A/N - Just a quick announcement! I'll probably update this bi-weekly or weekly, and I'm hoping to add more original content to the plot of the series since it's only eight episodes long and we won't have season two until autumn *sobs*. That being said, the Star Wars universe is pretty vast, so I'm sure I'll be able to keep going between now and then. Thoughts and suggestions are always welcome, and thank you to those who have reviewed already, I wasn't expecting it, and it made me happy :)
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The girl grunted when his armoured boot came into contact with her ribs, startling awake from a not-so-subtle nudge.
"Up." Commanded the Mandalorian, as he attached his grappling line back to her restraints.
The sun had not yet risen, but he was keen to begin their day's trek. If they left now and continued at a steady pace for the next few hours, they could be at his ship and off the planet by nightfall.
The girl wiped blearily at her eyes, blinking tiredly at him as he snatched the cape that was draped around her shoulders to re-attach it to his own. She stood after a long yawn and a stretch, making her way to the hovering bassinet to check on the youngling inside that was already awake again and staring intently between them.
"Will we arrive to what's left of your ship today?" She asked curiously, running her fingers through messy waves to shake sand out of long locks.
He halted in his tracks.
Not this again. It was too early for this nonsense, and he was in no mood to deal with it after a night of no sleep.
"Enough." Came the one-worded command, one that went unheeded.
"It was a gunship, right? I don't know that much about ships, really, but-"
Was?
What did she mean, was?
"Keep your mouth shut." He bit at her, but she continued as though she had not heard him.
"-there was this one time I saw a similar model in Corellia - no, maybe Hosnian Prime? Anyways, they said that your model of ship used to patrol the outer-"
She must really have a death wish.
Most people knew better than to anger a Mandalorian. Few got away with pestering and prodding at this Mandalorian, specifically. So far, he had put up with her mad rambling because he didn't like using violence against women if they posed no threat to him (although an enemy would be treated like an enemy, no matter gender or species), but his patience was already starting to wear thin with the girl.
He wouldn't hurt her, but there were other ways to make a point of who was in charge. If she continued to test him, she would learn this the hard way.
"This is your last warning, girl."
"My name is Noha." She corrected casually, not particularly concerned with how low his tone had dropped, a tone that indicated danger. She seemed oblivious, however. "I'd like you to use it. We're to be friends, after all."
Friends? That has to be a joke.
He remained silent, attempting to ignore her outrageous claim and the name that had once again been slung at him. Just his luck to be saddled with a madwoman in the middle of nowhere. The last few threads of his patience were close to snapping.
"Oh, there's another thing you should know -" She began again, pausing for a moment as if she were trying to recall something specific, or a detail of sorts. "Between the moments of the sun's zenith and it's setting, a group of Trandoshans are going to try to-"
He'd had enough.
He moved quickly, procuring a strip of fabric from a utility panel he'd had to utilise many times before when his bounties got too talkative. In an instant, and before she had proper time to react, he had moved behind her, forcing that strip of fabric between her lips and tying the ends securely at the back of her head.
This time, she struggled, but the girl was extraordinarily easy to subdue. As she attempted to wiggle out of his grasp and pull at his forearms, he could only note how weak those movements were – likely from lack of proper nutrition and the absence of muscle on a thin frame. It was clear she had never received any sort of combat training, because she floundered, her movements sloppy and uncoordinated.
All the better for him, really. A half-starved bounty that couldn't put up a struggle was an easy bounty, one that would pose no problems for him, physically at least.
There was no smile in her eyes now as he released the struggling young woman and gave her a yank forward. There was a distinct look of displeasure on her features, but he was not bothered by it in the slightest.
He had warned her, and she had chosen to ignore him. Now she would face the repercussions of her actions, and perhaps learn the lesson that he did not make threats lightly.
"There." He said, mimicking the same casual tone she had used only moments ago. "That's better."
It was far more peaceful now with the girl both bound and gagged as she trailed unhappily behind him. She attempted to pull at the gag for a few minutes, but he gave her wrist bindings a few hard yanks for good measure and she eventually ceased her efforts.
He was normally not this vindictive, and he truly had no desire to harm her, but the girl was by far one of the most obnoxious bounties he had ever captured. He only felt somewhat guilty about his treatment of the strange young woman who felt the need to defy his requests for silence and seemed to think he would not follow through with his threats.
He scoffed to himself as he pondered over her words about his ship and the Trandoshans.
She's crazy, she has to be.
The bounty hunter gave himself a stern reminder when he found his mind wandering towards the subject of his ship and any potential foes. His ship was fine, there were no Trandoshans near them – it was only the mad ramblings of a semi-coherent woman who was trying to distract him, to set him on edge so she could escape with the youngling. Of this he felt certain.
The Mandalorian would not be so easily tricked, and what a ridiculous trick this was on her part.
And now he no longer had to listen to her crazed mutterings – she could not annoy him through the filthy gag he had tied so tightly around her head. He was content with this set-up, and he could not comprehend how he had not thought to do this earlier. He really ought to have gagged her from the very beginning.
They walked in relative silence for a few hours while The Child preoccupied itself with watching the lizards scurrying over rocks in the ravine of the canyon they were passing through. It was entirely entranced with the little cold-blooded reptiles, watching them earnestly as they scuttled along jagged rock formations.
For all he knew, The Child could have been a distant relative of the small reptiles. It was certainly a strange little creature. He had never seen any youngling quite like it.
So far, the day was going suspiciously well. The Child was giving him no problems, as he had initially supposed it might, and the girl was both forcibly silent and trailing obediently after him.
He ought to have known the peace would not last.
It was not much longer after he had admitted things appeared to be going to his favour that the girl suddenly dug her feet into the mud and gave a strong tug on the grappling wire that attached her cuffs to his armoured arm panel.
He remained unfazed by it, and gave a harsh yank in return, not particularly perturbed that it brought her knees to the mud. If she wanted to play that game, it was one she would lose.
He continued once more, only to find the girl tugging at the grappling wire again, attempting to communicate something with him that he had no desire to hear. A scowl marred his features hidden by the helmet, and he ignored the muffled words from behind the gag and the intent look in her eyes.
This girl was about to find herself being drug forcibly through the mud if she did not comply with him. He had little patience for such antics.
It was then that he paused, his senses taking note of another presence besides their own and the little lizards that looked on from the rocks. In the stillness of the canyon he felt it, the evidence that they were not alone making itself known by the slightest shifting of dusty sand that fell from somewhere above them.
Was that what she had been attempting to tell him?
They both stood quite still, the girl finally having gone quiet and the Child looking on in interest.
His blaster went off at the same moment a hulking Trandoshan launched itself from its spot hidden in the rocks above them, taking no time in swinging a large, axe-like weapon at the Mandalorian.
He was quick about it, pushing the pram with all his might to force The Child out of the vicinity of the fight and knocking the girl's knees out from under her so she fell to the ground before the large axe swung where her head had been just moments prior.
In the blink of an eye, he was parrying and trading lethal blows with two Trandoshans, all whilst using coordinated wrist movements to yank the girl this way and that to keep her out from underneath their falling weapons.
It was a messy business, and one that required quick reflexes and a keen intuition – lucky for him, he possessed both. Unluckily for the Trandoshans who were foolish enough to have attacked him, they found themselves on the receiving end of his calculated wrath. All of this he accomplished with the girl still attached to his arm gauntlet, fighting off the two and simultaneously keeping her out of their reach.
The girl smacked hard into a boulder when he pulled her back once more, causing her to lose her already precarious balance and collide headfirst with the red stone. She did not move after that, slumping to the ground as he vaporised the last Trandoshan that was attempting to take out The Child.
As quickly as the skirmish had started, it had ended.
It was then that he noticed the tracking fob beeping at him from the ground, next to the body of one of the enemies he had just killed. His gaze was hard as he stared at it, the little mechanical noises grating on his ears and confirming what he had already begun to suspect: he was not the only one after these two.
That only begged another equally as concerning question – if he wasn't the only one with a fob, how many others were searching for them? Just how important were these two?
The Child stared at him, not particularly bothered or upset by seeing the foe vaporised before its eyes. Instead, it only cocked its head to the side, its large ears perking upwards.
A normal youngling might have cried. Then again, he supposed this was not a normal youngling. In fact, he suspected this was likely the furthest thing from a normal youngling he had ever seen.
Neither of them were normal, and the fact that they had multiple tracking fobs leading to them confirmed that there was much more to this mission and their importance than what he had originally been led to believe.
He glanced towards the girl lying crumpled in a heap at his side, eyeing her battered form warily.
She'd said something about Thrandoshans earlier that morning, she had warned him ahead of time that this would take place.
Just a coincidence, it has to be.
It was impossible, he reasoned with himself, trying desperately to find some sort of explanation. However, the longer he thought about it, and the longer he tried to finagle some sort of logical explanation as to how she could have possibly known how the events of the day would play out, the more questions arose in his mind – questions he had no answers or reasonable explanations for.
The Child gurgled as The Mandalorian exhaled slowly, shoving his personal quandaries back down and focusing on the task at hand. He slung the girl easily over his shoulder, keeping one hand on the back of her knees so she would not slip, and his other hand on the holster of his blaster.
If a bounty droid and this group had been given tracking fobs as well, there was no telling who else had, and he would need to be prepared for the event that others were actively hunting their location.
But first, he would need to make repairs to the circuit system beneath his armour and cauterise the wound on his arm before it had a chance to get infected.
It looked like the ship would have to wait another day, unfortunately. The repairs would likely take hours, and it was too risky to traverse the deserts at night, especially with an unconscious woman slung over his shoulder.
With a mind set and plan in place, he started forward again, repositioning the girl on his shoulder and continuing down the ravine to look for a safe place to make camp for the evening.
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The youngling was watching him as the sun slipped below the horizon, casting a myriad of colours throughout the night sky.
In fact, the thing had been watching him for hours now. The wide and curious eyes of The Child never left him, and he reckoned he could feel the overly-aware gaze even when he turned his back to it.
It was slightly unnerving, and he found he could not hold eye contact with it for too long. There was a strange sense of exposure he felt under the youngling's gaze, as though it could see straight through his visor and into the eyes he kept hidden from the world.
He turned his head towards the girl then, unable to look at the little creature any longer.
Her face was smeared with crusted mud, and a portion of her hair was matted with dried blood near her temple, but the soft and steady rising and falling of her chest indicated that the head injury she had received was not too serious.
The girl was still unconscious, and he was beginning to wish he had brought a bacta patch with him for the wound he had given her by slinging her head-first into a boulder. He had not meant to cause any damage, only to get her out of the way of the Trandoshan that had been slinging a vibro-blade at her neck.
But better concussed than dead, he concluded, feeling no remorse for the lengths he had gone to keep her alive. She would live. She might have a nasty bump on her head for a day or two, but he'd saved her life, and a bump on the head was a small price to pay for the retention of a life.
He had even removed the gag as well, she really ought to be thankful he was in such a generous mood, though he would not hesitate to shove it back in her mouth if she began her ramblings anew. His sense of generosity only went so far.
It was his theory that the group of Trandoshans had been waiting for someone to finally breach that heavily guarded compound, to let some other bounty hunter do the hard work and then steal the bounty from them afterwards. It was smart on their end, and it might have worked if they hadn't been up against a Mandalorian.
The girl stirred then, letting out a low moan but thankfully remaining unconscious. Giving a quick glance towards the woman before returning to his repairs, he could not help how his mind wandered as he considered the parametres of his mission and what little information he had been given regarding the assets. The nature of the underground assignment he had been hired for had been dodgy from the start, but then again, most of his work usually was. This time, however, he found that secrecy and oddities surrounding the assets he was after was of a different nature, one that went beyond the usual line of work.
It was obvious these two were not any sort of criminals or low-lives like he was usually employed to track down and either assassinate or return to the guild. He had never been tasked with anything like this, and he had never been responsible for collecting such strange assets before.
Though it was unwise, his mind continued to spin around one central question - if they were not guilty of any crimes, as he suspected they were not, then why was there such a high bounty on their head? What importance warranted a bounty that outmatched even former Imperial warlords who were wanted for warcrimes or dangerous mass-murderers who had escaped high security prisons? Their bounty was worth more than any he had ever come across, the highest he had ever seen - A bounty worth an entire fortune for a half-starved girl and a defenseless youngling.
These two were rapidly evolving to be more trouble than they were worth, no matter the amount of Beskar that lay waiting for him on Nevarro.
A frown stretched on his features as he turned his attention back to his circuit repairs, attempting to cast all thoughts of doubt about this mission back into the pits of his mind where they belonged. He did not get paid to ask questions, the bounty hunter reminded himself.
The helmeted head swiveled when a sudden sensation drew him from his thoughts to centre on The Child, who had once again escaped its pram and was reaching towards the wound on his arm. The Mandalorian had already returned it twice to its pod, and this time, he set the youngling back inside and made sure to seal it shut.
It gave a soft whine of discontent before it disappeared from his view, enclosed safely inside the hovering bassinet.
He resumed his work on his armour, grateful for the small repairs to make that kept his mind occupied from the questions that were swarming inside his head.
This, he understood. Repairs, hunting, killing, fighting, tracking – these were all second nature to the Mandalorian. He understood these things, he was comfortable with them. The actions of repairing his armour, and even the pain that came from cauterising and disinfecting the deep gash on his arm were somewhat comfortable to him; not because he enjoyed the pain or the rewiring of the circuit system underneath his Beskar, but because these actions were familiar.
He found comfort in the familiar, especially after entering into this unknown territory with these strange bounties. He was currently in uncharted lands, both physically and metaphorically, so he took pleasure in something as mundane as a circuit repair.
Unfortunately, the peace of the mundane did not last as long as he would have preferred.
The girl stirred again, this time waking and letting out a small groan of pain as she sat up and brought cuffed hands to the spot on her temple that he felt sure was tender to the touch. He had his answer when she winced, letting out a small hiss as thin fingers probed the wound.
"You were injured?" Came her question when she had finally focused on him, lips turning downwards as she took in the steaming wound on his arm.
He gave no reply - to do so would have been an unnecessary waste of breath. It was obvious he had been injured, she had eyes, she could make that conclusion herself. Why she felt the need to voice stupid and obvious questions, he hadn't the slightest clue.
She hummed to herself before muttering something that ignited that horrible uncertainty within him again, just when he had thought he might be rid of it.
"That's strange, I didn't see that happening." She murmured, more to herself than to him. "I still have all ten of my fingers too..."
"Enough." He snapped at her, unwilling to listen to any more of it. "I don't want to hear it."
"I'm only trying to help you. I thought you'd be grateful." She was frowning at him now, apparently unable to comprehend that he was one step away from throwing her off the top of the ravine and leaving her body there for the lizards to feast upon. "I tried to warn you this morning-"
"I'll be grateful when you learn to keep your mouth shut." He growled. "Whatever you're trying, it's not going to work. One more word, and I'll put that gag back on."
She stared at him a long moment, eyes roaming over his helmet with delicate features knitting together in disdain of his attitude.
But the girl really must have placed very little value on her own life, because she spoke again, in direct disobedience of his demand for her silence and in a tone that indicated she was rising to the challenge. Her voice practically dripped in defiance when she opened her mouth.
"There are Jawas stripping your ship of its parts as we speak."
The Mandalorian was done with her, and was immensely looking forward to the moment he would hand the troublesome woman over to his client – conscience be damned.
Her words alarmed him, striking a primal sense of something he normally did not feel into his heart. The possibility that she might not actually be mad, and that The Child might just be something more than a normal youngling made him nervous, and it was not often he felt nervous. This was beyond his realm of understanding, beyond what he knew and felt comfortable with, and he found he simply could not stand to listen to it.
She fought him, but was once more easily subdued and gagged.
The girl grunted and kicked her legs wildly, but eventually grew tired of her tantrum and leaned back against the warmth of the rock he had placed her body against.
He resumed his work in an unsettled state of agitation, unable to keep the mental image of Jawas scavenging parts from his ship out of his mind.
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"Up." The girl jerked awake at the sound of his command.
She mumbled something from behind both the gag, but he remained blissfully unaware of any oracle-like greeting, and had no desire to hear whatever it was she had to say.
Narrowed eyes was what he was met with when he continued to ignore her, and she wrinkled her nose at him when he made her take her portion of the water through the dirty gag in her mouth.
He helped the strange little youngling drink from the canteen himself this time, watching as The Child lapped gratefully at the little trickle of water he provided. All the while, he was certain he could feel the girl glaring at him, but he did not bother to glance towards her.
The walking resumed.
They were so close to his ship now, one step closer to the battered but reliable hunk of metal that had served him well over the years and would hopefully bring him and his bounties safely back to Nevarro. He was one step closer to ridding himself of the two of them, one step closer to gaining his reward.
With that thought in mind, his pace quickened subconsciously. He could practically see the slate-grey bars of Beskar waiting for him in that dingy hideout that his client occupied. He could almost feel the weight of it in his hands.
With that amount of Beskar, The Armorer would be able to create for him something magnificent, he had no doubt. He would wear his earnings in pride, another piece of his armour to showcase his devotion to the Creed and his clan's way of life. His status would undoubtedly be raised among his people, for the more pieces of their armour one earned, the more status and reputation one gained.
To this he had devoted his life, and he was one step closer now to fulfilling that goal for himself. That thought made the situation more bearable.
At least, until he crested the top of a sand dune to see that the girl had once again been right about something she could not possibly have known.
In the bottom of the valley, lay his ship – or what was left of it. Surrounding his beloved spacecraft were an entire horde of Jawas, unloading and scrapping the metal off the vessel to strip it clean and load the parts onto their Sand Crawler.
Just as the girl had predicted.
Again.
He swore nastily, immediately removing his Amban rifle and yanking the girl down to the ground with him. She made a noise of protest at him through the gag, but he had little time to dwell on what that might be, not when his ship was being torn apart before his eyes.
Both The Child and the girl recoiled as he started to shoot indiscriminately at his targets, vaporising the little desert pests one by one for even daring to lay a finger on his ship. The Girl grappled at his rifle in an attempt to discourage him from the violence, but he would have none of it. A rough shove was what she received for interfering.
He would have his parts back, no matter how many of those nasty little thieves died in the process.
The girl grunted through the gag as he unhooked the grappling wire from his arm brace and linked it to the pram, but he paid no care.
"Stay put." He demanded angrily, hoisting his rifle back up once he had secured her to the other asset.
And with that last threat he was off, bounding recklessly after the massive armoured fortress on wheels before the girl could try and stop him again.
In retrospect, he probably ought to have taken a moment to plan a better strategy, because when he came to again after having been stunned and thrown from the top of their Sand Crawler, the girl and The Child were nowhere in sight.
His first thought when he stumbled to his feet was to pull out the tracking fob to see how far they had gotten.
His second thought was that he still had his weapons on his person, which meant that the girl had been stupid enough to leave him armed before abandoning him in the desert.
The third thought was a realisation that the girl had not abandoned him at all, not if the tracking fob was correct, and it was hardly ever wrong.
The beepings of the tracking device in his hand were fast and high pitched, indicating that they were quite near to him, despite his initial assumption that the girl had made a run for it.
At least there was that.
He staggered forward, ignoring the pain in his limbs as the effects of the electric shocks slowly wore off. Every step he took sent a jolt of stiff discomfort through his body, down to his very bones. He was lucky to be alive, he realised. In fact, he probably wouldn't be if it hadn't been for his armour. Gloved fingers ran gratefully over his chest piece as he followed the signal of the tracking fob that led into the skeletal remains of his ship.
To his surprise, the girl and the youngling were sitting casually inside the main corridor of the ship with a pile of his rations between them. The woman was chewing on the rations she'd scavenged from his storage and feeding the youngling a small, bite-sized piece as he entered and looked towards them in disbelief.
She'd somehow managed to remove the gag as well, but that was the least of his concerns in that moment.
"Oh, good!" she smiled at with a mouth full of her stolen rations. "You're up! I tried to bring you back here, but I wasn't strong enough. That tends to happen when you've been starved, gagged, and dragged through the desert for a few days."
Her greeting was cheeky, which he did not care for.
The Child made a little whining sound and a grabbing motion that caught her attention then, and she returned to her feeding of it, placing another small portion inside an equally small mouth that was open expectantly to receive the food.
"You didn't leave." He stated the obvious, the question on the tip of his tongue. "Why?"
He would have expected her to. If he were in her situation, he certainly would have. The girl had an opportunity to escape, to steal his weapons, armour, and rations and leave him for dead in the desert, but she had not. Instead, she had stayed, waiting patiently for him to wake up. He had been vulnerable, but she had not taken advantage of the situation.
What was wrong with her? Was she really so eager to be delivered as a bounty to the undoubtedly cruel clutches of the client that was waiting for them?
"I told you already, Mandalorian." She answered, as though this was obvious. "Our fates are intertwined. If I left you, somebody else would have eventually found us and handed us over. You're our best shot of survival."
"What makes you so sure I won't?" He demanded, struggling to grapple onto any sense of reality in this situation. But try as he might, he could not deny that this girl had predicted three truths already, and he was having doubts that he really ought not to be having.
In fact, he really ought not to be having this conversation at all. He found that he could not help it, however. He needed answers, and no amount of trying to convince himself that it was not his job to ask questions about the tasks he was hired for would deter him now.
He was in way over his head, he realised this. Whatever this was, it was bigger than him, and he deserved to know what he was up against.
"Because I've seen it." Came her reply, once again spouting the vague nonsense that she'd been droning on about for the last few days. "I've seen two paths before you, and I'm hoping you'll choose the right one."
He wanted to scoff, to brush her wild premonition off and ignore her words, though he found that he could not. What he had regarded as nonsense just that morning was now looking to be anything but. If that 'nonsense' of hers had come true, could he truly continue to brush it off?
"You see a lot of things, do you?" He asked in thinly veiled and wary skepticism, and she answered this time in a quiet voice, placing another little ration cube into the smacking lips of The Child before responding.
She turned her head towards him, hazel eyes boring into his visor and her tone suddenly shifting from the peaceful indifference to one that sounded quite serious.
"Haven't you wondered why our bounties are so high?" She questioned quietly.
He had wondered that, many times thus far. Against his better judgement, he had wondered. But that did not change the fact that she had not answered his question.
Perhaps he didn't need to know. It might be better if he didn't know, he tried to convince himself, though he struggled to do so. He would still have to deliver them, and the less he knew about the duo the easier that would be.
Frustration welled up in his chest in the blink of an eye, as he thought about the situation at hand.
He was in the middle of a desert, his ship had been scrapped, his weapons arsenal stolen, his bounties were apparently much more important than he had been led to believe, and he was stuck here on this horrible backwater planet with a girl who spouted magical prophecies and a Child that he was slowly beginning to feel guilty about eventually having to hand over.
This was not an ideal situation, not even close. Never had a mission spiralled so far out of his control in such a short amount of time. He needed to get back on top of things, he needed to finish this job before this job finished him. Then, once everything was said and done, he could put it all behind him and return to the normalcy he had once taken for granted.
First things were first, however; he needed to get his parts back.
After he had done that, he would worry about the strange young woman and The Child.
"Get up." He demanded, though this time he waited for her to follow the command rather than using brute force to bring her to her feet. "I know someone who can help."