead.
After the two loud shots, the room was eerily quiet. If nothing else, guns made for good drama. Boba took the Darksaber off the corpse and eyed all the other Kyr'tsad members in the room.
“Any complaints?”
Boba was overconfident, but he still knew when he was sorely outnumbered. Hopefully the Kyr’tsad members in the room would hold onto the bit of dignity they’d shown when he’d arrived and the duel would be respected. It would be easy to just swarm him and pretend like he’d never had the Darksaber in the first place. And even if they ended up respecting the duel there was a chance that everyone in the room would challenge him for the Darksaber individually.
One of the Mandos scoffed, stepping towards Boba. Their buy'ce had a visor shape Boba had never seen before but seemed to be used by everyone in the room besides pre. There were owl eyes above it though, which was nice. “I'm not letting a fifteen year old rule mandalore.”
Boba shrugged, holstering his gun and bringing out his favored blaster pistols. As Mand'alor, he probably should've brought the Darksaber back out, but he wasn't as dumb as Pre. He'd actually practice using the thing before dueling.
“There's two ways to follow the sixth tenant, and I'm ready enough for another round.”
The Mando sighed, clearly irritated. “I'm not killing a fifteen year old either.”
“Really?” Boba asked, mock surprise thick. “Well I think you should've thought a bit harder about things before deciding you wanted to be high enough in Kyr'tsad to be in this room, watching your leader attempt to kill a fifteen year old.”
The Mando took off their buy'ce, revealing their pale skin and very straight red hair that had been cut just short enough to prevent it from peeking past the helmet.
“Look,” they started. Their expression was such that Boba already knew he was about to be talked down to. “I know what the Resol'nare says, but I think we can come to a more reasonable agreement. I was already planning on reforming Kyr'tsad when Vizsla died anyways, so if you really want to do some actual good, you should give the darksaber to me.”
Boba's eyes widened in recognition as the Mando spoke. “You're that Kryze! No wonder you want to take this from me without a duel like you’re dar’manda. Reform won’t do anything for Death Watch, idiot. Mando'ade need a real Mand'alor again, I'm taking things back to before Kyr'tsad and New Mandalore ruined it all.”
Kryze huffed, nearly rolling her eyes. “Back to what, the violent clans that predeceased Death Watch in the first place? Please.”
“Spoken like a true Kryze,” Boba muttered. “I’m not here to give you a history lesson, but why are you even here if you think it was like that? Shouldn’t you be up in that city made of stolen beskar on the other side of the planet, drinking up more propaganda?”
“New Mandalore might be a bit too cowardly for my taste,” Kryze started, her feathers clearly ruffled, “but they know how to document things. I grew up on Mandalorian history, I didn’t think I’d need a refresher when I left.”
Boba genuinely could not believe that Kryze, an adult who had been in Kyr'tsad for at least a decade, knew less about pre-civil war Manda’yaim than he, a fifteen year old, did. She really had been riding off her New Mandalorian upbringing and education while being complicit in the worst of Kyr'tsad.
“Look- have you ever. Have you ever heard of the Supercommando Codex?” Boba asked, feeling almost silly for having to bring it up. “I’m just going to…” He fished around in one of his many pockets, bringing out a small datapad and scrolling around a bit before he found what he was looking for. “Read this. It was written about 50 years ago by my ba’buir Jaster Mareel, Mand'alor at the time. It reinforces generally widespread Mandalorian values at the time… It’s why Kyr’tsad was formed, idiot. It was a direct response to Jaster calling out some of the older and powerful clans for becoming immoral and corrupt. Like Clan Vizsla, for example. Haran, I cannot believe I’m explaining this to you.”
Kryze just took the datapad with a disbelieving huff and brushed Boba aside. Another Mando came up next to her and whispered something. Boba could only barely make it out.
“He’s not lying, you know that, right?”
Boba smirked under his buy’ce at the surprise on Kryze’s face. Her eyes scanned the datapad, seeming more bewildered with every passing second.
“So are you going to duel me or follow me?” Boba asked after Kryze had been reading for a decent amount of time. “You could do neither, but I’d like to think there’s at least a bit of mandokar rolling around in that buy’ce of yours.”
Kryze leveled angry eyes at Boba. “You already think I’m aruetii, don’t you?”
“I’m not going to call you anything,” Boba replied simply.
Kryze looked back at the Mando who had confirmed that Boba was telling the truth. “Koska? You have anything to say? Considering you seem to know more about this than me.”
Koska rolled their head around a bit, considering things, and then directed their words at Boba. “You’re of House Mereel, right? If you can prove that, you could prove to the public that you're most likely to be the one chosen to be Mand'alor from the more… proper side of things.”
Boba nodded swiftly. “My buir Jango passed the mantle to me just a few years ago. Reclaiming the Darksaber was the last step.”
“Well there we go!” Koska exclaimed happily, putting a hand on Kryze’s shoulder. “Not everyone will accept Fett, obviously, you can’t get Mando’ade to agree on the smallest things, but it’ll be better than Pre. Almost no one likes Kyr’tsad, so his promise to dismantle it all will be popular. Remember, there's a reason you haven’t killed Vizsla yet, and if you kill Fett things’ll be even worse. The kid’ll be a good ally.”
Kryze sighed, clearly not happy about the development, and stuck out her forearm. “Alright. Mand’alor Fett, you have the support of me and the Nite Owls. For now.”
Boba grasped Kryze’s forearm and shook it once. “Vor entye, Miss Kryze.”
“Bo-Katan,” she corrected, voice flat.
“I’m sorry. Lady Bo-Katan Kryze, then,” Boba replied, his mocking grin barely hidden in his voice.
“This'll be dangerous you know,” Bo-Katan muttered as she worked to slice Pre’s systems. “Slicing” as in trying out every passcode she thought Pre might’ve used and trying them all.
“Yeah, I know. Everyone's going to find out anyways, not much I can do about that,” Boba replied nonchalantly. He didn't say that he felt like he had some sort of responsibility to announce the power shift through something so official. Because that was a stupid reasoning, Bo-Katan was right, it was dangerous.
Bo-Katan didn't look like she believed him anyways.
“You want to deliver this with your buy'ce on or off?”
Boba shivered minutely at the thought of being recognized as a clone. There was a reason he hadn't taken it off at all since he landed on Manda’yaim.
“On.”
“People might think you're Morut’la if you don't have it held in front of you,” Bo-Katan warned, and Boba didn't quite see how that was much of a bad thing. He shrugged dismissively.
“I'm not as cruel as you might think I am, so this won't be live,” Bo-Katan said as she pointed a holorecorder at Boba. “Just don't dick around too much, we don't have all night.”
Boba frowned and almost started to argue with the sentiment that he’d mess around with something so serious, but then he realized he wanted to get it all over with instead. It took a few takes for Boba to be satisfied with the recording and then it took a few more for Bo-Katan to be satisfied. It was annoying, but Boba was just glad he'd been allowed to keep the line “my first action as the leader of Death Watch is to disband Death Watch.” Bo-Katan had kept on telling him to remove it, but there was little she could do to prevent him from saying it every single take.
“Well now you should probably leave Keldabe if you don't want to be killed,” Bo-Katan said after sending off the footage. “Death Watch has a strong presence here, and I doubt most of them will be happy about any of this. I'll have a couple Nite Owls escort you out. I'm hoping you have a plan for what you'll do next, if you do I'll try to see if I can gather up some allies to strengthen our numbers. But only if you have a plan.”
“I have a plan,” Boba responded, offended. “I'll go visit an alor’goran. Just like Koska said, I gotta prove my claims of being a Fett of House Mereel. Then I'll try to figure out what I can do with all of Pre’s official contacts n’ such. See if I can get anyone to listen to me.”
Bo-Katan shrugged. “Good enough for me. You have a ship?”
Boba scoffed. “How else would I have gotten here?”
“I'll send Koska and Ursa with you. They're skilled, they should be enough protection.”
Boba didn't know who Ursa was, but Koska seemed much more… Decent than Bo-Katan. Maybe that's why Bo-Katan wasn't coming. Boba certainly didn't mind at all.
“So where are we going?” Koska asked casually as they inspected the interior of Boba's ship. It wasn't a great ship, it wasn't Slave I, but it did its job, and Boba didn't need to know much more than that and how to repair it.
“I… Uh, I dunno. We'll find a place,” Boba responded nonchalantly.
“You don't even have like… A general area in mind?”
“Hey!” Boba rebutted, “I grew up on Concord Dawn!” A complete lie, but something he could get away with easily, “this is my first time on Manda’yaim, you can't expect me to know where anything is!”
“We'll go to Tsarud,” Ursa interjected. “I know of a good alor’goran down in the Morut'droten covert below there. It's on the outskirts of Kyr'tsad territory and far away from here. If anyone’s going to be happy about the shift in power, it’ll be them.”
“Tsarud,” Boba repeated quietly, typing the name of the town into the nav computer. The town was small enough that the computer didn't have much to say about it, but it was big enough to be located at all. “It'll be about an hour,” Boba warned.
Ursa shrugged. “Not much you can do about that,” she said before disappearing into the hull of the ship.
That left Koska and Boba to sit alone in the cockpit. Koska just sat in the copilot's seat, took off their buy'ce, and watched as the land moved below them.
It took about ten minutes for Boba to work up to sparking conversation.
“Why'd you join Kyr'tsad?”
Koska looked up at Boba with a look on their face he couldn't place. “I really only joined the Nite Owls, Kyr'tsad just came with it. And I joined the Nite Owls to find a girlfriend.”
Boba hummed. “I see why you're called the Nite Owls.”
Koska laughed. “Yeah, I mean, it's first and foremost a group for dalcyase, but I guess nowadays we're more known for our skills as guards. Only Mando'ade could ever turn a pride and support group into a group of renowned protectors. Maybe it's just Bo, she wants to turn the group into a full on splinter. It feels a bit strange considering we're a… dalcya’yc group. I bet Bo’s out there right now finding everyone who sides with her that isn't dalcya’yc.”
“When'd you join the Nite Owls?” Boba asked. Koska couldn't've been any older than 18, which was actually pretty young if Boba actually thought about it for more than two seconds.
“Around your age,” Koska replied after a bit of thought. “There were more kids that age at the time than you'd think. That was before we did much dirty work. Officially, that is.”
“But it was still part of Kyr’tsad at that point, right?”
Koska huffed. “We’re based in Keldabe. Keldabe is Kyr’tsad.”
“Right,” Boba responded awkwardly. His sources seemed to be a bit outdated. “What's working under Bo-Katan like?”
“Interesting,” Koska replied. It took a few seconds for Boba to realize they weren't going to elaborate.
“I can imagine,” he muttered.
The cockpit fell into a barely comfortable silence. Koska just sat, looking out at the wispy clouds in the air. Boba was watching the unfamiliar landscape below them intently, the nav computer said they were getting close.
It didn't take long before Tsarud appeared. It was small, much smaller than Keldabe. A thin river snaked up next to it, carving a path that created three fourths of the town’s outer bounds.
Ursa had reappeared at some point and stood right over Boba, scanning the town.
“That’s it. The river marks the end of Kyr'tsad territory, so we’re really on the edge. Hopefully that means you’ll be pretty popular.”
Boba nodded absently, taking note of the comment. There was no turning back now.