Chapter Text
Silas had more than one brain cell. He knew he did. He just needed to act like it, and he needed to not panic over the concept of courting knives while Death Watch was actively running around the city and being a threat.
But maybe even if he couldn’t get Myles a knife as a courting gift, maybe he could get him new lekku sleeves? No, wait, that was too much like an armor gift, and he didn’t want to skip courting and go straight to swearing the riduurok. Myles deserved to be courted properly. Silas wanted to show off how much he treasured his best friend and how much wanted Myles as his partner for the rest of his life.
Silas had never thought he would want anyone like that. Not platonically. Not romantically. Not—
Um—
… carnally.
And yet, Silas could suddenly and vividly imagine having and wanting a relationship like with Myles. Sure, his own thoughts about that flustered him. He was a little uncomfortable with them too, but Silas knew that was because it was so new. He had never even contemplated desiring anyone before, so it mentally unbalanced him a little.
Wait…
Baar’ur Mij was now going to have to give him the Talk.
Osik.
Silas would rather fight Death Watch than sit through that nightmare powerpoint that the rest of his squad had to suffer through. He had barely gotten away with having one datapad thrown at him because he was a Standard Human and only needed the most basic information. Especially because Silas, his mind-healer, and Baar’ur Mij had all thought he was probably ace.
Apparently he wasn’t.
But Silas would rather go fight Death Watch than think about that for another second. Actually, that was what he should be already doing. Instead of hiding in an alley and having the strangest sexuality crisis ever about the mesh’la verd that happened to be his best friend.
So, he should plan about fighting Death Watch rather than continuing to attempt to plan how to court Myles. Especially when he wasn’t getting anywhere in figuring out what to get him.
Silas huffed and forced his mind to think about the logistics of the current situation. They were surrounded by the enemy, they didn’t know how many Kyr’tsad verde were here, and a fire was raging nearby. It was possible that more explosions could happen at any moment. The only resources that Silas had access to were himself and Myles. And they were likely incredibly outnumbered.
So the question was what they could actually do?
Well, Silas had gotten his squad hopelessly outnumbered before whenever he broke someone’s chains and angered the slavers on the planet. Their squad had always managed to mow through the demagolkase, but they had had Arla and her rifle hidden away back then. They didn’t have her ranged support right now, because she was busy with providing backup to the jetiise. But Silas needed to keep in mind to switch on the main comm line when they started attacking the Death Watch aruetiise.
Still Silas thought that they could still use some of the same tactics they used before for this battle. He had his spear on him that could easily stab between the armor of a verd. Myles had himself as a deadly weapon. A Togruta didn’t even need claws to kill with how lethal their initial pounces could be. Of course, both of them had their blasters too. And Myles did have a bunch of thermal detonators on him too.
And for once, it was guaranteed that all their enemies would have some kind of tech on them.
Myles' echolocation and sense of space might be shot, which means Myles couldn’t track as well as he could in a better situation. There wasn’t a constantly updating map of the surrounding area in his partner’s head that Silas could rely on. But he could actually make up a quick program to try and track all of the positions of the enemy verde in his HUD. There were maps of the city he could overlay the information on, after all. And if Silas reliably knew the environment and the locations of his opponents, that was half the battle already won.
A wonderful, chaotic plan started to bloom in Silas’ mind.
“Myles… How do you feel about ambush tactics?”
His best friend and crush grinned at him. Silas could tell by the tilt of his helmeted head and pleased ringing flicks of his sleeved lekku against his armor.
Myles hoped it was too obvious he was giggling a little too much in his helmet as he stared at his crush in delight. Of course, Silas had a great plan. His best friend was jatnese be jatnese!
Silas outlined the basic details to him, and Myles explained the ways the Haat’ade had developed to help fight Kyr’tsad over the years.
“Wait, you really think I can actually tell the difference between a demagolka and a verd’ika that’s been forced to fight and wants to escape? Through the manda?” Silas’ shock and surprise could be heard through his vocoder, even if it still sounded a bit flat with disbelief.
Myles nodded, letting his lekku bounce and jingle a little. “Well, yeah, every Mando’ad can listen to the manda.”
That was the main theory that explained why most of the Haat’ade had the “impulse” to spare and overlook certain verde in battle. Jaster just didn’t have the words for the “instincts” all Mandalorians seemingly had as long as they followed and believed in the Resol’nare. He knew it was a thing, even before the Fett children showed up in their lives and gave them back the proper vocabulary for it.
Myles swore that the manda would still be widely known in their own culture if it wasn’t for the damn Dral’Han that annihilated so much of their traditions along with their planets some odd seven centuries ago.
Silas huffed loud enough to be audible. “Yeah, but I thought only people that were hyper-sensitive to it could use it to actually sense whether someone is dar’manda or not. Like you, or Arla, and Jango. Jater too. But not me.”
“Nope!” Myles grinned. “The rest of the Haat’ade call it the ‘instinct’ to spare and not ever hurt kids. They justify it however they need to in their head, but they all manage to notice who doesn’t want to fight and spare them. Even if they don’t know that they’re listening to the manda.”
Silas carefully thought over that revelation for a minute or so. But Myles knew it clicked in his crush’s head when he saw most of the tension leave his shoulders. “I guess that makes sense. Good explanation, Myles.”
Myles was glad he was wearing his helmet for once. He knew he was blushing, because he knew that was the way that Silas said thanks without saying it. Most foundlings had a way to express casual gratitude that wasn’t really common in their culture. It still made Myles a bit giddy to have that directed at him.
“Jate. Now, do you think we’re ready to do this?”
Silas snorted. “Myles, we’ve done crazier.”
Arla let herself relax a little when she heard the faint crackle of someone joining the comm channel with her and her jetiise. She saw the green edge lighting around the borders of her HUD, and she tongue-clicked the buttons to let Silas override her helmet settings. The tech genius had done this to her set-up before, and she trusted him to not mess with the visual feeds she was using to aim.
She was pleased when a map dropped into her background and a little text box popped up to notify her that two of her retainer buttons had been reconfigured to pull up the video from Silas’ and Myles’ helmets. The map had their squad, including the jetiise, all in blue dots while Death Watch got red dots.
Somehow, she wasn’t surprised her tech savvy vod’ika figured out a way to track and mark all of the Kyr’tsad they needed to deal with. She was even more pleased when she noticed quite a few of the red dots turn white. Myles and Silas were likely running a side channel to talk to each other without bothering the main channel, and Myles was marking which ones were working for them unwillingly.
Arla took her hands off of her rifle to start going through the dot data on the map and started updating which enemies were dead and which were stunned and which were pretending. She wasn’t worried about not providing cover fire for her two Jedi when they had this street pretty much cleared already.
Silas’ voice crackled over the main comms for a second before the audio cleared up. “Permission to cause chaos, alor?”
She already heard Myles cackling loud enough in the background that Silas’ mic could catch it.
Arla couldn’t help but snort. She was glad Myles was already up on his feet after that unexpected explosion. “I think you’re already causing it. Just make sure you don’t explode any buildings, Myl’ika. Remember that we actually like this city.”
Myles switched over to the main line too. “Ugh. Lek, alor. I’ll keep returning explosions to a minimum. I won’t even throw anything stronger than a stunner!”
Jon squeaked. He was just startled, but Arla knew why. Even she didn’t know that Myles had stun grenades. She hadn’t paid that much attention to the armory their ship had initially been stocked with.
Well, she supposed it was better than Myles committing arson again. She swore that her vod’ike pissed off local criminals on purpose, just so they could set their base on fire and rip through all data and ruin it.
Taaon chuckled. “Well, I’ll warn the other Guardians so you don’t startle them too much.”
“Ibac ori’jate, Baji Taaon.”
Xe laughed outright at Myles’ response, having picked up over the past few days that ori’jate meant very good or great and baji meant teacher. Xe seemed much more relaxed now, releasing a bit of the lethal tension xir body had been holding onto since Arla had explained how Death Watch stole children.
Jon made another little noise, but it sounded more curious than startled this time. Arla got the impression that he didn’t regularly interact with other people.
Oh well, if he was an introverted jetii, that would just make him much easier to steal later! Goran Obi had told her that she would end up following him because his senses were better, but that was just a matter of perspective if they ended up in the same ship.
She hopped into Myles’ and Silas’ side channel for a second. “So Jon is feral as hell and is giving off pathetic wet tooka vibes. Any objections to stealing him?”
Myles cackled and Silas sighed.
Neither of them objected though, so she was totally going to have her own Jedi by the end of this mess.