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"So." Jaster begins awkwardly. Jango looks up, raising a suspicious eyebrow. "Jango. How would you feel about vod'ike?"
"Where are they?" Jango asks, resigned, and tilts his head to see if he can find the ad'ika in question. But there's not one hiding behind his buir or peeking through the doorway.
His buir shifts uncomfortably.
"Coruscant." He admits.
Jango narrows his eyes. He can't imagine why his buir would decide to adopt an ad and then not actually adopt them.
"What did you do?" He asks instead.
Jaster pouts at him at his tone, then smirks.
"Your future vod'ike got me into the archives." He says smugly.
The pieces slot together in Jango's brain in a way he really wishes they hadn't.
"The Jetii Archives." He asks hollowly, just to make absolutely sure.
Jaster's smug grin remains in place.
"You're trying to adopt a Jetii'ad?" Wait, no, he'd said ad'ike. "Several Jetii'ade?"
Jaster's smirk grows into an excited grin. Oh kriff.
"Here," he says, striding across the room and hip checking Jango to get him to budge up and make space. "Watch this."
He projects a clip of helmet footage onto the wall. In it, a to be fair, extremely copikla Jetii'ad pronounces ominous warnings of death and betrayal with the most enormous big blue eyes. It's adorable. Jango needs this vod'ika.
"And the other?" He asks. Surely they can't be as cute as this first one.
Jaster just smirks at him, and the recording shifts as the helmet cam tilts, bringing another tiny ad into view.
"That can't be a Jetii'ad." Jango protests, "It's in armour."
Jaster just waves at him to watch the rest of the footage.
"You want all of them, don't you."
Jaster looks down at him with tooka eyes, which aren't nearly as effective as the Jetii'ad's. Jango sighs. There's no stopping his buir once he's got an idea into his head. Looks like he's going to be extreme ori'vodding.
"Fine." He concedes. "What are we doing about deathwatch?"
---
"Buir!" Jango snaps. "Why didn't you tell me all my tiny new vod'ike all have tiny darksabers?"
Jaster freezes, caught.
"The footage is all over the net!" Jango continues. "Everyone has seen it. Half the clans want to wage war on the Jetiise to rescue the ade and half think it's fake. And another half think the Jetiise have stolen a whole load of darksabers from Mandalore somehow. That's not even a thing! Oh yes, let me just go down to the darksaber mines somewhere under the beskar mines and carve some nice little laser swords out of the rock, and I'll just take a ride on a Mythosaur while I'm down there -"
Jaster's com chimes, cutting him off.
Jango huffs out the rest of his frustration, and peers over to take a look. A com from an unknown number. No message. Only a holo.
Jaster shares a glance with him, then projects the holo onto the wall. The footage is poor quality and shaky. It shows one of Jaster's Jetii'ade out of armour and dressed as some sort of crustacean in a dress. The holo is too fuzzy to make out any details. It's a play, Jango realises. His vod'ike meshing seamlessly with the other Jetii'ade.
"I'm going to send it to Jaster." Whoever's recording whispers.
Next to him, Jaster's head jerks slightly.
"That sounds like the mesh'la flirty Jetii." He murmurs. The seer with the long dark hair, Jango remembers.
"The Mand'alor." The Jetii continues in explanation.
The audio picks up a dramatic sigh. "You have his com?" Another voice asks, and Jango recognises this one. This is the Jetii'buir from the first recording Jaster had shown him. The one Jaster's helmet cam had spent far too much time focusing on.
"You were planning the riduurock and he doesn't even know who you are?" Jango asks, pushing as much judgement into his tone as he can.
Jaster flushes and swats at him without looking. Jango shakes his head. His buir is hopeless.
The play is hilarious. The ade are adorable. And more than that, there's a sense of chaos, of joy, of home, happiness and family, that's clear even through the holo. Jango thought Jetii couldn't love, but that's clearly wrong. They're going to have to leak this holo. It should stop most of the people wanting to declare war on the Jetiise. They seem to be doing an actually good job of raising the ade.
"Do all those ade look really similar to you?" Jango asks. Jaster frowns.
"It's difficult to tell with the quality." He says. "And the shaking isn't helping either." The mesh'la jetii had clearly been laughing the entire way through, along with the rest of the audience. "I'm reasonably sure that the goose is Ob'ika."
Jango can't stop his snort at the ad'ika's antics. They're so copikla.
"And I think the tree might be Cod'ika." Jaster muses.
"But you can tell which ones are our ade and which are the Jetii'ade." Jango prompts, trying to keep them on track. He doesn't need his buir spending the next half hour trying to work out which of the ade was which. He doesn't even know all their names.
Jaster hums with a frown.
"Their armour." Jaster says eventually.
Jango thinks back to the helmet cam footage. It was an interesting mix of traditional Mandalorian and what he now knew was the armour for the Jetii'yaim guard. And every set was identical. Down to the size.
"Their armour isn't fitted to them." Jango realises. "It's all the same. Mass produced."
"But it is." Jaster says. "I knew something was bothering me about it. You're right that all the pieces are the same size, but it's also well fitted to each of them."
"You're saying that the ade are all the same size?"
Jaster hums in confirmation.
"What does that mean?" Jango asks. "Are they like clones or something?"
Jaster freezes.
"Oh Manda." Jango breathes. "Are deathwatch cloning ade now?"
---
Tor rewinds the holo and lets it play again.
"I hav a laser sword, do you want to see?"
Then the familiar wash of the darksaber.
"Do you all have a jetii'kad?"
The faintness in Mereel's voice is unmistakable. And the hut'uun has always been an osik actor.
And then each of the little whelps pulls out a glowing black blade.
He looks down at the weapon on his hip with a scowl. The cursed thing can't be radiating a sense of smug amusement along with the icy cold he's used to. It's an inanimate object.
It's far too late to suppress the holo. Half the system has already seen it. Tor growls. He needs to find someone to take his anger out on, and then he's going to plot. There must be a way to spin this.
---
Jango has snuck out of Little Keldabe while Jaster's off for a contract. He just wanted to explore! And maybe practice stake outs. And if he had chosen the Jetii'yaim to practice on, in the hopes of seeing his vod'ike, that was his business.
He clearly needs to improve his stakeout skills though, because he's on the way back when he sees two Jetiise, two Jetii'ade, and all the little armoured Jetii'ade on a public shuttle. He has no idea how they got past him. He changes direction. Maybe his tracking skills need practice too.
He shows his buir his helmet footage later. If he's distracted by all the copikla ad'ike, he might forget Jango snuck out.
"You need to practice your tracking." Jaster says once he's finished cooing at the ade, and gazing at the Jetiise with little hearts in his eyes. "They know you're there."
"What?"
"See here," Jaster says, rewinding the holo to basically the beginning, "can you see how they all shift so that the Jetiise are in the middle? And here, where the Jetii is watching where the copikla ad's hands are. He's signing something."
"Wait," Jango starts, confused, "so the Jetiise didn't spot me but the ade did?"
"Beskar shields us from the Jetii magic." Jaster explains. "It's a long time since we last fought the Jetiise, they're too used to relying on their magic senses."
That makes sense. But for the ade to have spotted him... they were tiny. So young.
"I don't know who trained these ade." Jaster says, and his voice has dangerous undercurrents of a burning anger that Jango's only heard a couple of times before. "But you're not easy to spot, Jango." Jango feels himself flush at the compliment. "Skills like that don't only come from training. They come from experience."
"Here, this is where the Jetii spots you."
It's where they're gathered outside the shop, discussing the price of sniper rifles. The Jetii glances at him, just briefly in passing. It's incredibly subtle.
"Do you think we can send them gifts?" Jango asks. Watching them buy things for themselves with their own credits for what is clearly the first time is giving him feelings. He probably has enough credits for a couple of sniper rifles.
"Did you manage to count how many of them there were?" Jaster asks him.
"Nayc. They didn't stand still long enough. Every time I thought I'd got a number, they'd shifted and I had to start over. And you can't tell from the footage either, they're never all in shot."
Jaster frowns.
"How do we send them all gifts if we don't know how many of them there are?"
---
Tor scowls. There is one very easy solution. No one's going to miss a bunch of Jetii'ade. He'd be doing the Galaxy a favour.
He chuckles low, then louder. This is a sure path to victory.
"Muhahahaha-" he cuts himself off and clears his throat. Priest is giving him the side eye.
---
Deep inside the Jedi temple, Sifo Dayas opens his eyes and smirks.
There's a rap at his door, then Jon comes in, trailed by Cody, Obi-wan and Crys. The three smaller children see his smirk, and meet it with matching ones of their own. They all clamber up onto his bed and nestle themselves around him. Obi-wan hands him a pink berry muffin, and Crys pulls out his ever present datapad.
Sifo thanks the force, again, for bringing these children into his life. The significant decrease in the unrelenting horror of his visions is nice, but it's the baking that's the real benefit.
"You seein eff watch?" Crys asks, fingers tapping aimlessly against the side of his pad. The tiny child's slicing skills are extraordinary.
Sifo nods, smirk not dissipating.
"So." Obi-wan says. "How we dealin wiv dis?"
"Seein an nopportunity." Cody muses.
Sifo's smirk grows.