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With Calrissian’s dubiously-recruited assistance, The Krayt’s Spa was coming together. The process wasn’t without hiccups—and plenty of them. But Boba was banned from handling customer service complaints. (No, Fennec, he wouldn’t really have cut off that guy’s arm, mainly because he was a pretty good musician, and this place could use a little music.) And Fennec and Calrissian were handling the latest shipment confusion. (No, Calrissian, the order for sparring mats and blaster cleaning kits wasn’t a mistake.) That left Boba with his mid-morning free. So just like the twin suns, Boba’s feet were up.
A shadow crossed into Boba’s perimeter, blocking the suns’ rays.
“Boba, why does the spa have a carbonite freezing chamber?”
“It...doesn’t?” Boba removed one of the cucumbers over his eyes and ate it. He glanced up at Din. “Oh, do you mean the cryosauna?”
“The what?” Din asked.
“Cryosauna.”
Din tilted his helmet. “You already have a sauna.”
“I had one sauna. What about a second sauna?”
Din’s silence spoke volumes.
Boba continued, “It’s amazing, you’ll see. Your sore joints? Gonna freeze-zap them better. After a dozen sessions, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.”
Din’s arms crossed. “I’m not voluntarily stepping into a chamber that freezes people. I put bounties in there to shut them up.”
“I’ll be the bantha bait,” Boba cajoled. “Let me show you how it works. I’ve already tried it twice. Fennec, too. Best thing we’ve bought this month. Guaranteed.” He slapped his thigh for emphasis.
“You’re starting to sound like Calrissian,” Din observed.
“It’s all the ad writing!” Boba complained. “We’re ready to host more guests, so we’ve been brainstorming promos all week. Here, check them out.” He tossed the HoloPad at his side to Din.
Din flicked on the device and paged through the text. “The Krayt’s Spa, a holistic healing hotspot?”
“Don’t say it as a question. It’s a statement,” Boba clarified. And okay, that particular line had a lot of unnecessary alliteration, but Calrissian liked it, and what did Boba know about marketing?
Din read on: “The Krayt’s Spa, an exclusive spa destination for exclusive clientele—come for the soft opening, stay for the soft-tissue massage.”
“Mhm.”
“We offer a soft-tissue massage?” Din asked.
“Evidently.” Actually, Boba hadn’t known that either. And if they did, why hadn’t he gotten it done yet? He added it to his list.
“The Krayt’s Spa: let your cares burn away under the twin suns.”
“A little ominous, that one,” Boba commented.
“Agreed,” Din said, and it looked like he shuddered.
“Calrissian wants me to personally record, I quote, a ‘non-threatening’ HoloPromo.”
“Why?”
“He says there’s a rumor going around that this is a sting operation. He says people either don’t believe I’m back from the dead, or they think the spa is a front, and when they show up I’ll nab them for whatever bounties they’ve got on their heads.”
Din turned his helmet. “That’s...not actually a bad idea. If people actually fell for it. The Guild would go wild for it.”
“Right? Fennec said the same thing. Imagine it,” Boba mused. “Just posting an invitation and letting the bounties come to you. Like shooting fish in a barrel.”
“Almost too easy.”
“You’d miss the fun of the hunt, wouldn’t you?” Boba teased. “Anyway, look, you don’t have to promise to try it, but will you at least let me show you how the cryosauna works?”
Din nodded. And he didn’t move from where he was blocking Boba's light.
“Now’s good, then?” Boba ate his other cucumber slice and stretched. Running a spa was proving to be more work than he’d anticipated.
Boba and Din stood in front of the cryosauna.
After getting ready for the treatment by stripping down to his black shorts, Boba was sure Din’s laughter was not at him but rather at the incongruity of his standing around in shorts while wearing fluffy socks and gloves. He’d even donned a beanie. His scalp got karking cold. “They’re to protect the extremities,” Boba explained, patting his gloved palms together.
Din was inspecting the large cryosauna pod, which Boba had turned on to start warming up--er, cooling down. Boba fiddled with the settings, which were still set to his preferences from his last use. The large white and blue pod was tall enough for a human and many other species to step into completely.
“Are you sure this is safe?”
“It’s perfectly safe. And it came with cloth face masks as an option, too.”
“I can’t wear my helmet?” Din’s voice was thin.
Boba considered it. “Well, my helmet is durasteel alloy, so I know it’d freeze up and shatter in the range of -120 to -150 degrees celsius. Yours? Pure beskar? Might be okay.” He didn’t want Din to feel pressured—either to remove his helmet or to get in the cryosauna at all. Din had stopped walking around at all times in full Mandalorian gear, and he’d even taken a few meals with Boba and Fennec, sipping spicy soup as he titled up the brim of his helmet. But more often than not, Din could be found stalking the spa premises wearing his buy’ce.
“I guess I could try the face mask,” Din said, rubbing the thin fabric between his gloved fingers. “That is, if you convince me to try this.”
“Yeah, yeah, give me a hand,” Boba said, and promptly removed his prosthetic leg and placed it on the cushioned bench behind the curtain. Din offered Boba an arm, and with two hops, Boba was inside the pod. He closed the glass door, which came up past his chin. “When it’s ready, hit start on the control panel.”
“Okay,” Din said. “I’m looking at this description. It says it uses gasified nitrogen to activate the body’s healing cold-shock response. Freezing temperatures make your blood vessels contract and dilate, which increases oxygenated blood flow and flushes away toxins, while bringing nutrients and enzymes to the skin. Benefits include increased collagen levels, accelerated injury recovery, increased focus, boosted mood…”
“Yeah, it feels good, but that’s not the best part,” Boba said. “The best part is the way the cold lowers inflammation and decreases soreness. And the effects stick around longer the more regularly you use it.”
Boba couldn’t wait for the anticipated long-term benefits to start working. He was always sore. His joints were constantly inflamed. Some of it was pre-sarlacc, and some was post, and all of it could stand to feel a lot better. Hot therapy. Cold therapy. He’d try it all. Kriff, he’d earned it.
When he first thought about salvaging Jabba’s old sauna, he recognized it might seem excessive on a desert planet where you could start dripping sweat before taking ten paces. But Tatooine’s desert heat was dry. It stripped your skin to the bone, weathered your face, and left you parched for even the tiniest droplet of honest moisture. A sauna, on the other hand, was a tropical, humid heat that seeped pleasantly into your pores and suffused your body with tranquility from the inside out. If you could drink peace like spotchka, it would be drunk in a sauna. With a soft towel under your butt, cucumbers on your eyes, and a glass of the priciest ice water in your palm. That is to say, a sauna was a totally different kind of heat. A good kind. The kind a person would pay good money to use. So far, that part of the spa had been a resounding success. And if people were willing to pay for a special kind of heat on a desert planet, surely they’d be willing to pay for a special kind of cold, too.
“Hm. It’s ready,” Din said. “Hitting start.”
Boba braced himself for the chill. The blasts of icy air over his body hit him fast, cooling him from head to toe. Din was watching him from the other side of the glass, looking back and forth between Boba and the control panel. Boba relaxed and rototated a few times as the chilly air dropped his core temperature and triggered his cold-shock response. He gasped slightly.
“You okay?”
“That was a good sound,” Boba assured him. “But I’ll tell you, I wouldn’t try this completely naked.”
“If it’s really as cold as Hoth in there, we wouldn’t want your balls to freeze off,” Din joked.
“Yours either,” Boba bit out, teeth chattering, even though the cold blasts didn’t aim for his face.
Din shifted side to side outside the cryosauna pod. “You say this is a spa treatment, but I’m looking at these settings, and I think you could freeze a man in there.”
“Don’t give Fennec any ideas,” Boba warned. “Cranking up the cold in here won't make a bounty popsicle the way carbon freezing does. You’d just end up with a dead bounty. And I don’t want to find any more bodies in this place.”
After three minutes, the session ended. With Din’s help, Boba exited the pod. Din handed him the big fluffy robe he had waiting, and he wrapped himself in it, shivering. “Brr,” he said plaintively.
Din laughed and rubbed Boba’s shoulders as he steadied him.
Boba reattached his prosthetic and smiled. “There’s one more step to this.” He walked over to the machine at the side of the cryosauna pod. It was a specially ordered vending machine, highly recommended to pair with the cryosauna. He placed two mugs under the spouts and tapped the controls. Hot steaming liquid poured into the mugs.
He heard Din sniff behind his helmet. “Is that...hot chocolate?”
Boba handed Din one of the mugs full of the warm cocoa drink. “It’s also programmed for tea, if you prefer.”
“Nah,” Din said, accepting the mug. “This is fine. Good. Grogu likes marshmallows in his. Not sure where he learned that.”
They clinked their mugs together, and Din pushed up his helmet as they each took a sip of the sweet, hot drink.
“Ahhh. Much better,” Boba said, shuddering one last time, more at the pleasure of the hot cocoa warming him from the inside than any lingering chill.
As they sipped their warm drinks, Boba got an idea. “You know, this thing comes with a portable detachment for localized treatment.”
“Yeah?” Din’s voice, unmodulated where his lips rested on the rim of his mug, sounded interested.
“Knee still bugging you?” Boba asked, trying to think of a tempting proposition.
“Always,” Din said ruefully.
Boba lowered his mug and retrieved the long, wound-up cord with the portable cryotherapy device that was stored inside the sauna pod. He held it up enticingly, as if it was a prized vintage bottle of spotchka.
“That looks like a vacuum,” Din commented, having pushed his helmet back down to see. But he’d also lowered his mug.
Boba barely restrained himself from making a joke about sucking, or lack thereof. Instead, he pointed out, “You ice your injuries, don’t you?”
“Sometimes.”
“Same thing. Just more targeted. Easier, more efficient, and less painful than an ice bath. What do you think?”
Din rubbed at his arm. “I busted my elbow the other day while helping remove some undesirable guests from the bathhouse. Maybe we could try it on that?”
“Sure!” Boba agreed, delighted.
“Okay,” Din said. “I’ll just...be right back.” And then he went behind the curtain to the changing area. By the time he came back, Boba had finished his mug and gotten the machine booted up. Din was still wearing his helmet, but he’d removed a lot of his upper body armor, freeing one of his toned arms, which stuck out from beneath a short-sleeved tunic. Din held his bare arm out to Boba. “Can’t make it worse.”
Boba snorted. “That’s the spirit.”
Boba demonstrated how the device worked by releasing two puffs of cold air away from Din. “I’m just going to hover this over your arm and blast it in several bursts for a few minutes or until you say to stop. They say five to eight minutes of this is comparable to hours of icing.”
Din just waited expectantly, so Boba started the treatment. He turned Din’s arm slightly, arranging it in a good position, then activated the cryotherapy.
Din sucked in a breath. “Kriff, that’s cold!”
Boba paused, but with his other hand, Din waved him to carry on. So Boba continued activating the bursts of freezing air, letting the puffs dissipate one by one as he moved the nozzle around Din’s elbow. Goosebumps prickled Din’s skin and he emitted another hiss. “That’s your cold-shock response working,” Boba told him.
“Oh, I kn-know how it w-works,” Din stuttered, and Boba adjusted the temperature on the device, increasing it until Din’s voice evened out. “I was s-stranded briefly with Grogu and a fare on Maldo Kreis.”
“There’s nothing there but ice and snow.”
“Exactly,” Din said.
“And since when do you take fares?” Boba asked.
“It was a one-time thing,” Din said. “Her eggs had to travel sublight. X-Wings pulled me over for not running a transponder beacon. I had an outstanding warrant, so I dashed. They chased.”
“Mm, can’t chase you here,” Boba noted. “Sign on the door says no New Reps.”
“You’re not seriously going to enforce that, are you?”
Boba nodded and blasted Din’s arm with more cold compressed air. “Watch me.”
“At the end of it, the rangers did help shoot a giant ice spider off my ship and let me off with a warning. So it could have been worse.” Din shrugged, and Boba had to hold his arm still.
“You’re too nice,” Boba muttered. “I’ll bet you didn’t even try to shoot them.”
“I’m not that nice,” Din insisted. “Definitely not too nice to stick around a den of smugglers, hunters, and reprobates of all creeds.”
“A spa for smugglers, hunters, and reprobates,” Boba corrected.
Din laughed, the shaking from his amusement overlapping with shaking from the cryotherapy, and Boba tightened his grip on Din’s wrist.
“Last bit,” Boba said, checking the timer on the device. He added, “Speaking of people who are too nice for The Krayt’s Spa, wait ’til you find out who Calrissian let slip about this place to. The word royalty has been batted around.”
“Whoever it is, they’re probably overestimating our luxury accommodations.”
Boba thumbed off the cryotherapy device and examined Din’s arm to make sure it looked okay. “Is that a complaint, Mandalorian? Even after this comp’d, luxurious cryotherapy treatment? You’ll have to take it up with the boss through the proper channels.”
“Am I not doing that now?” Din asked.
“Of course not. You have to go through Fennec.”
Din snorted and started moving his elbow around. His range of motion looked good, unhindered. “It actually does feel better.”
“Told you so,” Boba said.
“Might just be numb, though.” His tone was teasing.
“Give it time,” Boba encouraged. “It won’t wear off right away. Your arm should be strong enough to toss out any other misbehaving guests.”
“Did I mention they were imps and I tossed them out a window from the highest turret?”
Boba clapped him on the back and grinned. “You’re a good friend, Din.”
They both laughed.