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The Jedi takes Grogu out of Din Djarin’s arms and then suddenly stiffens.
“Dank Ferrick!” The strange warrior swore, eyes darting past the group assembled on the Light Cruiser’s bridge and out the forward view-port.
Din blinks, the expression so painfully dense when no longer concealed by his helmet, it caused Cara to snort. Grogu cooed up at the Jedi, curiously. Fennec Shand found her own gaze tracking the Jedi’s line of sight. Was he sensing trouble? Imperial back-up? Or worse, was the man sensing Boba Fett’s return? Fennec thought anxiously, tightening her hold on the stock of her modified sniper’s rifle.
“How’d he catch up so fast?” The Jedi murmured to no one in particular.
Before anyone could think to ask what was disturbing him, the Jedi turned in a swirl of black.
“Gotta dash! Don’t worry, R2 will stay to work out the details of Grogu’s training schedule. Bye!” The Jedi sprinted off down the hallway.
He was clearly in a rush to leave. So much, in fact, he did not bother to wait for the lift to return and simply flung himself, and the child, down the shaft. Grogu’s excited gurgling echoed back up to them. Din choked. Too startled to chase after the deranged wizard.
A shrill whistle drew their attention to the blue and white astromech still present, left behind by it’s pilot, on the bridge. Fennec and the rest stared down at the droid. Din was still too busy internally panicking about his son’s safety to divert any attention towards the automaton. It chirped, unimpressed, and rammed into the still Mando’s shins. That caught his attention.
“Huh?” Din said. Had the Jedi just abandoned his droid.
The astromech’s dome swiveled in impressive imitation of a human rolling their eyes. Cara wondered where it might have picked up on such an action, as it extended a data-pad and stylus towards Mando.
“Training schedule? Visitation?” Din slowly read, his voice quavering as he took the proffered data-pad into his trembling hands. “Visitation? I’m still allowed to see him?”
The proximity alarm blared for the third time that hour just as the Jedi’s X-Wing vanished in to hyperspace. Fennec relaxed. It was probably only Boba Fett returning, and with the Jedi gone they could avoid that whole situation. She sighed.
Cara Dune checked the scanners anyway, they’d already had one nasty surprise this rotation, she didn’t want another. She froze. What the in the Force! Her eyes bulged as a sleek, black Nubian-esque yacht reverted to real space less than half-a-meter off the Cruiser’s starboard bow.
“Incoming craft, what is your designation?” She hailed urgently. That all black look was giving her some uncomfortable imperial vibes. “I repeat. Incoming craft, what is your designation?”
The bridge fell silent in tense anticipation. Well, almost silent. Din was still engaged in setting up Grogu’s training schedule with the Jedi’s astromech. Cara’s hands hovered over the comm, straining for any response to her hail and prepared to try for a third time.
She heard nothing. Well, no she heard something. Something that sounded bizarrely like the rhythmic breathing of an automated respirator. As if the ship’s design hadn’t already set her nerves on the precipice. Cara gulped. It was just coincidence. Right? He had not been the only person in the Galaxy to ever require the aid of a respirator. If he ever had actually required one. Cara, herself, had never been entirely convinced.
Din swiped a gloved hand over his misty vision as he followed the little droid’s prompting and authorized Grogu’s training schedule. He wasn’t losing his little boy after all.
“Mando, pull yourself together! We’ve got more company!” Cara hissed, turning her back on the Comm station as the strange craft continued to ignore her hails and docked itself in the Cruiser’s hangar. “And this guy doesn’t seem like a friendly.”
R2 whistled and trundled over to peer at the ship’s security feeds of the hangar bay. He chirped and blatted, the noise making Cara think of a person groaning. He swiveled away from the feed and waved his manipulator arm around wildly, chirping a steady stream of something. A pity no one in their group understood Binary.
“Hey, droid? You know who this guy is?” Fennec hazarded a guess, gesturing towards the holo-cam’s screen where a hulking, black shrouded ‘something’, or someone, was glimpsed moving rapidly through the ship on a direct route towards the bridge.
The droid chirped affirmatively. “Okay. Is he hostile?” She prodded. Her response was the unreassuring droid equivalent of a shrug. “Terrific.”
“Oh, that’s real helpful.” Koska Reeves groused, taking up her blaster and placing herself between the bridge’s blast-door and her leader, Bo-Katan Kryze’s, unconscious form.
Cara hefted her gun as Fennec took careful aim on the lift. Mando glanced around, having donned his helmet again, he half-heartedly ignited the Dark-Saber. He didn’t seem all too sure about attacking this new-comer. After all, hadn’t the Jedi’s droid vouched -- sort of -- for this stranger?
The lift pinged it’s arrival and before a bolt could be fired or an assessment of the stranger made, a black shadow was towering over Mando and snarling into his face.
“Where is he, Bounty Hunter?” The stranger snapped. “Where’s my son?”
“Um, who?” Din flinched backwards.
R2 trilled and rolled across the deck, plowing into the new comer’s legs. A distinctly metallic clang resulted from the collision. Unfazed the man waved the bothersome droid off, with one black, gloved hand.
“Not now, R2. I sensed a disturbance-- what -- ,” the man cut himself off in response to the droids stream of whistles and chirps, “-- SHOT!” His voice thundered, reverberating throughout the bridge.
“Who dared to...me! What? Droids? Droids that looked like me shot at my son?” The man and the astromech ignored the existence of all others assembled on the bridge as they talked. “Who would build such a thing?”
Moff Gideon groaned, Cara’s earlier blow evidently wearing off as he slowly began to push himself off the floor. The stranger’s words died off, his hooded head turning to appraise the Imp. Cara shivered, her arms pimpled in the bridge’s abrupt temperature drop.
“Moff Gideon.” The stranger’s voice was devoid of it’s earlier ire. “You were always a supreme disappointment to me.”
What? Cara blinked and then yelped, watching as the Moff dangled three feet above the floor, his legs kicking, hands scrambling to undo his collar, gagging as if someone had wrapped their hands around his throat...Oh. Oh! Her eyes shot wide and she looked to the tall, black cloaked stranger. With weirdly raspy, rhythmic respiration. Oh, not good!
“Who? What are you!” Gideon struggled for air.
The man threw back his hood, revealing a horrifically scarred and pale visage, crowned by scraggly crop of dirty blond hair. His blue eyes pierced through flesh and blood to the soul beneath as he devoted his whole attention to the Moff. The eyes and the hair were an uncanny match to the young Jedi’s. Cara gulped.
“Your worst nightmare.” The man withdrew a silver hilt from his robes. “ And, you have failed me for the last time.” A violet-hued blade sprang into existence with a thrumming snap-hiss.
The Moff’s eyes widened, taking in the man’s frame and the mask affixed over the lower half of his face. “But you’re dead?”
“One should never put much faith in rumours.” The stranger seemed to smirk.
“No. No. Spare me Lord VA--” Moff Gideon’s plea fell silent to the deck along with his severed head.
“There. One less headache for Leia.” The man said, disengaging his light-saber and returning it to his belt. “Now. Where did my son go?” He turned towards the droid.
“Perhaps here?” Mando, wasn’t really sure why he decided to show the data-pad with Grogu’s schedule and school coordinates to the strange and terrifying man, but…
“Of course he’d choose Yavin.” The man rolled his eyes. “Well, let’s go, R2.”
The droid made an unflattering sound but fell in line behind the man. Din couldn’t contain his curiosity. “Wait. Who are you?”
Cara really wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the stranger’s answer. Commander Skywalker she knew. His story, she knew. His supposed exploits against the Empire? She knew. Who his father was meant to be...she’d thought she had known. Now?
“My name is Anakin Skywalker.” With that he and the little astromech disappeared into the lift.
“Anakin Skywalker?” Fennec stared.
“I thought he was dead?” Koska Reeves said.
“Apparently not.” Din shrugged.
“How’d he know Moff Gideon?” Koska said, eyeing the cooling corpse.
“No idea.” Din said.
Boba cleared nothing up with his vehement swearing, upon the relation of events. “Sithspit! He’s still alive! I thought he’d finally bit the dust at Endor.” He grumbled.
“Endor?” Cara paled, thinking of the towering frame, metallic limbs, a respirator, clothed in black, wielded a light-saber, and weird powers. “Ah, heck no! Darth Vader is still alive!”
“Who?” Din asked.