Training
Boba fired rapidly at the targets in his viewscreen, sending two streams of plasma cutting through the rain. He squinted and fired again, conscious of Jango's watchful eyes behind him. Boba's clothes were wet and plastered to his body, and the boy shivered a little. The slight motion affected his aim, and plasma shot away into the rain beyond Jango's landing platform. Boba stopped firing and bowed his head as his father's hand came down firmly on his shoulder. "Again," was all Jango said.
"Dad, can't we do this later?" Boba asked, pulling the trainer viewscreen off of his head. "I'm cold, I'm tired—" Jango cut off Boba's complaints with a brisk shake of his head.
"No. You wouldn't be stop during a hunt just because it got cold and rainy, would you?"
Boba shook his head sullenly and donned the viewscreen again. Before long, Jango reactivated the screen, and Boba found himself plunged into another scenario. This time he was on a landing pad on Coruscant, with barely enough time to scope out his surroundings before the first shot chanced his way. Calling on his years of training, the boy dropped into a roll that brought him up a few yards to the left, and he came up firing.
Somewhere beyond the Coruscant scenario, he was vaguely aware of Jango's coaching: "Don't waste fire; be precise; don't give them a chance to fire at you; take 'em down."
Boba popped off a few shots at the nearest enemy, who fell in the holographic equivalent of death, before turning his attention to the three wookiees which were closing in around him. Boba cursed softly in Huttese, hoping Jango wouldn't hear him, and opted for his jetpack, sending himself hurtling into the florescent light-blurred sky. As he rose, he rained fire down on his attackers, having the satisfaction of seeing one fall. Wookiees were tough creatures, and Jango had been inserting them in the scenarios more and more lately, much to Boba's irritation.
Boba deactivated the jetpack as he brushed by the wall of the building, allowing the electra-magneto strips on the sides of his armor to grip the wall's surface and hold him there. The two remaining wookiees roared in their strange language, raising their crossbows to fire. Boba waited until the last possible moment, then withdrew power from the magnetic strips, allowing himself to fall back to the landing pad, just steps from the wookiees. He sprawled himself out on the wet deck, making the wookiees think he was dead or injured, then just as they approached, he sent two blaster bolts sizzling upward, rolling out of the way just before a wookiee body tumbled down with a groan.
Boba continued the roll until he was back on his feet, his gloved hands fumbling with the zipline on his gauntlet. He sighted at the third and final wookiee's head, and sent the line whipping around its neck. The line not only encircled the creature's neck, but attached itself to the wall just over the wookiee's right shoulder. With a roar of rage, it turned, dropping its crossbow as it tried to tear the line from its neck. Boba pressed the retract button, and the line grew taught. As Boba began to slip towards the wookiee, he counteracted the slide and dropped to the deck, causing more friction between his body and the landing pad. As an added measure, he . Now secure, he anchored the zipline to the ground, it now sufficiently taught to hold the wookiee firmly. He approached the enormous alien leveling his blaster at it. The alien struggled one last time, then slumped, an already cauterized wound straight through its chest.
No more adversaries appeared. Jango disabled the trainer viewscreen, and Boba pulled it off once again. The boy turned around and jogged back to his father, his actions having taken him across the landing platform. "How'd I do?"
Jango smiled. Wookiees were difficult opponents. Opponents whom Jango himself had once feared. Worthy opponents. "You did all right, Son," he roughly patted Boba's shoulder, "now go inside change. I need to check something on the ship. 'Be right in."
Boba nodded and wiped a soaked strand of hair out of his eyes. The rain, if it was even possible, was coming down even harder now. As he headed back to the brightly-lit halls of Tipoca City, he tried not to voice how much his small body hurt. Jango didn't put up with whining, and Boba didn't want to disappoint him. The training was hard, though. Wookiees, even wookiees on the easy setting like those in the scenario, were daunting merchandise. How would he ever be as good as Jango?
The boy stumbled slowly down the hallway, leaving a set of wet footprints glistening on the polished floor. Even as he walked, maintenance droids scurried to mop up after him, but he was used to them and did not notice. When he reached the house he leaned on the door mechanism, deactivated the alarm, and ambled inside.
The apartment was not fancy at all. With only a few rooms, it was almost similar to their bunkroom on the Slave I. Boba showered and dressed in a dry tunic—blue, like almost all of his clothes—and wandered out into the tiny living room to crouch in the window seat with a book Zam had given him. She had taught him to read, and he had learned quickly. He'd had to. Zam's visits were infrequent, and Jango disapproved of wasting time reading books. Reading was essential, Jango has said repeatedly, but not for entertainment purposes.
Jango took longer than Boba had expected, and after he had finished a few chapters, the boy fixed himself a sandwich. Then he sat in the window seat, the book forgotten, and stared at the ship that was occupying the landing platform: Slave I. Someday it would be his, Jango had said. Well, Boba thought, not for a while anyway. He was only six.