AN: Migraines aren't gone, sorry again for all the mistakes! (I mostly share this with you, not for comments about it, but so you know why everything is sporadic and because I know there are others dealing with medical issues and I want you to know that you're not alone). Thank you to everyone who has been reviewing this story!

Chapter 21 - A Calling

Jango watched his two ade battle quietly over the study modules. Obi-Wan was scary when he decided manipulation was needed to solve a problem.

At first, Omega and Boba had gotten along famously, until Boba started to feel comparative. Having been raised in isolation with the most brilliant Kamino of their era, Omega was, herself scary intelligent, and spoke with a larger vocabulary than Boba did.

The bickering between them had unexpectedly escalated when Jango made the mistake of praising Omega's Mando'a grammar.

Jango, who wasn't used to Boba fighting with anyone had been at a lost, especially when Omega started crying.

Not because she was sad, but because she was furious.

Obi-Wan had swept in effortlessly with new training modules of Ryloth, a new language, neither of them knew. Omega was better at vocabulary and grammar but Boba was better at comprehension and speaking. The two usually, like now, battle studying against each other.

Jango would have been disgusted as a child if Jaster had him do that. He had assumed Boba would be the same way, however, because Obi-Wan had pricked both their comparative instincts, it seemed the subject didn't matter

But then Jango's sister, Arla, had been older and keeping up with her hadn't been the same.

Omega looked a lot like Arla.

It had been a quiet flight, though due to the lack of stars and systems in the Outer Rim, the trip only took a few days.

Jango gave a whistle.

Two heads popped up to look at him.

"We are coming out of hyperspace," he said.

It was as if the two materialized on either side of him, they ran so fast.

He scooped both twins onto his lap as he turned down the engine.

Omega gasped as they came into sight of the blue-green planet.

"There's so much life," she said in awe. "So much green."

Jango rested his cheek against her head, "The galaxy, ner ad'ika, has more wonders than can be imagined."

She grinned up at him, her smile identical to Arla's.

Jango truly would remake the galaxy for his children, whatever it took.

oOo

"How many?" Satine asked.

"Over three hundred, My Lady," Almec said. "And growing."

"I will not let them destroy what we have," she said.

"What do you propose we do?"

"We have the ion canon's, and we have what they never will."

"And what is that?" Almec asked.

"Mandalore."

oOo

Two hundred True Mandalorians, and nearly a hundred ade with them.

Jango greeted them all, individually, and it warmed his heart that every single person of his new people who offered him feality, afforded Omega and Boba with the same reverence.

Omega clung to his side a little more readily than Boba, but by the end of the greetings, which took a full day, both ner ade were half asleep in his arms.

They gathered the hundred warriors who most prepared for war on a freighter ship where they could be afforded some privacy. As much as Jango apraited the Queen's help and knew her and her handmaidens to be allies, only the True Mandalorians were precent, sitting on the boxes of rations and medical supplies.

Jaster had told him once that he had been born to be leader. But after hearing the Resol'nare repeated to him, many of whom had never sworn such oaths to his buir, he felt the weight of his failings sharply.

Kal Skirata grunted, "So what trouble have you got yourself in, Mand'alor?"

"You mean other than the war we need to fight?" Vhonte Tervho, a red armoured Mandalorian female, asked.

"I do plan to defeat Death Watch, once and for all, as well as win back the heart of our people from the Delusions of the pacifists."

"I here a but coming," Vhonte sighed.

"I made a bad deal and I need help getting out of it," Jango said.

Myles grunted, "Who we got to kill?"

Aside from the Resol'nare was the most Myles had said since he had arrived. His silence had been eerie.

"More like, who we need to save," Jango said, cradling his twins closer to himself.

"Except those two, Fett," Kal said with some heat. "Your clan has marched on."

Jango shook his head, "I made a deal with orginazation of cloners. Aside from my stipend, I asked for an ad of my own." He hugged Boba and Omega to him. "But I didn't fully realize the conditions they intended to keep the clones in, by which point my son began to fall ill from a genetic disease."

"They blackmailed you with your own ade?" Silas demanded.

Kal took of his golden helmet, "Fett, that does not look well upon you."

Omega, who wasn't asleep as Jango had believed, spoke up, "There are also explosives in all the facilities. If you try a straightforward evacuation. All the vode will be blown and drowned."

They stared at her.

Jango's heart constricted, he had known that, but to hear it outloud still hurt.

"What did they promise you?" Kal asked.

"They promised me vengeance against the Jedi Order," he said honestly. "And once I came to my senses and realized what was more important, they had them."

Kal nodded, "We will help."

This was echoed throughout the ship.

Jango sighed, "One more thing."

"Just the one?" Vhonte asked, amusement colouring her tone.

Jango restrained a wince, "A few Jedi outcasts are attempting to help us as well."

Protests rang out around him.

"You want us to work with Jedi!?"

"I want my ade safe, at any cost," he raised his voice, quelling the protests. "They are Clan Fett and I am Mand'alor. I cannot and will not abandon them."

Omega clung to his hand, holding onto the promise, the hope not quite believing.

Trust that Jango had yet to earn.

While Boba remained asleep, trusting without the slightest hint of doubt in his heart.

Both felt damning.

Silas spoke up, "The Jedi who joined him, is the one who guarded the Duchess."

Kal raised a brow, "A New Mandalorian?"

"He has left the Order and the Republic," Jango said. "He was born Mandalorian and he has taken the Resol'nare as a True Mandalorian. He is loyal."

"And you would stake your life on that?" Myles asked.

"Yes," he said without hesitation.

"You would stake your ade's lives on him?" Kal asked.

Jango met his gaze, "Yes."

Kal inclined his head, and fisting hand he fisted it over his armour and heart, "We answered your call, Mand'alor, and we will follow you."

The gesture was repeated, and Jango could only hope that he would be enough.

That they would be enough.

oOo

All the younglings stood at the platform, staring down into water depths below them.

Many of the CTs had chosen to go down with Fay to the sea level platform, but others, like those who would have been a part of the 501st.

They all knew how to swim, and the water was calm today. Still, now faced with the plunged, they were hesitating.

"You were all born on this planet, surely you'd like to say you swam in its ocean?" Obi-Wan coaxed.

Their lives would be changing soon, but Kamino was as much theirs as it was the Longnecks. They deserved to have memories of their homeworld that was wasn't tainted by fear and grief.

They deserved more than they had; they deserved everything.

Obi-Wan would remake the galaxy for them.

"I'd like to say I didn't die in its oceans," Appo groused.

Rael shoved him off the platform.

Appo fell over the edge with an indignant squawk.

Obi-Wan laughed, scooping Helix and Fives up into his arms. Both boys hugged his neck, neither making a sound. Whereas Cody, Rex, and Alpha-17 shouted at him, them along with Ponds, Cody's twin, and Appo's twin Gregor, followed at Obi-Wan's heels off the ledge.

Rael did the same with 99 while the Asajj Force shoved the Nulls into the fall below. She flipped in after them.

The water was cold, but not too cold, and Obi-Wan used the Force to slow their descent. The ade began to swim, seemingly in shock that they had jumped, because they made no immediate comments as they waded in the ocean.

Obi-Wan smiled at them as Fives and Helix clung to his back as they tried to adjust to the temperature. Looking up, Obi-Wan smiled and waved the others down. Soon a hundred younglings were making the plunging in around them. Obi-Wan held them all in the Force, letting gravity carry them down but ensuring none of them slapped the water's surface too hard or knocked into one another.

It was important they know how to swim in these waters. To know that they weren't imprisoned in the facilities that they had been born in. He planned to take the older boys out swimming again when the oceans were less than calm, but this was a good introduction.

They had various floats bobbing in the water around them that the ade swarmed to then began playing games around, such as last man on the float. Their laughter and voices carried over the water, into the open sky, and Obi-Wan could feel the fear lift from their hearts.

Sense the freedom they had never known before.

Rael swam nearer to him, 99 gliding freely among the Nulls and the rest of the Bad Batch, the salt freeing his muscles and bones from the weight he had to carry on his frame. Meaning that for once, in sheer physicality, he could keep up with his brothers.

Of course, 99 had nothing to prove. To Obi-Wan's knowledge, Fay had never taken a Padawan, had flat out refused to ever take a Padawan, until 99.

Fay wouldn't stay with the vode forever, but Obi-Wan doubted she would ever abandon 99, not for anything.

Fay who was gathering all the younglings who were beginning to tire closer to the lower platform.

It was an hour later when Helix and Fives swam to Fay. The older vode showed no sign at all of tiring, buoyed by freedom. They would sleep well tonight.

Rex, who despite being younger, refused to be sent away, came to cling to Obi-Wan, wrapping him in a hug.

Obi-Wan rested his temple against Rex's head.

"Thank you, Buir," he whispered into his ear.

Obi-Wan held his ad'ika tighter, using his legs to keep them above the surface as he pulled back far enough to look into his ad's eyes.

And said the next words in Mando'a, claiming Rex as not just his family, his clan, but his son, "Ni kyr'tayl gai sa'ad, Rex Fett."

Rex shook his head, "No, Rex Kenobi."

Obi-Wan's heart squeezed a little, "Re'ika, my name means—"

"It means we overcame," he insisted. "That no clan but our own gave us anything."

Obi-Wan wondered if Cody felt the same way but, unsurprisingly, had been unwilling to argue the point. It took a year before Cody was truly comfortable arguing with Obi-Wan as an adult, "Ni kyr'tayl gai sa'ad, Rex Kenobi."

Obi-Wan pressed their foreheads together, "Legal, binding, you are my ad'ika."

Rex smiled, lifting sea-soaked hands to wipe away the tear tracks on Obi-Wan's cheeks.

Saltwater joining saltwater.

"And you my Buir," with just as much conviction and stubbornness as the man he would one day grow to become.

How was it possible that the vode, who had nothing, could give so much?

oOo

AN: Thoughts, Demoiselle cranes, or feedback pretty please?