(open) weapon-crafting 101

[myownprice]

WHO: Boba Fett and you!
WHERE: Around Temba
WHAT: Boba decides the first thing he needs on a new planet is a weapon. Naturally.
WHEN: Early May, but after Sports Day
WARNINGS: Brief mention of child slavery




i. required materials

To say it had been a difficult first day on Agra-10 for Boba would be a massive, massive understatement. He’d spent most of it bouncing between confusion and panic, chased by his fears of what might be waiting for him if he should return to Tatooine too late and, at one point, literally chased by an angry cyborg clone through the empty Temba streets. Somehow, a day that had started with him being hunted for sport and almost enslaved on Tatooine had gotten worse. At least when he was being chased in Mos Eisley, he had an idea of why.

Now, on his second day, he’s decided that things are going to be different. He’s done panicking; now he’s going to come up with a plan. First things first: he needs a weapon.

He spends most of the first part of the day combing through the city, searching for the materials he needs. He thinks a spear would be a good start; he knows how to use one for both self-defense and fishing, the latter of which he needs to pay Tommy back for the meal on his first day. He makes for an odd sight as he searches for the necessary components; a short-statured figure in a blue cadet’s uniform, face hidden under a silver-and-blue Mandalorian battle helmet, picking through junk and debris. Unlike his first day, he won’t run or hide if he sees another person approaching—though he will stop and watch them, the black visor of his helmet turning to track them as he weighs whether or not they might be a threat.

ii. steps 1-6

By the time Boba finds everything he needs for a spear, it’s already past noon. He kneels in the shadow of an abandoned storefront, taking in his finds. A broken mop handle, a clump of electrical wiring, and a few sharp fragments of scrap metal—it’s not much, but it should be enough for what he needs. He spends the next while putting it all together: using one of the pieces of scrap metal to score a notch into one end of the wooden mop handle, inserting another piece of scrap to be the spearhead, and tying it all together with frayed bits of electrical wire. The result is an ugly, haphazard thing that will probably fall apart the second he tries to puncture anything firmer than flesh—but it’s better than nothing.

Grimy and exhausted, Boba examines his new weapon with grim acceptance. He knows it’s nothing amazing. He also knows that with the sun going down, he probably won’t be catching any fish today. Maybe he can go back to Tommy’s diner? It feels wrong, taking another meal when he can’t even repay the man for what he’d eaten yesterday, but… he’s hungry. And at the very least, he can think about catching something tomorrow.

He stands and, after a quick glance at his communicator to figure out where he is, begins to walk in that direction, still holding his improvised spear in one hand.

{OOC: Feel free to encounter Boba either at the diner or on his way there!}

Comments

[myownprice]

Honestly, Boba is so baffled by her answer that he hardly notices that she's mistaking him for a cadet. She wasn't created to be a soldier? How could that be? The entire reason the Kaminoans had needed his father's DNA in the first place was so they could create an army. Why would they make a clone who not only looked different, but also didn't even share the same purpose as the rest of them?

"I don't get it," Boba mumbles, brow furrowed. "Why would they use my father's DNA just to make Nala Se an assistant?" There must be another reason. Unless... "You are a clone of Jango Fett, aren't you?"

It seems unlikely that she isn't, but then, none of what she's said sounds very likely in the first place.

[small_compromise]

The turn of this conversation's certainly not something Omega's expected, and the fact that she isn't able to provide Boba the answers he's apparently looking for make her feel like she's disappointing him, somehow. It's also frustrating, like he knows something she doesn't.

"Your father's..?" She latches onto that phrase. No clone's ever referred to the originator of their DNA as 'father' so far as she knows. "That's the only DNA sample that the Kaminoans have been making use of for all this time," she admits with a frown.

"I'm a clone like you, but no one's ever told me much about why I'm different. I just know that my brothers are too. But they were genetically altered when they were young, part of an experimental unit. So most of them look a lot different now than Regs - that's what they'd call the regular clones."

[myownprice]

It sounds like the Kaminoans were doing all sorts of experiments with the clones that Boba hadn't known about. If Omega's right, then there's a whole unit of clones a little bit like her—made from his father's DNA but different from the others.

'Kaminoan experimentation' seems like the closest to an answer he's going to get. Boba accepts it with a nod, though, to his own surprise, he doesn't feel much satisfaction in finding it out. If anything, it makes him feel a little unnerved to imagine them experimenting with his father's genetics. He tries to play it off with a shrug.

"Okay. I was just wondering." A pause. "I'm different, too, even though I don't look like it. Jango Fett was my father. They didn't alter my DNA at all."

A fact he evidently takes some pride in given the way he says it.

[small_compromise]

Omega wouldn't correct him on that; so far as she's concerned, she's always been a part of the 'Bad Batch.' The defects, so far as things went from the standard model. She hasn't yet been told otherwise.

The girl blinks at him, brightening a little. Someone else who was different. Just...not in the way that her squad is. "Really? How old are you?" she asks, all at once curious. "I never knew there were any direct clones. So...you're not a cadet, then?"

[myownprice]

"I'm eleven now," he says. "And no, I'm not a cadet. I haven't even been on Kamino since, um..." Well. Since he'd tried to go back after his dad died and Taun We had called the Jedi on him. Boba suffices with, "In a while."

Boba thinks it's a little odd that she'd asked about his age. Could she be like him in that regard as well? "What about you? Did they make you grow up faster like the others? Or do you age normally?"

[small_compromise]

Her eyes widen at that. "My brothers and I left Kamino too, if pretty recently. Things have changed there now that the Empire's taken over the Republic. I didn't think it was a good idea to stay..."

But things are better because she's with them- or at least she was. Still, she doesn't think staying would have made anything better for them. Omega smiles a little.

"I'm about fourteen now. Dustin helped me calculate when my birthday will be, here, so I'll be fifteen in a few months."

[myownprice]

"The Empire?" If the Republic has been taken over by anything, it's news to him. Even on Tatooine, he thinks he would've heard of something as momentous as that. "What do you mean?"

[small_compromise]

Omega blinks. "Oh... You must be from...before? Is the war still going on?"

Time differences are still such a strange concept to her. Even though she knows Echo's from some point ahead of her, it hasn't seemed so far as to be disruptive.

"When the Clone Wars ended, the Republic became known as the Galactic Empire."

[myownprice]

"'From before?'" His expression grows more confused as she keeps talking. Then, something seems to click and he grimaces. "Is this more... time stuff?"

He knows this place has some kind of dysfunctional relationship with time. That's how they can be here for so long and then return home with no memory of it nor time having passed—allegedly, anyway. Boba prefers not to think about it too much precisely because it sounds so impossible. It makes him feel like he's being told a lie and worse, he wants to believe it.

But now here's someone else telling him that she's from after the war—and Boba realizes, it makes some amount of sense. After all, how else could she be older than him? He was the first clone of his father ever made.

"So you're from the future?" His tone is uncertain. Maybe her aging has been accelerated like the rest of the clones and she's lying, but why would she do that? "Does that mean the Republic won?"

[small_compromise]

A nod. "Yeah, more time stuff," Omega confirms, with a faint twist of her own lips. As commonplace as it is here, she doubts she'll ever get used to it. Who possibly can?

"I guess you can say that. I'm not sure when you're from to really know otherwise. "The Republic won, and the Supreme Chancellor became Emperor."