Chapter Text
Jango Fett was a very, very paranoid man.
He knew he’d been hired by a dar’jetti. Some dar’jetti had allied with some mando’ade before Dral’Han, but so had some jetti. The goram on Concord Dawn had stressed both tales, particularly when telling of how this or that mando’ad had been betrayed. So he knew that the deal he made - an army of mando’ade to kill the jetti, and then to return and conquer mando’yaim – wasn’t going to be kept by the dar’jetti. Ka'ra had been howling in his ear, warning him of betrayal, as he had stepped into Tipocca City.
He knew he’d been mind tricked when he did not take Boba to the goran on coruscanta despite paying for Boba’s first vambraces. He kept finding reasons not to take his child off Kamino, despite it beging a haran run by demolgoka.
He didn’t expect to survive any of this.
He recoded his every action constantly, having set his vambraces and buy’ce to automatically record and not to turn off no matter how he tried. He automated backup of those records to his data decks on mircet'ad parjir and then on secret accounts scattered throughout the galaxy that were not under his control. Every time he left Kamino, he’d spend days in hyperspace going over recordings, writing down his notes, treating it like another hunt. Something about that mindset, the meditations that Jaster had taught him and the ori’ramakade, made it easier to see the patterns amidst the chaos of war.
He started using Jaster’s lessons on Kamino. The first time it made a difference was when he’d found himself strangling Priest. He'd found the sha’buir carving up one the Alphas. As Mij had said while they were dumping the body into Kamino’s infinite oceans, that was no big loss. Kal had helped raid the dead man’s comms and he’d managed to redirect Priest’s paychecks into new accounts for the Haat’Mando’ade. The Kaminoans could never tell any of them apart, so it was easy to reassign their work to him, to don durasteel and to keep the pretense going.
He taught Jaster’s trick to the Alphas, just shy of when they’d have started their verd’goten training in a better universe. He unofficially changed his lessons – quietly, but consistently training the verde in small group tactics for fighting jetti and dar’jetti.
He kept it up with the CCs. They were smaller than the Alphas, and less individualist, but fast. He only had to have them practice with him once for them to learn how to take down the ka'ra cursed.
The second time Jaster’s lessons made a difference was during their field training. During the pre-hunt command meeting, he discarded his planned speech and spent the meeting time explaining how to use emotion to overwhelm force users. How to drop their shielding, or how to push emotions through it. He’d called in Mij, who had goran training, to finish up Alpha’s lecture when his head started pounding.
He put the Alphas to training their little sub-cadres in what he’d taught them. He’d seen the effects almost immediately in the jetti accommodation classes where the brain wave machines measured the CCs’ shielding strength. They were almost too successful. It had taken several trainers demonstrating their own shielding strength was stronger than the CCs to keep the Kaminoans from flushing the class. That each of those trainers were ka’ra blessed wasn’t mentioned at all.
He’d also been called to heel by Tyrannus for fighting with the Kaminoan. He’d left…where ever they had met with a new headache and a shitload of holos he wasn’t going to view until the damn headache stopped. It was a good thing he’d told 99 - not an Alpha, not a soldiers, and not a real person according to the dar’jetti – about the deal. That verd had understood immediately what to do when Jango got back to Kamino and become more accommodating to the Kaminoans. They were well practiced at “resetting” his mind and within a few weeks, he was back to practicing his ori’ramakad meditations.
The third time ka’ra intervened, he’d had a rout with Reau. He’d fileted her good and fine for running a fighting ring. He’d used her expectations about him to put her off her stride, letting his body telegraph actions that he wasn’t going to take. The CCs silently watched him destroy the kryst'ad reject without wearing most of his beskar'gam. He didn’t remember what he did after that, finding himself back in his room dazed.
Once he was back in space, he watched the holos of the last few years. He read the notes inscribed into durasteel under his mattress and in his hold. He marked the third change in his plan - he wasn’t supposed to kill more trainers – on the wall and felt sick.
Once was suspicious, and twice meant enemy action. But he didn’t have the time or energy to figure out why he’d upended the training regime to include moves and tactics that Jaster had trained him in when he indicated his interest in being Mand’alor.
He had a job on Coruscant to do. He’d figure it out once he was back at Kamino.