Chapter Text
Florrum’s sun blazed high above the planet, bathing the rocky desert in liquid fire. A slight breeze stirred up particles of sand, stinging the eyes of any who found themselves unlucky enough to be roaming the near-barren flats of the planet.
Kon-El considered himself one of the unluckiest bastards to ever be born.
Well, no, that maybe wasn’t totally correct. He’d managed to mostly dodge the various dangers that had come after him throughout the years (ranging from eager slave traders to particularly vengeful plants), so he certainly wasn't the most hapless person alive—but given his current situation, he assumed he was entitled to a certain level of hyperbole. His current situation, of course, involved running for his Force-damned life.
Honestly, he wasn’t even sure what had done it this time. He’d been minding his own business, taking a quick gander at the Doshar Fields, and absolutely 100% not hiding any ancient Jedi artifacts on his person—or at least not any that the guys chasing him would be able to identify. Maybe he just looked easily muggable? Like yeah, he wasn’t by any means a small person, but whatever types of creatures were currently after his hide were positively gargantuan in comparison. Their muscles had muscles, and Kon was in no way looking forward to getting acquainted with the bad end of their blasters. Thus, the haphazard chase across the desert plains began—a chase that it was rapidly becoming clear that he was losing.
He’d somehow managed to avoid tripping on the scattered rocks thus far, but even his meager luck had to run out at some point. He probably should have listened to all those rants Kal gave about “feeling the earth beneath your feet” or whatever, because rolling his ankle and getting a face full of pebbles was definitely an experience he could live without repeating. Not that he’d live long enough to experience it again, what with the absolute brutes looming over him. Kriff, this was not how he wanted to die.
Rolling onto his back, he tried to scramble back while simultaneously kicking up, just like his early childhood self-defense teacher had taught him. Unfortunately, Instructor Lance seemed to be full of shit, because one of the Gamorrean-Nikto-something hybrids simply grabbed his ankle, the kick from his other flailing foot barely doing enough damage to even make his assailant blink.
The soon-to-be-murderer not holding his screaming, writhing body grunted out something deep and guttural that its companion seemed to agree with. His ankle was dropped, but before he could even think about moving, a large, heavy foot was placed on his chest, crushing his sternum and his weak, futile dreams of escape.
“Please,” he wheezed out in Basic, “I don’t know what I did to offend you, or what you want from me, but I’m sure we can come to some sort of agreement.” Suck it, Kal, he could totally be diplomatic when the situation called for it. “If you let me up, we can have a discussion like reasonable people. There’s no need to resort to violence, yeah?”
They either didn’t speak Basic—which, this far into the Outer Rim was a distinct possibility—or didn’t care much for diplomacy, because instead of letting him up so he could hightail it the kriff out of there, they simply nodded at each other and readied their blasters. Force, he was actually going to die here. He couldn’t help but think, as the one using him as a footstool aimed their blaster at his head, that he had wasted his entire kriffing life. What had he ever done beyond being a thorn in the side of Kal and the rest of the Jedi Order? Kriff, but he hoped news got back to the Order sooner rather than later. Kal may not have been the most affectionate of pseudo-parental figures, but he was all that Kon had, and he didn’t wish for the man to think he’d simply abandoned him after their latest tiff.
That’s really what led to his presence on Florrum anyway. He couldn’t even blame Kal—the man had been right, and Kon had just been too thick-headed and stubborn to see it. He wasn’t putting his all into his lessons and therefore wasn’t making progress like he should’ve been. Deciding to go adventuring half a galaxy away in retaliation for what really hadn’t even been that big of a deal in the first place was definitely not his brightest idea, and only proved Kal’s point of him not being ready for solo missions. The cherry on top, of course, was that only now, with the foresight of a kriffing champion and on his literal deathbed, could he realize that Kal was worried about him, not trying to treat him like the child he was acting like.
As the creature’s finger twitched towards the trigger, he closed his eyes and pushed one last thought of “sorry” through the Force, knowing it would never reach anyone who mattered. He braced himself for the burn, but it never came.
Instead, there was a sharp clang, the sound of metal on metal, as the being above him grunted in surprise. His eyes flew open to see both creatures confusedly examining a carved piece of metal sticking out of the first one’s hand, stopping it from firing the weapon. The subtle sound of footsteps behind him were thunderous in the near-silent desert, causing them to abandon their study and whip their heads towards whoever was approaching. Kon craned his neck back as far as possible, catching an upside-down glimpse of—
Of a—
Was that a kriffing Mandalorian?
As if his day couldn’t get any worse, the Mandalorian—a long-standing enemy of the Jedi Order—approached their group, drawing out a long staff from behind his back. The things above him immediately backed up with a squealing sort of grunt (giving further evidence for the theory of their Gamorrean ancestry), and he wasted no time in scrambling as far away as he could in the few seconds it took the Mandalorian to reach their group and attack the maybe-Gamorrean whose blaster had recently become well-acquainted with his forehead.
The fight was faster than he could track, all whirling spins and hard hits from the Mandalorian’s long staff, the armor he wore glinting in the melting sun. Within a matter of seconds, both of his assailants were down for the count, the Mandalorian standing over their unconscious bodies for only a second before turning to him. Kon, still on the ground like a Force-damned idiot, held up his hands placatingly as one of his ancestral enemies approached.
“Hey, hey, hey, I don’t want any trouble! I appreciate the save, but I don’t have anything of interest, I swear! Oh Force please don’t kill me—”
“Relax,” a deep, modulated voice rang out far too close for his liking. “I’m not going to hurt you after going through all that trouble to save you. That’d be stupid, and a waste of my time.” This close, Kon could make out the details of the Mandalorian’s armor. His helmet was unpainted, save for two vertical stripes from the bottom of each end of his visor to his chin. His armor was black—and Force he had to be melting in that—with a red V painted down his torso, leading to stripes on his arms. He looked significantly shorter and slimmer than Kon, but he couldn’t fool himself into thinking he could win a fight against him.
The Mandalorian must have said something else while Kon was practicing the sacred art of observation, because the next thing he knew a gloved hand was waving in front of his face.
“Um, hello? Do you need help up?”
In the face of a lack of hostility and unwillingness to incite any, Kon adopted his perfected Grateful-Common-Person-Who-Is-Definitely-Not-Jedi-Adjacent impression.
“Yes, thank you so much!” he quickly grasped the other’s hand, allowing him to pull him up with surprising strength. “You really saved my ass back there, I don’t know what I could do to— wait.”
While he was getting ready to exalt the Mandalorian’s virtues until he could escape in an extremely quick and unsuspicious fashion, the man in question had attached a medium-sized piece of metal to the back of his wrist. With the tap of a button on whatever wrist contraption was built into his armor, the object expanded into a cuff and magnetized, firmly attaching to the Mandalorian’s arm.
“Hey—” his complaints were cut off as another piece of metal was slammed onto his other wrist, immediately turning into another cuff. His first arm was released from the other’s arm, instead attaching to his own wrist as he realized the weird hunks of metal were apparently extremely high-tech handcuffs.
“Pure Beskar, so don’t even try using the Force. Running is also futile—I can pull you back here with the built-in magnets, so unless you fancy making this trip with a dislocated shoulder from the force of it, I’d stay fairly close.” Now that the man had mentioned it, there was a hollow feeling in his chest where his usual sense of the Force surrounding him had depleted. It wasn’t completely gone, but was weak enough for him to gather that attempting to use it would only result in failure—not that he’d even had that much control over it in the first place. Certainly not enough to escape the two knocked-out hulks laying a few yards over.
Kriff.
At least he wasn’t dead.