#and until they give us more backstory to Mandalore and the kryzes

[hauntstrat]

[arc-saber]

The Way Forward - Did I write a Mandalorian Fic?

I fic-ing did.  Or part of it.  Look.  I was bored and I’m almost always thinking about Star Wars.  It was bound to happen.

No, but really.  I’m not really a fanfic writer.  I’m not great at it.  and clearly, I start with a single, stupid idea and get side-tracked until I have a WAY TOO LONG bit of story.  But my main pet peeve about a lot of fic is inconsistent characterization.  So then I was like “WELL CAN U DO ANY BETTER, SMARTASS?”  Answer?  Mmnnmmnsssnng? I dunno.  We’ll see.

Din Djarin finds himself in a predicament some years after parting ways with Grogu.  Someone unexpectedly shows up to help.  I W0ndEr WhO!?  

Forgive my lazy backstory-ing... Story below the cut.

PART I

The Dark Saber.  It had once been described to him as a symbol more than an item of power on its own.  But its history said otherwise.  It was both.  The ancient blade was not only a feat of engineering that wedded ancient sorcery and Mandalorian tactical sense, but it was the manifestation of power on Mandalore itself.  It had been forged, stolen, retrieved, lost and found again — its past was as dynamic as the story of Mandalore itself.  

But today it was a tool and Din Djarin was using it to cut a hole in a scrapped hull so that he didn’t burn to death in a sudden deluge of acid rain.

The screeching metal and insulation giving way to the unyielding blade manifested on his helmet’s HUD as static while the rest of his feed grew grainy with sensor damage from the rain.  Very technically, Din had known what he was getting into when he arrived on Lotho Minor, but he hadn’t been presented with a lot of options during the chaotic spiral landing he’d been forced into by his pursuers.  It bothered him that he hadn’t known their affiliation and it was a troubling indictment of his life that there were too many groups with cause to target him as a general mark to make an educated guess … let alone the number of people scattered across the galaxy who had cause to target him specifically.  It also bothered him that he didn’t know if these particular pursuers had broken off when he’d plunged into the junk planet’s acidic atmosphere.  Or if it was personal and they had followed him to the surface.

With a heavy kick, he toppled his impromptu door into the cavity of the  remains of a freighter and plunged inside after it.  His armor had deflected most of the acid damage, but everywhere that beskar wasn’t was smoking and starting to sting as the rain soaked through the padding.  He knew he should strip off what he could and try to allow it to dry, but after depositing himself with gravity against the far bulkhead, he was having trouble finding the will to move just yet.  

About two clicks away, his shabby X4 gunship was little more than a smoking heap — his less than graceful descent having caused some pretty severe hull damage, not to mention now whatever connectors the rain was melting away.  So unless he could miraculously a) find the parts he needed buried in Lotho Minor’s literal mountains of scrap or b) even more miraculously find an operational ship to get himself off the surface, he was stranded.  Letting his head tilt back wearily, he let out a sigh that felt like it had risen up in him like a bubble through pitch.  He was tired.  He had been tired for three years — possibly longer than that — but when he’d been caught up in the concern for someone other than just himself, it had distracted him from it.  His people.  Then of course the kid.  He sighed again, feeling as though the first hadn’t quite reset him as much as he needed.  He should be relieved to only be responsible for his own skin again; what would he do here if he was also trying to keep a helpless child alive along with him?  But the fact remained: whenever that brief time he’d spent as the child’s guardian crossed his mind, he missed it.  Missed Grogu.  

He didn’t know why lately in particular the odd little sorcerer had crossed his mind so often, but now hardly a night passed when he didn’t factor into Din’s fitful dreams somehow.  Most of it was pure memory, but some seemed different — moments when he felt like he was being reached for.  It was probably a result of wishful thinking.  And right now, wallowing was not going to fix his situation.  When he’d either sat out the worst of the acid evaporating, or simply dulled to the sting of it, he laboriously reached for the lightrod that was tucked into his belt.  Raising it over his head, he could just make out the shapes of the ship’s interior by its meager glow.  Most of what was left of the freighter had been picked clean by whatever locals there were here.  Staying put would give him shelter, but nothing more than that.  He lowered the lightrod again, disappointed, and pushed himself back to his feet.  His unceremonious entry had granted him about a three foot opening through which he could now peek out and try to assess the weather.

A flash of movement and light bouncing off a metallic barrel was all the warning he got.  Din jerked himself back behind the hull, milliseconds before a red blast scored the metal right next to his head.  Falling back with a grunt, he wedged himself into the dark as much as he could while drawing his own blaster.  He checked the charge.  Decent.  Outside, the sound of footsteps had distinguished from the rain just enough for him to guess at two pursuers.  He edged back to the opening and did a quick double glimpse, ducking down as he popped his head out the second time, lining up a shot with the movement he saw.  Two figures. Humanoid for the most part and well equipped against the hostile environment in full vac suits.  “Dank — “ Another blast lit up the hull briefly overhead.  “Ffffarrik.”

His free hand went to the hilt that hung at his belt.  He could stay here and deplete his charge trying to take them both out before either got to him… or use the blade in the one capacity it had that had never failed him.  Intimidation.  Din could use a sword.  He could use pretty much anything.  But it wasn’t his first choice.  If the Dark Saber was any other blade, he wouldn’t consider it, but the few times he’d ignited it, the effect was notable.  Most people didn’t know exactly what it was, but they knew enough that they didn’t want to try to fight it.  Maybe that was part of the reason he hadn’t dumped it down a canyon somewhere for Bo-Katan Kryze to go find on her own.  It had caused him enough trouble over the past few years that that would make the most sense.  Yet he held onto it and because of that, had suffered not a few varied encounters with Kryze and her clan and their attempts to force him into a tradition and history he knew nothing about and found he didn’t care for.  That wasn’t his path — his way.  It was something else entirely that had, before it knew him, labelled him a zealot.

He ignited the saber in his off hand, keeping his blaster at the ready.  They were close now, but they had slowed down in the absence of return fire, approaching  his shelter with caution.  They would crowd to one side of the opening, one coming in first to provide cover, the second following up with the needed accuracy.  Sure enough, he felt the hull vibrate as his pursuers flattened themselves against it. With little time, Din stepped back to give himself enough room to plunge the dark blade straight through the hull at about where he figured the second body would be.  It met some affirming resistance and a modulated shout of shock came from the other pursuer.  Din had hoped the sight of the blade would have scared off the remaining enemy, but with a stubborn war cry, the other was suddenly upon him, having whipped around the opening with a barrage of blasts chasing Din chaotically back to the back wall.  When he felt one ricochet off his beskar, he’d lunged forward into a roll, losing the hilt of the Dark Saber in the process, but coming up at an advantageous position to fire his blaster.  

A direct hit.  He saw the flare of energy meeting his enemy’s breastplate and had almost enough time to lower his blaster with a spin towards the holster before the full weight of his attacker plowed into him.  Confusion barely had a moment to sink in before he realized his error.  He wasn’t the only one in beskar.  Now this up close and personal, he could see the vac suit peeling away from the coated breastplate of Mandalorian armor.  He only had a very brief moment to gasp out an admittedly daft:  “What — ?” before the second attacker, proving to not be as skewered as he’d have liked, flung themselves into the opening, one injured arm hanging at their side, but the other wielding a blaster in an attempt to train on Din amid his grapple with the other.  

“Wait— wait!” but they weren’t there to talk.  He knew precisely what they were there for, and it was laying on the ground a few feet from any of them.  Din had tried to yield the Dark Saber before.  A few times, actually.  But its inherent rules seemed to have cornered the clans, and him, into a more deadly negotiation for it.  They would take it when he was maimed or dead.  So now he would just as soon they didn’t take it.  His attempts at getting their attention had only earned him a hard elbow to the neck, tossing him effectively into survival mode.  With an uncomfortable twist of the body, he got a foot up on the bulkhead behind him and activated his jetpack. The unexpected surge caught his attacker off guard and plowed both of them straight out the opening, into the second shooter and rolled them for several yards along the littered ground.  

The impact of their landing flung them apart, but the advantage of that for Din was an advantage for all of them and he was still outnumbered when he rolled to his feet, blaster raised.  He swapped his aim from one to the other of his attackers, trying to give the impression that he had both of them covered at once while they simply had to train their blasters on him and start to close in slowly.  “Are you with Bo-Katan?” he called out, hoping to get at least one talking.  They did pause, but the grim chuckle told him he’d not only guessed wrong, but he also might have encountered a rival of Bo-Katan’s for the throne of Mandalore.  “Of course.”  

The prospect that he might die here — on a literal garbage planet — only filled him with weary resignation.  But then — for just a moment — immense disappointment as he suddenly remembered a promise he’d made to Grogu as they parted.  “Sorry, kid,” he murmured to himself as he stood on the brink of lowering his head and his weapon.

But the two others had stopped and craned around, one rapidly looking back at Din as if they suspected whatever he’d murmured had just summoned a problem for them.  Unbeknownst to them, it was simply his outlandishly bad luck that had summoned a problem for all of them.

With a shriek like wrending metal — and indeed that was probably partially what it was — one of the mountains of scrap that had previously been looming over them, gave a violent buck, smaller bits of scrap now joining the acid that pelted them, shaking free from the towering metal monster that emerged and resolved into a four legged, open-mawed form that seemed to be made of the planet’s refuse itself, but fuelled by an oily hot fire from within its belly.  As it swung around, a pronged foot came inches from flattening Din where he stood.  He reeled back from the monstrous intrusion, no longer able to see his previous two attackers while he scrambled to get away from the brand new horror making itself his problem.

No words. No thoughts. Just survival as he reflexively activated his jetpack again and pushed off at an acute angle front he ground and away from the beast as it dove past him, mouth gaping for an improbable bite of pure scrap metal from the side of one of the hills.  Perhaps the monster itself was distracted by its meal, but the teetering hillside caved and an avalanche of spare parts was suddenly rolling down from higher than even Din’s current altitude.  Bits and pieces rang as they bounced off his armor and he strove to outrun the larger chunks he knew were coming.  He managed to dodge the caved in hull of what looked to be part of a Mon Calamari cruiser, but found himself straight in the path of an untold tonnage of metal that was soon sweeping him out of the air and along with it in a tumble of junk that splayed out between the hills like a river of metal… and then in a breathless moment, charged straight over the edge of a dark ravine, carrying Din down with it.