Chapter Text
The desert air was cool and still in the night, the world nearly pitch-black save for the glimmer of stars in a perfectly dark sky. On the horizon stood the faint suggestions of mountain ridges, their peaks surely great, but too distant to be imposing.
Under the cover of the low sagebrush, a kangaroo rat scurried. It darted from shrub to shrub, pausing only to stuff the ripened seeds of wild bluegrass into the fur-lined pockets of its cheeks, its movements hurried and calculated by choices optimized for survival. Around it, the night was silent.
Or, nearly silent. The kangaroo rat skidded to a sudden stop at the base of a sagebrush, small ears twitching as it listened for nearby predators. In the distance, heavy footsteps scuffed the sand and gravel, their pattern slow and deliberate. A slight jingle of spurs coupled every movement, tinkling quietly in the still air.
This was not the first human the kangaroo rat had seen, nor would it be the last. Though it was less common to see one at night, those who milled about the town at the far edge of the kangaroo rat's home range could sometimes be seen stumbling in the darkness, letting out wild whoops or grunts or foul smells before collapsing in a drunken haze. It was grateful that humans largely ignored it, allowing the kangaroo rat to scurry about its business beneath the dense canopies of shrubs, unbothered so long as it kept a safe distance. But something seemed different about this one. The rat twitched its whiskers, watching as the man made his way through the night.
Rarely did it see one walk with such conviction.
Boba Fett made his way through the darkness with fixed resolve, hooded eyes focused on the summit of the little rise ahead, behind which slept the settlement he had traversed the Mospic mountain range to arrive at. The sun was still far from rising, and the dark blanket of the sky lay quiet and distant above him. Boba pulled the brim of his hat down lower and lengthened his stride.
Somewhere beyond that rise slept the man who'd stolen his heritage.
He'd gotten the information off a band of Jawas several towns back - they were strange little desert inhabitants who covered themselves in thick robes and spoke in a whooping sort of language, and who made a living pawning off trinkets and stolen mining parts on the outskirts of old run-down settlements. Boba wouldn't trust them farther than he could throw one. But the right barter could convince them to part with profitable information, and Boba had gone in prepared.
Luckily for them, the band Boba had bargained with hadn't been the one that had picked up the equipment he'd lost. Enraged though a part of him was, Boba wasn't about to go and waste his time searching the high desert for the band at fault, especially when he knew they no longer had it. And in all sense of practicality, Boba couldn't find it in himself to entirely blame them for it. He'd had his fair share of dealing with Jawas, and untrustworthy as they may be, at the end of the day they were just trying to make a living in this vast and empty wasteland the same as he was. Besides, once he'd handed over the polished Trandoshan carbine he'd been willing to part with, he was given the name of the man to pursue next in suitable exchange.
He crested the rise and looked down on the tiny settlement known as Mos Pelgo, its ramshackle dwellings only just visible in the darkness. Boba took a moment to take in the layout of it, then started down the slope.
In calculated movements, Boba approached the silent town, the click of his boot spurs muffled by the layer of dust covering the ground. Mos Pelgo slept quietly, its inhabitants tucked safely away in the meager comforts of their homes or businesses. Worn boots, picks, and shovels sat propped against many of the doorframes, all the expected tools of a tradesman's mining town. Boba passed them all by without sparing more than a glance.
He wove his way through the cluster of buildings, silently searching for his target. Suddenly, one structure caught his attention, and he stalked towards it, a rattlesnake creeping towards its prey. The house was simple and economical in its design, identical in every way to its surrounding neighbors and constructed with rough-cut timber - a building meant for the minimal purposes of living in it, and not much more. To the unobservant eye, it would not stand out from its neighbors in any way... save for the lack of tools set up against its doorframe. Boba crept silently up to it, and carefully sidled across the edge of the wall to peer into a dark window.
After a moment of listening and seeing no movement within, Boba tested the doorknob and, finding it unlocked, slowly unlatched it and stepped inside.
The interior proved to be as simple in design as the building's exterior, with a small room containing a few pieces of wooden furniture and cookware revealed by the dim light let in by the open door. A wall to Boba's right separated the space from another small room, with a door to close it off for privacy. After a quick scan of the open room revealed nothing to hint at the objective he was interested in, Boba turned his attention instead to the bedroom door.
A few quiet footsteps brought him to its threshold, and Boba's hand drifted to draw out his pistol as he turned the doorknob.
A beat of silence stretched as Boba took in the dark room, before it erupted into a flurry of movement as the man inside sprang from his bed with weapon in hand. A shot rang in the darkness, but it missed its mark, and the two men grappled with each other in its wake.
Boba tore the gun from his opponent's hand and swept a heel behind his leg, sending the man to the ground with an accompanying shout. He struggled vainly to regain his balance, but came to a sudden halt when the end of Boba's pistol pressed itself into the side of his neck.
"Where's the aliik?" came Boba's voice, low and cold in the chill of the night air. The echoing click as Boba pulled the safety off the pistol didn't hurt to emphasize his words.
To his credit, the man at the end of the muzzle kept his nervous swallow subtle. Startled though he was, it seemed that Boba hadn't quite yet convinced him of the gravity of his question.
"The what-now?" the man grit out, jaw working above where the tip of the gun was nuzzled into his neck.
Cobb Vanth was pretty, in that infuriating way of a sheriff who fancies himself too big for the town he runs. His salt-and-pepper hair and beard were clean and seemed well-kept, the wave of it nearly perfect even when roused at gunpoint in the dead of night. Boba, who had already set his rage at the man to simmering, found himself hating the man even more with every passing second that he had to look at him, the simmer threatening to rise to a boil all too quickly. But Boba couldn't give in yet, without knowing the man had it.
"The signet you stole from me," Boba growled, pressing the pistol up farther into Vanth's jaw. "And the beskar, and everything else that you took." Heat flooded into Boba's chest and out through his limbs, the hand gripping the pistol dangerously close to allowing his finger to slip on the trigger. Boba prided himself in being collected when he killed, but after everything he'd been through, the man's inability to answer him was infuriating. He'd put too much time, energy, and effort into molding an identity for himself to allow this man to pick up his pieces and parade around under a stolen persona, just a shadow of the figure Boba had made for himself.
And to make matters worse, this man had stolen the aliik of Boba's father.
"Ah," came a sound from Vanth that struck Boba as being dangerously close to a chuckle, "so you're a Mandalorian."
Boba clenched his jaw and didn't respond.
"My apologies," the man said placatingly, "I suppose I presumed you were dead. Clearly," he muttered, more to himself than to Boba, "I was wrong."
Tell that to the rest of this wasteland, Boba thought. Out loud, he demanded, "Just tell me where it is." He rotated the tip of the pistol against the man's neck, just in case Vanth needed a reminder.
"'M sorry, but I ain't got it anymore."
Boba felt that if any more pressure were to build inside of him, it would burst out the bottoms of his feet and split the entire planet in half. He took a deliberate breath, letting the air rush out of his nose along with some modicum of the pressure. He just needed the information first.
"Then tell me where it is now," Boba bit out in a growl.
"Gave it to another Mandalorian," Vanth said. "Said it was his duty to return or repurpose it, an' I figured it was the right thing to do. Besides, the guy helped rid my town of that blasted krayt. Only seemed fair that I give it to 'im." The man's eyes shifted to meet Boba's. "Guess I woulda held onto it if I'd known you were gonna come by."
Boba stilled as he processed this, the sharpness of surprise acting as sufficient distraction from the justified anger he'd been keeping a lid on, though the pistol in his hand did not waver. There had been a Mandalorian here? It sounded rather far-fetched; from the little that Boba knew, most Mandalorians had been wiped out by the Western Empire, and any that were left were likely scattered across the desert and in hiding. It seemed reasonable to Boba that any surviving Mandalorian would rather go to ground than flaunt their identity, even in a backwater town like this. And given Vanth's recent history of fancying himself a Mandalorian, Boba couldn't help but find himself skeptical that this other Mandalorian even was one at all.
Regardless of that, he now had yet another trail to follow. Boba's jaw clenched.
"What did this man look like? Where was he headed?" he demanded.
"Well he looked like a Mandalorian, you know?" Vanth said with a smile that was halfway between a grimace and a grin. "Had this fancy mask, leather outfit, all that. Real showy. Definitely had one of those signet things, what did'ja call them? Aleek?"
Boba only exhaled impatiently.
"Right. I don't really know where he was headed, though it looked like he was goin' in the direction of Mos Eisley when he left town," Vanth continued. "An' he had this kid with him."
"A kid?" Boba frowned.
"Yeah, kinda strange-lookin' little runt. Had these big dark eyes and perfectly white hair. Pretty young too, maybe 3 or 4 by the looks of 'im."
Boba pondered this. If nothing else, Vanth's description would make it relatively straightforward to track this Mandalorian.
"You gonna keep that pistol on me all night or what?" Vanth asked.
The sun was fast approaching by the time Boba finally made his way out of Mos Pelgo, weaving thoughtfully through the shrubland back to the little spring where he'd tied his horse up for the night.
His mind had buzzed the entire trek, meticulously filtering through the information he'd garnered about this Mandalorian and how to set about tracking him. It was clear that his first stop should be Mos Eisley - and if he was lucky, it would be his only stop. But given how things had been going for him over the past year, Boba was reluctantly preparing himself for the possibility of a long haul. He continued to mull the situation over as he absentmindedly unhitched his horse, who flicked his tail at him in brief greeting and nibbled at his belt in search of the dried fruit pieces Boba sometimes kept pocketed there. Boba handed him one and then swung up into the saddle, directing them towards Mos Eisley.
It did not take long to find sign of the Mandalorian, but it did take some time and effort to track him down. He seemed to have traversed sporadically across the whole frontier, making his way from Mos Eisley to the remote rocky coasts of Trask, then nearly vanishing until one stablehand informed Boba that he'd heard the bounty hunter mention Corvus before heading out of town. When Boba finally reached the place, he found himself wandering in a hazy twilight of burned forests and whole mountainsides stripped of all life and mineral. The charcoal remnants of pine trunks jutted like skeletal figures from the barren slopes and cliffsides, greeting travellers with arms like outstretched gallow posts. But the tracking was good in the sooty soil, and he was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of a knowledgeable man in the incongruously lively town nearby. His new informant nearly gushed about the Mandalorian who'd swept through only a mere month ago, and Boba was surprised to receive far more information about the man than he'd expected.
Until then, Boba had only picked up bits and pieces about the bounty hunter, little more than the basic information about what he looked like and what his profession was. To be truthful, he didn't particularly care who the Mandalorian was; recovering the beskar'gam was his only priority - so long as that was a possibility, Boba would deign to make his own judgements of the man as the occasion called. But the man in Corvus told him earnestly of honorable intentions and ferocity, recalling the way the Mandalorian had stepped into town in alliance with a Jedi to rid the place of its oppressors.
"No one else could've pulled that off," the man had said, "we needed someone to show us the way."
A Mandalorian working with a Jedi.... Boba's lip curled at the thought. He had heard of stranger things, but that sounded like a load of bull to him. But if it was true, then Boba had all the more reason to find him and retrieve his armor back. The thought made the fire in his belly churn all the more furiously.
And yet, despite himself, Boba was curious. What kind of Mandalorian would take another's beskar'gam, but just as easily swoop in to rid a backwater town of its problems for no compensation? And to do so at the side of a Jedi, at that? It made no sense to him, and the mystery of it bent him even more to the task of tracking the man down to see for himself.
From Corvus, Boba found himself travelling wearily towards a distant mountain slope upon which stood the ruins of some ancient structure, rough-hewn stone spires standing desolately among the boulders and trunks of twisted trees. Beneath their shadow Boba found trace of some desperate scuffle, the remains of empty shell casings littering the terrain of the rockface, and the disintegrating carcass of a dapple grey horse splayed out where it fell beneath the hidden canopy of trees. Its saddle and packs had long since been carried off, but the imprints in the coat upon its withers and belly remained, where not picked apart by ravens and scavengers. Boba studied it staunchly, sweeping over the scene with eyes searching for a sign of where to go next.
From there, tracking was somewhat of a gamble - too many places along the mountainside had been reduced to exposed bedrock, where Boba had to stop and scour the area for sign more slowly than in places where the soil was soft. It was slow going, After some time, he found himself back at the base of the slope, where multiple sets of horse tracks careened off into the valley; he spurred his own horse into a trot to follow them, trailing the well-trodden path until he pulled to a stop where the prints of a solitary rider broke off from the rest. Boba studied the point at which they'd diverged, contemplating whether the solitary set might be that of the Mandalorian he was looking for. He'd found no trace of a body matching the Mandalorian's description anywhere on the slopes above, though he had found several motionless figures strewn across the rocks. Each one had been clad in identical pale outfits, the familiar white emblems of the Imperial badge glaring up at Boba in the sunlight.
Boba frowned thoughtfully at the disturbed soil. Perhaps the Mandalorian had managed to pursue the Imperials to the base of the mountain. He was fairly certain that the horse carcass by the ruins had been his, its speckled grey coat and shorn mane distinct enough to identify it as the steed he'd heard described by various informants who'd seen the Mandalorian. But considering the number of Imperial bodies Boba had come across as he picked his way down the mountain, it wouldn't surprise him if the Mandalorian had simply killed a rider and stolen one of their horses - it would certainly conform to what he could expect from the adaptable skillset of a bounty hunter, especially one who he'd come to figure was more skilled and resourceful than most. Boba clicked on his horse, and set off in the direction of the solitary tracks.
Some time later found Boba entering a little town in Nevarro, nestled among craggy hillsides of porous volcanic rocks and bustling with an active marketplace, a small school building, and, incongruously, a bounty hunters' den. Boba quirked an eyebrow, but quickly refocused to his task.
After some snooping followed by acquainting himself with the right people, which included feigning interest in joining the bounty hunters Guild and making small talk with an eager rookie, Boba came to realize that he was finally nearing his goal. Not only had the Mandalorian been here recently, but he had an established presence here - apparently he was widely known amongst the town's citizens and bounty hunters alike, though opinions on him seemed to vary from respect to distrust and one-sided rivalry. By this point, he'd heard a great deal of information about the town's various perceptions of the man, but what interested him most was the fact that the Mandalorian had left town only a few days ago. Boba excused himself from conversation as tactfully as possible, much to the disappointment of the Guildmaster, who'd been eyeing him as a potential recruit, feeding the man an empty promise to return after considering the opportunity to join. The Guildmaster held a calculating look in his eyes as Boba left, and for once he was glad not to be in beskar'gam, grateful for the anonymity his scarred face provided him.
Boba returned to his horse just as the evening sun began to dip behind the rocky hills, his mind racing as it focused on planning out his next moves. He'd restocked on a few necessary supplies, and made quick work of packing them away and saddling Legacy up, his brisk movements sparking the horse into an energetic mood. Before long he was swinging himself back up into the saddle, driven on by the notion that this journey would soon see its end.
In a quick movement he directed his horse west, conviction settling itself across the determined features of his face, and tensing the thick sinew of his muscles as he spurred the horse on in one last pursuit.