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When a Mandalorian fell through the roof of the train, everyone immediately decided that was not their problem.
Except Cal, who wondered how much worse his day could possibly get.
When the Mando stood up, and Cal saw the two lightsabers at his belt, he decided that, really, he shouldn’t test the Force with that kind of question.
Prauf immediately shot him a worried look, and Cal knew that Prauf had made the same connection he had.
Cal looked up. There wasn’t a hole in the roof of the train.
Something wasn’t right here.
Then the train stopped.
The Mando’s helmet tipped downward. “Hope that wasn’t my fault,” they muttered. The accent was surprisingly Coruscanti.
Then stormtroopers filed in. “Everyone off the train,” they snapped. “Have your identification—Jedi!”
They pulled their blasters, and Cal prepared to die.
They pointed them at the Mando, who turned to look behind them.
“Where?” They asked.
Cal was watching the scene, horrified. Prauf slowly shifted in a way that hid Cal from the stormtroopers’ view, if not the Mando’s.
The stormtroopers were calling it in. “Sirs, we’ve identified an individual in possession of lightsabers, and we believe them to be a Jedi. Send reinforcements.”
“ Me? ” The Mando asked in disbelief, and Cal sensed... something , in the Force, but with such a broken connection, he had no idea whether it was a warning or a flicker of something. He noticed that the Mando’s accent had changed. “Do I look like a Jedi?”
“Those certainly look like lightsabers ,” one of the stormtroopers said dryly.
“Oh good, you can see something in those helmets,” the Mando sassed. “They’re trophies, dumbass.”
Four figures in black armor entered the train car. Three of them were humans, or near, and the fourth was nearly twice the size of the rest of them.
There was a quiet gasp next to Cal, and he saw a blue-haired guy in clothes that weren’t quite guild uniform who certainly hadn’t been there a moment ago. “That’s bad,” the guy whispered.
“How bad?” Cal asked, barely breathing.
“They’re Inquisitors,” the new guy said. “Jedi-killers.”
Cal’s blood turned to ice.
The new guy stumbled out two words in Mando’a, and Cal hadn’t heard the language in five years, but even he could remember the word for evacuate .
The Mando gave the tiniest nod.
“Well, well,” the smallest Inquisitor said. “What have we here? A little Jedi, pretending to be a Mandalorian?”
The Mando’s hand brushed towards their blaster, and the stormtroopers all tightened their grips on their weapons. “The Empire’s armories must have some really shitty transperisteel,” they said. “You’re all blinder than Genoshian cave-bats. I’m a bounty hunter, and I’m after a Jedi. You can keep it, once I’ve captured it; I’m after the bounty and the lightsaber.”
Cal was sure his panic was giving him away to everyone in the room.
The new guy stood up. “Alright, alright,” he said. “You caught me.”
He moved like a blur , and Cal didn’t quite understand what had happened, but the Mando had been knocked over, and there was a hole in the roof of the train, and the Mando was shooting at it while two of the Inquisitors followed the Jedi out the hole.
“Kill the Jedi!” the two remaining ones yelled, activating purple stun batons.
The stormtroopers followed them out of the car.
All the Braccans stayed still for a moment in shock, while the Mando rolled to their feet. They assumed an imposing stance, one that demanded to be listened to.
“Get out of here, now,” he told the train car. “I’m sure you all have better things to do than wait around for those Inquisitors to return, wondering who’s been harboring traitors.”
The scrappers didn’t have to be told twice, scurrying off the train like scrap rats off a ship descending to the Maw.
Cal was torn. If he didn’t leave with Prauf, he’d be exposing himself, and he’d probably die. But the other Jedi was in trouble , and if he didn’t do something, the other Jedi would die.
Prauf stopped at the bounty hunter. “You planned that with that Jedi,” he accused, even as Cal tried to stop him.
The Mando didn’t answer him, but tilted their bucket pointedly at Cal. “You this kid’s father?”
“More or less,” Prauf said, clearly not interested in anything less than a solid claim to the bounty hunter.
The Mando pressed something into Prauf’s hand. “You two have any trouble getting off-planet, you call me,” they said. “If Ezra escapes, they’re going to lock down all air traffic. If he doesn’t escape, they’re about to become extremely busy fighting off an incredibly stupid Mandalorian. Either way, you don’t have a lot of time.”
Cal’s eyes widened. “You know…?”
“I don’t know anything,” the Mando denied. “I’m just here to look pretty and shoot straight.”
Then with a quick two-fingered salute that reminded Cal of the General Kenobi holovids, the Mando jumped through the hole in the roof and ran off.
“Come on, Cal,” Prauf insisted, tugging him along. “That Mando’s right. We don’t have a lot of time to get you out of here.”
They ran .