Chapter Text
“We’re bored.”
Annakin tilts his head back. The sky above the Rashti temple is a pale, heat-washed blue. He spreads his hands over the soft, deep green grass of the hill he’s been lounging on, soaking up the sweet sunlight. He likes the Rashti temple. It encourages an indolent sort of laziness.
Not that the younglings could bother indulging in it. Anakin lets the smell of spring blooming flowers fill his nose. The hum of insects, low and sleepy, blurs the edges of his hearing.
Ahsoka flops down into the grass next to him, a splay of gangly limbs and childish huffiness. “Bored!” She says more insistently, as if that would convince him to anything about it. “We’re so bored we’re dying, Anakin!”
“And why’s that my problem?”
“We decided that you’re the Knight most likely to fall for our wiles,” she chirps, leaning over him. Her lekku dangle, the tips brushing his bared collarbones. Her smile is predator-sharp and pearly white. “We don’t want to have to wait for the Masters to take us kyber hunting!”
He blinks lazily at her. The Force layers itself over Rashti like a heavy blanket, urging him off to sleep. It moves in sluggish eddies around the younglings rolling through the wild grass, like a fat cat circling her kits, nosing at each in turn. Safety, it whispers at him, cajoling him into sleep and peace. “You don’t need kyber yet,” he murmurs. If the universe were right, they’d never need it at all - not, at least, in the way they’re nudging at him.
“We need kyber for our sabers!” She yowls. Her screech attracts tumbling children, small frames flopping over his thighs. Sharp elbows dig into his stomach as one of the human boys, Caleb, shifts to get comfortable. “We’re going to die old an’ wrinkly as Master Yoda if’n we don’t get to go out and quest for them!”
“You’re ten, Snips.” He raises one hand and drops it, heavy, on her small skull. Her lekku are warm against his palm. She pushes into it with a grumble.
“Ten is old enough! You had your kyber at seven!” She sounds deeply wounded by the injustice of it. How dare her temple brother get something she doesn’t have?
“That was different.” He squirms until he can reach down and pet Caleb’s head, his silky baby hair smooth enough to catch on his ‘saber callouses. “I needed to have the kyber. Force said so. You don’t need it yet.”
Her cheeks puff out, flushing pink with outrage. “I do so!”
“You do, huh, Snips?”
“Yeah! And Caleb, and Barris, and Feral!”
That makes Anakin sit up. Feral is usually one of the ones he can trust not to run off in the middle of night following mad urges of the Force. If even he was staring to get flight footed, then Anakin was about to have a full on rebellion on his hands.
The Masters hadn’t even left a week ago.
Maybe there’s a record I can beat. Fastest time to a youngling rebellion.
He feels the peace in the Force slipping away. It had lasted an afternoon. That was as much as any of them could ask for. He has to shuffle Caleb into his arms before he can stand, his little body warm and soft, his robes smelling of the soap Shmi prefers to wash with. Ahsoka clings to his leg like a limpet.
“We’re going to go get kyber!” She screams, one fist waving in the air. The other clings to the leg of his pants, little feet balanced on the top of his foot.
“No, we’re going to go make sure Feral didn’t send you over here to distract me while he makes a run on the ships.” The Force buoys them along, quickening his steps as he climbs the hills and up the boulder-strooned path to the temple proper. He can feel Feral there, pacing the courtyard, a knot of feelings in the force.
Most teenagers are. Dramatic, he’d call them, but his Master would blame it more on hormones or something. Teenagers, he’d learned, even Jedi teenagers, have a lot of feelings inside them. That made them the worst to deal with when the older Jedi scarpered off.
Caleb is squirming around in his arms as he steps into the courtyard, trying to get more of his limbs free - why, Anakin would never know, but he tightens his hold just because he can - and he has to grab Ahsoka before she can dart off to chummy up to Feral.
The kid’s pacing around the fountain. He’s been there long enough that the back of his shirt is soaked through with sweat and he’s starting to develop the beginning of a sunburn on the back of his tattooed head.
Anakin takes a deep breath. “Feral, I heard something funny from the kids. Something about kyber and a horny little brat trying to get his?”
The kid jumps, skinny limbs flailing, turning on his heel to stare at Anakin and the younglings. “I wasn’t planning anything!”
“Sure you won’t. And you won’t slip away the first chance you get if I just leave you here, will you?”
Feral’s shoulders hunch up, guilt pouring off of him in heavy waves.
Anakin considers him.
Technically, he’s a Knight, with the authority to run missions out of temple. Less technically, he’s one of almost a dozen Knights left in the temple right now, and the younglings have a terrible habit of letting their rebellion catch. If he left them to their devices and their whispering, the dorms would be awash in ugly demands before morning meal tomorrow, and instead of handling three younglings they would be chasing a horde of them.
“… Fine. But it’s going to be a short trip! And we can’t tell anyone, okay?”
Ahsoka cheers. Caleb, leg dangling over Anakin’s shoulder, wiggles until he’s just about dropped out of his hands. And Feral just looks relieved.
He’d probably have to ask about that after they came back.
He’s never getting babysitting duty again.
—
“We have a ship in distress off the starboard side,” Miles notes. “Should we engage?”
“Either it’s real or they’re bait.” Jango drops into the gunner’s seat. Excitement, mild as it should be, traces its way up his spine. “But either choice is a good one for us.”
“Better hope for their sakes that it’s genuine.” Jango can hear the barely restrained glee in Miles’s voice. When he looks out the viewport he can see the ship, a small, sleek thing, cutting through space on the remnants of its engine output. “Hailing them now.”
The voice that crackles through the comm is strained. “Mayday, emergency transmission. Assistance requested, pirate attack. Engines are cut. Mayday, mayday!” Static swarms the transmission, making it impossible to identify the speaker by age or species.
“This is the Ijaht, coming in for assistance. Are you being pursued?”
“Four, the last time I checked.” Static cuts through the transmission. By the scarring on the ship’s hull, something had nearly taken out the whole array. They’re luck they’re receiving anything from the small craft. “- Hyperspace. Destroyed our engines, need assistance to the nearest port.”
The nearest friendly port to the ship would be a good three days out, if the Ijaht towed them. A Mandalorian port would only be one, but it’s a rare idiot that would choose that over sitting in their cramped quarters for a while longer. Mandos charge outsiders more, and that’s if they bother to deal with them at all.
“Roger. We’ll tow you in and see what we can do about those engines.” He switches channels, hailing one of the closer patrolling ships. “We have a ship claims it’s been attacked by pirates. We’re gonna tow her out to Kijimi for repairs. Need you to close the gap in the patrol route, back us up if those pirates decide to show up -”
“Best to say they have showed up.” Miles cuts in. “Looks like he was wrong about there being four - or he got one on their way into hyperspace.”
Jango drops back, climbing the ladder to the gunny port. “I hear you. We’ll engage - not like a couple of karking stupid pirates are much for two strapping Mando warriors, eh?”
Miles scoffs. “Sure, yeah. Just don’t miss this time.”
“You’re a bastard.” The guns hum to life, and Jango pulls the sights up to the first approaching ship. It’s a pirate for sure, but not the local sleemo type, their ships built out of rotting junkers flying colors. The purple dragon’s head leers out of the painted side. “I’ve got them. Pull us between the ship and the scourgerot.”
Miles shoves them into gear, slipping through space. The pirates pull back. They recognize a Mando ship well enough to be wary. He can see them make the choice to press forward instead of pull back, the group splitting to either side and under.
The Hunter-class patrol ships aren’t easily outgunned. Jango has to do a pretty bit of multi-tasking to get three of the six turrets pointed in the right directions, but that’s why he took gunny in the first place. Phaser fire paints space green and gold as Miles pulls them about, dodging a pass by the smallest of the ships and rolling to get the slowest in sights.
It shatters apart like some delicate glass thing hitting duracrete when Jango lands a shot true in the engines. Bodies and plating scatter through space. “Two left!” He cheers, and Miles turns them about to get back between the ship and remaining pirates proper. Hunter ships don’t have much mass to them, but they’re still built for long patrols, and they dwarf the little thing.
Of the two left, there’s the tiny one - a proper fighter, probably manned by one crewman, without any real longterm travel capability - and a bigger one, with a proper set of turrets for the guns and a heavier armory load. Shields are shit on both going by the way the first one blew, but that only meant as much if their ship outlasted them in the fight.
“Think they’re going to flee?” Miles twitches the controls, shifting the ship until more of the turrets are pointed at the bigger ship than not. “Not much of a payout if they’re dead.”
“Depends on what our new friend’s carrying. Might be something worth dying for.” But Jango doubts it. The only thing worth more to a pirate than money is his own life.
They watch for several tense moments as the ships linger, waiting for one side to make a move. Jango wants to lean into the engagement - maybe scuttle one properly and board, get real blood on his armor for the first time in months - but he keeps his hands still on the controls. Patience was a hard earned lesson.
Finally the ships break the stalemate and pull back.
“They’re entering hyperspace,” Miles notes. “We’re just about out of here.”
“Cowards.” Jango keeps his hands on the controls until the last trace of the ships has left their sector. They’ll need to trace them back and clean out whatever sector the bastards had swanned in from, since the fighter made it clear they were too local for comfort. “You think they’d be a little more willing to fight for something that’s already cost.”
“That’s a fallacy. Ready to meet our guests?”
“We’re boarding?”
“I think it’s better than towing a mystery.”
Jango stretches as he climbs out of the gunner’s chair and down the ladder. Through the viewport he can see the ship they’d protected. It’s almost within touching distance, now: a small, pale colored ship with a sleek design, sized for a crew of maybe four if they were close friends. There’s only one duraplast view window, and more holes in the hull than Jango’s frankly comfortable with.
He adjusts his gauntlets as he watches the side swing fully into view. The Ijaht isn’t sized for taking whole ships into her hold, but there’s enough hull left to attach a gangplank and cross, if they’re careful. Would mean taking her crew on for the trip, since he’s not sure it’d still be space worthy with a new, Mando sized hole in the side, but Hunters do have guest quarters, for all they lack most anything else.
“Yeah, sure. Let’s go say hello to our new friends.”