"Far, Far Away..." - Part Three

Part Three

            “Taun We?” Jango addressed the Kaminoan. “What’s going on here?”

            Taun We inanely gazed back and forth between Jango and Djarin, the latter of who stood firm after his ruse was short-lived. “I thought he was you, Jango,” Taun We explained. “I will call security right away.”

            Jango raised one hand in protest. “No need,” he told Taun We. “I can handle this.”

            Djarin examined Jango’s living quarters. He noticed a boy standing at the foot of what he presumed to be the bedroom. At the floor of the bedroom sat a few pieces of Mandalorian armor. It suddenly made sense to Djarin how Taun We easily mistook him for Jango.

            “Where did you get this armor?” Djarin asked him, pointing directly to it.

            “Where did you get yours?” Jango deflected.

            Gen and the Doctor intently watched the exchange between the two men, sensing how much the tension swelled in the air with every word.

            “I earned it from the Children of the Watch,” Djarin answered.

            “Never heard of them,” Jango said.

            There was a long pause before Djarin asked again – with a more intense tone, “Where did you get the armor?”

            Jango didn’t answer. Instead, he gave an order to the boy who he shared his living quarters with. The order was given in an alien language, which Djarin recognized to be the language of the Hutts, common within the Outer Rim territories.

            Fett then offered to Djarin, “How ‘bout a trade? I’ll tell you where I got my armor…in exchange to see who you are underneath that helmet.”

            Djarin tensed up. “No deal.”

            Jango again gave the boy another order in Huttese and, in the blink of an eye, the boy pointed a blaster right at the head of the child. Gen, Djarin, and the Doctor reacted accordingly, with Gen in particular speaking in defense of Djarin, “You’d force a man to surrender his pride for a simple answer?!”

            “The answer doesn’t seem so ‘simple’ to men like us,” Jango told her. He then smirked as he asked Djarin, “That’s the way, isn’t it, Mando?”

            There was much hesitation in Djarin. This “Jango Fett” was a crafty one. He saw all the angles of the situation from the moment Djarin stepped inside with Gen, the Doctor, and the child – singling out the most vulnerable of the Mandalorian’s companions.

            “Alright,” Djarin finally decided. “You have a deal.”

            Djarin removed the helmet of his armor, made out of the same beskar material that he received from the bounty on the child. Jango and everyone else in the room looked on the true face of Din Djarin: a human male in prime age with short dark hair, brown eyes, tan skin, and bits of facial hair.

            Jango took a long, hard look at Djarin’s face and uttered flaccidly, “I expected better. You can put the helmet back on.” And, like an obedient slave to his master, Djarin did as he was told. Jango ordered the boy to lower his weapon from the child and, holding to the deal he made with Djarin, he shared his story:

            “I was a foundling…raised in the ways of the Mandalorians just as you were, my friend. I fought in their Civil War as a commando before eventually turning to a career in bounty hunting. That, of course, led to the life I’m living now here on Kamino with my son, Boba.”

            He nodded to the boy who he had been ordering in the last few moments.

            “Admittedly, there’s much I would love to know about you, Mando,” Jango continued. “But I’m afraid our business here must end. There are things happening in this city that neither you nor your friends should trouble yourselves with…or else I will have no choice but to kill all of you for it.”

            Not taking Jango’s warning lightly, the trespassers departed from Tipoca City and Kamino altogether in the Crest. During the takeoff, there was uncomfortable silence within the cockpit. Although his helmet hid it well, Gen and the Doctor were certain their encounter with Jango Fett left its mark on Djarin.

            “I should go and check on the TARDIS,” the Doctor excused himself, obviously unable to take the awkwardness any longer. He turned to the child and asked, “You wanna come with me, yeah?” He got his answer from the child’s reaction: his small, pointed green ears turning up in interest.

            Shortly after the Doctor and the child left the cockpit, Gen did what she could to help put Djarin’s mind at ease. “Jango’s nothing but a bully,” she consoled him. “He had no right telling you to take your helmet off.” Djarin didn’t respond to her comments, so she went the extra route and told him, “If it’s any comfort, I think you look handsome without it.”

            “Are you making fun of me?” he retorted, half-turning her way in his pilot chair.

            Gen jolted in panic. “N-No,” she stammered. “I was only trying to…”

            “The Children of the Watch have a code: if I ever removed my helmet in front of anyone, I would not be allowed to put it back on again or ever considered to be a true Mandalorian.”

            “I understand,” Gen acknowledged with a nod. “But, just to state the obvious here, you did put it back on when Jango told you to.”

            “His ways are not my ways,” Djarin said.

            All of the sudden, the Crest’s alarms blared. Gen and Djarin noticed why as soon as another time vortex opened in front of them, much larger in size than the last one. Just as before, they were caught in its gravitational pull and sent spiraling into another unspecified period in the galaxy.

            Once they recovered, they saw a space station in their trajectory.

            “At least we were taken somewhere to dock to get our bearings,” Gen noted.

            Djarin wholeheartedly agreed, which was why he immediately piloted the Crest into the spaceport’s main terminal. As he did so, Gen went to check on the Doctor and the child, only to discover that they were nowhere to be seen in the ship – and neither was the Doctor’s TARDIS.