Ba'jurir

[tasteoftruth]

Byrne had come to the Japanifornia space station about eight years ago, shortly following the death of his wife. In accordance with Japanifornia's legal traditions the fledgling prosecutor had been paired with a seasoned detective meant to show him the ropes and keep him in line. Badd had only managed to accomplish the former.

Japanifornia was off the beaten space-path and its inhabitants disinterested in the goings-on of the rest of the galaxy, which made it an enterprising place to start a law career and a perfect base of operations for criminals. A large smuggling ring shipped priceless cultural artifacts in and out of the station, and large businesses were covers for money laundering operations that underpaid their workers while threatening those who stepped out of line. They were not above the occasional silencing, either. Byrne tried to take the fight to them in court but found himself tripped up by bribes and forged evidence at every turn.

They had been the Yatagarasu together, taking the identity of the messenger of the gods to bring truth and light to the creeping corruption on the backwater space station. They had exposed the rot of Japanifornia at night and then prosecuted it during the day. They had fallen in love.

And then Byrne had left him behind.

"You need to be in bed, Kay."

"No, you need to be in bed. You never sleep, you're always working." Kay, clad in pajamas imprinted with blue space cows, stomped her foot insistently. Stubborn, like her father, and impossible to deal with once she got an idea into her head.

Badd shook his head and waved her off, barely looking up as he typed in yet another sequence of name/date/location/actions taken and circled relevant areas on the crime scene photo. "I'm an adult and I'm busy. You have school tomorrow."

"I'm not going to bed until you go to bed!" Kay set her hands to Badd's shoulder and began trying to move him from his desk with all the efficacy of a mouse attempting to push a mountain, an expression of deep seriousness upon her face. "Gar shuk meh kyrayc, Uncle Badd!"

Later, Badd would blame the late hour. He would blame the extra cup of coffee he had an hour prior. He would blame the stress and the grief and his straining eyes. And then he would throw all that out and blame himself entirely for the way he slammed his stylus down and snapped back "Speak normal, all right? You know I can't understand you when you talk like that."

Kay shrank away from him. "I...sorry, Uncle Badd. Sorry." Before he could apologize she'd scuttled from the room.

Badd slumped forward and put his face in his hands, staring down into the purple face of a random thief's scowling mugshot. Byrne did not discuss his personal heritage very much, even after he'd outed himself to Badd as a Mandalorian. He had taken Kay off to visit his "alliit" once or twice a year, and he would speak mando'a to Kay when they were at home, but Badd asked for nothing further and Byrne gave him exactly that. It wasn't until Calisto Yew put a blade through his chest that Badd had cause to regret it.

A few minutes later the old detective slipped up to Kay's room and perched on the edge of her bed. Kay kept her eyes closed but Badd had tucked her for far too many years to not know when she was pretending to sleep.

"You know I love you, right? My addehka?" His tongue tripped over the word he'd heard Byrne use for her when she was fussy and he was apologetic.

"Ad'ika," Kay grumbled against her pillow.

"Right. Ad'ika."

Shit.

Comments

[scarred_warrior]

It had been weeks now, weeks since Mand’alor came out of Dxun and rallied the clans, and nobody had heard from Byrne. Some people – not that Novoc was one to name names, especially when they knew damn well who they were – didn’t think he was coming back at all, but that just didn’t sound like the person Novoc knew. Sure, Byrne was a strange one for wanting to live out in the middle of nowhere and help foreigners fix their ridiculous problems, but he was still a mando’ad. If he was at all capable of it, there was no doubt in Novoc’s mind that Byrne would already have answered Mand’alor’s call.

Which meant that something was very, very wrong. What, was impossible to say without talking to Byrne himself, and if he wasn’t answering his e-mail then the only thing to do was go look for him. Or his kid. Novoc wasn’t going into this with any illusions; if Byrne was having problems big enough that he couldn’t even call home, then it was likely he was now beyond any problems at all. If that was the case, it’d be up to Novoc to get little Kay out of there.

Getting into Japanifornia was easy. A homebody like him didn’t have a criminal record that would worry station security, even for a place a lot less dirty than this, and his scars could be dismissed as products of small workplace accidents – which to be fair, was true for at least a quarter of them. He left most of his armor on his ship, except for the chest piece which he concealed under a long, thick coat, and the helmet which he tucked into a suitcase along with some small machine parts. Just a small businessman on a small business trip. The guards working the security checkpoint didn’t give him a second look.

Once he was through customs, he ducked into a deserted – and disgusting – public bathroom, and quickly re-assembled the pistols he’d disguised as “machine parts” before belting them to his thighs. Once he’d made sure that his coat would cover them, he slid on his eyepiece and stepped back out into the hallway, suitcase in tow.

Byrne had left his mark all over customs, just as Novoc had hoped. Electronic tags, invisible to everyone without access to the jorhaakar, the mando’ade version of the extranet, peppered the security checkpoint and the guards, identifying weakness and corruption. Novoc noted with grim amusement that an official who’d smiled at him as he put his suitcase through the scanner was connected with murder, then turned away, walking deeper into the station. Byrne hadn’t been considerate enough to label a path to his home base, but Novoc could download a map from the station’s extranet and cross-check it against the tags. A cluster of tags in one of the residential sectors was different from the rest, focusing on domestic things instead of crime. Children who Kay liked to play with, a woman whose shithead boyfriend Byrne had chased off, an elderly couple who sometimes made treats for the neighborhood kids…And in the middle of it all, a residence labeled “Badd’s.”

That looked like a good place to start.

[tasteoftruth]

If Badd had known that Byrne was sticking tags all over town that were only visible to a gang of complete strangers he'd have been annoyed. He wouldn't admit to himself that there was something heartwarming about Byrne labeling his own home as "Badd's", with Badd's actual apartment labeled "Badd's second house". Towards the end he'd spent as much time working from Byrne's living room as he did at his own kitchen table. After Byrne died he'd moved into his partner's home completely, having inherited his lease along with his possessions. Besides, a cramped bachelor's apartment was no place for a child growing larger and more independent with each passing day.

Byrne's apartment was in a nicer part of the station than what Badd could afford on a detective's salary. The complex was painted the pale blue of Earth's sky and its facade hinted at machiya lattices. The lobby had walls covered in murals of Hokusai's "Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji" and a discrete yet tasteful set of ferns near the elevator.

Badd had moved in all necessary items from his own place and dumped or sold the rest. He hadn't replaced any of Byrne's things...no heart to throw out the bed where he'd held Byrne's warmth against his chest until they fell asleep, or box up the mando-related artifacts he'd treated with such sacred importance.

One morning he'd found Byrne's travel toothbrush, held it over the garbage bin, and then found himself setting it right back on the shelf. It was pathetic, he knew. It was a toothbrush. But he wasn't ready to let go yet.

(It should have been him. He was almost a decade and a half older, and he was the one who got shot at by criminals on a semiregular basis. He was supposed to die first. It wasn't right.)

In that vein, and because no one had commented on it yet, he hadn't gotten around to changing the building's directory. If Novoc were to start cycling through names on the call box by the lobby he'd find the name "Byrne Faraday" listed in the system.

[scarred_warrior]

It was a nice place, by aruetii standards. As a mando’ad Novoc had been trained from birth to value buildings – especially homes -- on the basis of their defensibility, and to that end he noticed several flaws in the building’s structure without even thinking about it. But still, the murals were pretty. He could easily picture Byrne in a place like this -- and it seemed he had indeed lived here for a while, if the lobby directory was anything to go by.

He wasn’t likely to get any answers by standing around. He made a mental note of the number next to the name, then casually followed the next person to come along into the elevator. They glared at him, but didn’t say anything; that was foreigners for you. Drop them in a nasty place like Japanifornia and they turned selfish, stopped looking out for anyone but themselves. He wondered, not for the first time, what Byrne had seen in this place.

[tasteoftruth]

Badd, for one.

If Novoc had pushed the buzzer and let Badd view him over the security cameras he'd have had a far harder time getting inside the building. Byrne's murder, aside the loss of Byrne, meant that Badd was mildly paranoid that they wouldn't be satisfied with chopping off only one leg of the Yatagarasu. The first week he'd slept with his gun next to his bed and a sheathed knife under his pillow. But after a few weeks it seemed like the ring was content with killing Byrne, and letting Badd live with the knowledge that continuing to thieve might mean they'd rub out the rest of the Faraday line.

Therefore when he opened the door, assuming that it was one of his hallmates, his gun was in the other room. His steel-grey eyes fixed on the tall, scarred man standing in the hallway (An underling with a warning? An assassin? Where the hell was Kay?) and then immediately went to the stranger's hands. No guns. Not yet

[scarred_warrior]

The elevator trick had used up nearly all of Novoc's subtlety. He looked this new player up and down -- he looked strong, but tired, and was that anger or fear in this eyes? -- then gave him a friendly grin, extending one empty hand. "Mister...Badd, right?" he said, stumbling only a little over the unfamiliar arrangement of letters. "I'm Novoc Vevut, a friend of Byrne Faraday's from back home. Do you know where he is?"

He spoke English fluently, but with a strange accent. Byrne's surname came out sounding more like "Vharaday;" words beginning with "f" were almost non-existent in mando'a. Aside from that he sounded a lot like Byrne when he spoke.

[tasteoftruth]

Badd didn't take the hand. If it was a merc or a mook, it was a brazen one. Or one that assumed he was a moron.

"You just missed him," he said, his voice a slow graveling tone. "He died three weeks ago. What did you want with him?" He was still assessing the man, calculating where weapons might be hidden on his body. The accent reminded him of Byrne's, which might mean he had come back to fill a grudge. Or angle for an inheritance that he wasn't getting a damn cent of no matter how many lawyers he threatened with.

[scarred_warrior]

"I'm sorry to hear that," Novoc said with complete sincerity. Even though he'd half-expected it, it was still a blow. The mando'ade needed all its warriors right now, and on the personal level Novoc didn't have so many friends that he wouldn't miss one of them, even one he'd only seen a few times a year.

He let his hand fall back to his side, giving Badd a calculating look -- and noticing the assessing way Badd was looking at him in turn. He wouldn't do right by Byrne's memory by wallowing in his emotions; the important part right now was to confirm the death and find Kay -- and from the looks of this "Badd" character, any information he had wouldn't be gotten from him easily.

"The truth is I've been trying to contact him for weeks," he said. "Was hoping I could talk him into coming home, but he wasn't answering his e-mail. Guess I know why, now. Can you tell me what happened to him? Is Kay safe?"

He'd meant to ask something that would sound more innocent to foreign ears, like How is Kay doing? But the truth was, he was scared for her safety, with no idea where she was and her dad dead, and he couldn't keep that emotion back completely.

[tasteoftruth]

"Someone put a knife in his chest, and she is. What's your interest in him?" Badd kept up the same flat, curt tone. He was a cop. His job in any interrogation was to get the maximum amount of information while giving away the minimum amount in return.

Home, though...he knew approximately what area Byrne was from, and not many details about it. The accent seemed to confirm they originated in the same place. Badd's attention wavered to the dreads and the gold in them, wishing Byrne had told him more about what his compatriots tended to look like. Badd had only seem them in lurid news reports before he met Byrne.

[scarred_warrior]

Novoc's eyes narrowed. Normally mando'ade would only use that curt, guarded tone when challenging each other to duels, or speaking to a divorced parent or spouse. It rankled to just stand there and take it from a foreigner, but once you crossed the line into beating information out of someone, you couldn't easily step back. He wanted to get all the information he could diplomatically, first.

"Like I said, we're friends," he said firmly. Byrne was dead now, but his memory lived on, and they would meet again in the manda. Death cancelled all debts, but it couldn't sever memories. "Known him more than twenty years. Poured a beer over his wife's head at their wedding party." He shrugged slightly; a foreigner probably wouldn't understand how meaningful that gesture was. "I was hoping I could talk him into coming home. Now I guess I'm going to avenge his death." He gave Badd a pointed look, one that said And I pity anyone who gets in my way. "So how about you tell me what your connection is to him and Kay?"

[tasteoftruth]

Avenge his death, like the bastard knew anything about it. The man's raised hackles were automatically raising his own, but he was old enough to know not to rise to the bait. Keep it stable, control the conversation. Badd's shoulders settled and he kept his gaze steady with his interloper.

"I was his partner, and I'm his daughter's guardian. Their business is my business now."

Wait. the beer thing. Badd didn't know anything about the cultural context, no, but he knew how Byrne laughed when he'd described the incident. One eyebrow raised. "You're one of Byrne's people, aren't you? The Mandos?"

[scarred_warrior]

Novoc's eyes widened slightly, but it wasn't until Badd asked those questions that he nodded, before saying, "And you're the cop. The one who was working with him."

Byrne hadn't talked much about his work, but Kay had -- or at least the man he did his work with. Novoc just hadn't connected her childish stories of a fearless but sweet giant with the name, or the foreigner standing in front of him. And this didn't mean he was ready to start trusting Badd on the spot, not without knowing more about him. But it did mean he was now considering the possibility.

[tasteoftruth]

"Among other things." After a brief pause in recognition of the fact that this man was from the strange land of "not Japanifornia", he clarified, "We were romantically involved, too. He made some arrangements so one of us would have legal authority over the others' affairs if anything bad happened. Not quite a marriage, but in the eyes of the law itself it carried the same weight. When he was killed I became Kay's legal guardian."

Badd hadn't quite relaxed, but the potential danger rating of the mando had decreased slightly. Still might be someone with a grudge, and he didn't tell him that by 'Kay's safe' he meant 'in the house right this moment'.

[scarred_warrior]

"...I see." That put quite an entirely different spin on it. Novoc had to remind himself that, right now, he had no proof that anything Badd was saying was true. But, if he and Byrne really had been that close -- and it didn't matter to him if they'd been officially married or not, appointing someone your kid's guardian was more than official enough for him -- then, well...

"All right, let me be upfront," he said after a minute. "You've been talking to me like I'm some kind of thug because you just lost someone you loved and you don't have any reason to think I'm not here to ruin things further. I understand that, really I do, but if there's any way I can prove to you it's not like that, tell me and I'll do it. Byrne wanted to live apart from the rest of us, and I respected that, but he was still my friend. He could have called on me for help at any time and I'd have come. That..." He had to pause for just a moment to think of the right word in English, "Bond, if you want to call it that, belongs to Kay now, and you if you want it."

Of course, all of the above only applied if Badd was indeed being truthful with him. He was trying to play Novoc for a fool, then sooner or later he would find his scheme blowing up spectacularly in his face.

[tasteoftruth]

The compiled stress of grief, fear, and anger were encouraging Badd to tell Novoc to piss off. He couldn't understand what Byrne had with him, couldn't begin to relate to it, and Badd just wanted him to get out.

"Novoc!" A blur in a pink shirt with denim jacket burst past Badd and affixed itself to Novoc's leg. Kay was taller than the last time he'd have seen her, and the dark hair in her high ponytail was longer.

"Novoc, you're here! Where's everyone else?" Because she only saw him during yearly reunions or other events, and in a subconscious way assumed that he could only exist while surrounded by the rest of the clan. Badd looked down at his daughter and gave a soft sigh, features softening for the first time since he'd opened the door.

"Suppose that confirms your ID," he said, looking back up again.

[scarred_warrior]

"Ka'ika!" Novoc felt weak with relief. He gently pried the child -- she was getting so tall -- off his leg and sank down one knee so he could hug her properly. "It's just me for now. Are you all right?"

He glanced up at Badd when the other man spoke, raising an eyebrow. "I suppose it does," he said coolly.

[tasteoftruth]

"I'm okay. Dadddy's dead, someone stabbed him with a knife. Uncle Badd doesn't know how to send messages to Manda'tra so I couldn't tell anyone in the clan." She buried her face against his shoulder. "I missed you."

Badd watched them talk in their crazy mando space language and felt very left out in the cold. This was something she and Byrne had kept private for themselves, and with Byrne gone he had no idea how to make sure she still had that.

[scarred_warrior]

"Ori'kotep, ad'ika." You've been a very brave girl. Novoc hugged her again, stroking her hair. "I missed you too. Everything's going to be okay now."

He stood again, giving Badd a flat look. He was trying hard not to take his suspicion personally, but it was difficult. He was just so foreign to everything Novoc considered acceptable. But he had to work with him, for Kay's sake. "Suppose if you were to let me in now?" he asked. "Might be better than continuing this in the hall." They might have given away all kinds of things already, if anyone was watching Badd's apartment.

[tasteoftruth]

"Might just," Badd reluctantly agreed, as much as the situation rankled him. Kay was happy, that was what mattered...though this man clearly wasn't here for a social call. He stepped back and let the pair into Byrne's home.

Like most homes on the station it was space-efficient, with light sliding doors with false wood veneers separating the rooms. The front room had a semicircle sofa against the wall facing the TV. Badd was not a neat man in anything he considered unimportant, and his coat was draped carelessly over the sofa next to his work bag and a large bag of chips.

By the back wall, tucked away between two shelves, was a small shrine. A picture of Byrne rested between a pair of incense burners, next to a photo of his wife. A small bowl of rice and an orange sat in front of them.

[scarred_warrior]

Novoc didn't even notice the clutter, though his gaze lingered sadly for a moment on the shrine. He stooped to take his boots off without prompting, lining them up next to his suitcase in the space by the door. It had occurred to him, as he did so, that Badd might notice the leather straps holding his thigh holsters in place, and being a foreigner might object to someone carrying weapons into his house…But Novoc didn’t see how he could do anything about that without raising the issue himself. He would just have to convince Badd of his good intentions…somehow.

[tasteoftruth]

Badd hadn't seen Kay this excited about anything since Byrne died. She took him by the hand and dragged him around the apartment, introducing him to the fridge and the trophy shelf and Badd's jar of lollipops while chattering incessantly in her long-denied mother tongue.

Badd noticed the thigh holsters, but he also noticed that Novoc was making no effort to hide them. The Mandos were a warrior culture, even Byrne went armed most of the time...but while Novoc was in Kay's room Badd made a quick trip to grab his firearm and tuck it into the shoulder holster beneath his coat. Just to fit in.

Kay's bedroom lacked the aesthetics of the living room. The seafoam-green (more like pistachio, really) walls were hung with posters of fantastical animals in pastoral landscapes or backlit by the light of a full moon. A smaller picture near her dresser showed a massive artist's depiction of a mythosaur roaring before a set of jagged mountains. At its feet stood a tiny armored Mandalorian holding up a tiny sword in defiance of the beast, combining strains of their own mythos with the Earth notion of dragonslaying. There were pink sheets on her bed.

"I need to show you my armor! It's getting too small but Uncle Badd doesn't know how to make new armor so you need to help him!"

Of course Uncle Badd should be part of the process. Even Kay understood that Badd was heir both to Byrne's riches and his obligations, though they might have disagreed on what those obligations might entail. Badd, unable to understand a word of it, lurked by the doorway and watched Kay dig through the laundry in the back of her closet.

[scarred_warrior]

All of which made it clear to Novoc that, up until her father's death, Kay had been living a happy if slightly unusual childhood. It was clear that Byrne hadn't made her want for anything, which was fine with Novoc. Mando'ade -- at least the mando'ade of his generation -- didn't worry too much about spoiling their children. Life had a tendency to be short and unpredictable, and the mando ideal of shereshoy called for enjoying the experiences of life when they were available. Willingness to share what one had was far more important than depriving oneself, and even if Kay had developed a small selfish streak -- which Novoc doubted -- her warrior's training would soon take care of that. Not to mention the enemy that was approaching.

On that sobering thought, he glanced over at Badd, who clearly didn't understand more than one word in ten of what he and Kay had been saying. Novoc's first instinct was still to mistrust him; he was foreign, and couldn't be expected to understand their ways. But he understood now that it was his duty to make Badd understand, for Kay's sake.

He just hoped Badd wouldn't be too much of a jackass about it.

"Did Byrne involve you in Kay's training at all?" he asked the other man in English, trying to sound as casual as possible. No judgement here, just a simple question.

[tasteoftruth]

"Training for what?"

"He means bajur, Uncle Badd." She gave him a look of 'duh!', until she found no comprehension in his face. Her eyes slowly drifted towards the floor. "It's, uh, it's mando'ade stuff. Like fighting and sneaking and not getting shot in the face."

"Oh. Yeah, of course," said Badd, putting a brave face over his ignorance. "We go out to the shooting range so she can practice with a gun, same as Byrne used to do."

From Kay's continued fixation on her shoes, that was not what Byrne used to do.

[scarred_warrior]

Novoc looked between the girl who was still staring at her feet and the grown man who plainly had no idea what was going on. Great. Just great.

"Kay," he said in English, crossing his arms and giving the girl a flat look. "Is there anything you need to talk to your uncle about?" There very obviously was.

[tasteoftruth]

Kay had been taught not to lie to people in the family. That was one of Daddy's rules, like not crying in front of strangers and promptly bringing all boyfriends to meet Daddy as soon as possible. She squirmed and kept looking at her feet to resist the urge to say 'no'.

"I think I can guess." Badd's large shoulders slowly lowered as she sighed. "It's because I'm not one of your people. I can't even speak your language and I have no idea how to give you what Byrne would have wanted you to have. Is that it, Kay?"

Kay looked up at him and stiffly nodded. "It's not your fault, Uncle Badd." She still loved him. He was just ignorant about important things.

"I know. Doesn't make it not true."

[scarred_warrior]

Novoc felt his respect for Badd increase as he listened. You couldn't ask for a better admission of ignorance than that.

"It's not the end of the world," he said, giving Badd a sympathetic look. "You can learn. You could join us, for Kay's sake."

[tasteoftruth]

Badd raised an eyebrow. "Just like that? I'm not sure it works that way."

Kay was jumping up and down in excitement, tugging at his sleeve. "Oya! Yes, Uncle Badd! Join us!"

[scarred_warrior]

"Actually..." Novoc had to grin at Kay's excitement; if nothing else this plan clearly had her full support. But he continued speaking in a serious tone. "We'll take anyone who wants to join, as long as they make a sincere effort to learn our ways," he said. "You don't have to pass any kind of test or anything, just convince one of us that you're worth teaching." A short pause, as he considered his next words. "And I think it'd be better for Kay, if you did."

He didn't mention Byrne, was very careful to keep anything that even looked like curiosity off his face. This wasn't the time to wonder why Byrne had never extended this offer, or if he had, why Badd has refused. That was in the past, and he was acting on Kay's behalf now.

[tasteoftruth]

"Byrne never mentioned it."

"You have to ask on your own. That's how it is." Kay had pushed for it once or twice. She'd complained to him that Uncle Badd didn't understand important things and Byrne had told her that there were things aruetii weren't allowed to know. She'd accepted it as default but having to leave him out of the loop made her upset. He deserved better.

Badd's arm curled around Kay's shoulder. If Byrne had asked him, on an idle Sunday over coffee and toast, Badd would probably have turned him down. He had enough on his mind without training to be an alien merc and to someone who had cynicked himself out of any cultural attachments to his own heritage the entire thing seemed goofy. With Byrne gone, and with Kay clinging to his arm with those desperate eyes blinking up at him it was a lot harder to resist.

Badd shrugged. "Sure. Why not."

[scarred_warrior]

He'd certainly seen more enthusiastic conversions, but that wasn't important compared to the fact that Badd had agreed. As long as he stuck to that, dealing with this situation would be astronomical units easier than trying to deal with a foreigner.

"Olarom, ner vod," he said with a grin. "Welcome."

[tasteoftruth]

Japanifornia's gravity systems became too weak to hold Kay's enthusiasm. Badd stumbled backwards as Kay leaped onto him and climbed up his shoulders, staggering to hold the gleefully wiggling child getting tangled in his coat.

"You're going to love it, Uncle Badd! We can teach you everything!"

"It sounds great." His smile was only for Kay as she wrapped her arms around his neck and legs around his torso. Anything for you, little one.

More serious talk was put off until the end of the evening. Kay ordered in some 'exotic" local food. Badd was content to stay silent while she dropped a year's worth of giddy information on Novoc's head. (In Mando'a she was also conspiring to train Badd to be a proper mando'ade, though she could only draw upon her own limited experience as guidance for a sixty year old man's path to being one of the clan.) It was the happiest Badd had seen her since Byrne's death, the closest to the way she had been the day he died. He would convert to just about any crazy cultural structure if it meant hearing her laugh again.

He gave her an hour past her usual bedtime and then strongarmed her into her bedtime routine. Smiles the entire time, gentle little smiles, but he could feel Novoc's judging stare on his back. (Novoc may or may not have actually been giving him judging stares.)

He was...something, now. Whatever being mando'ade meant. And however a mando went about making his daughter clean her teeth and tucking her into bed he was probably doing it all wrong. When she was finally shut up in her bedroom he stole one of his stronger lollipops from the glass jar in his bedroom and went to wash the dishes, wondering what he was supposed to do now.

[scarred_warrior]

Novoc offered to help with the dishes, but whether Badd accepted the help or not he stayed in the kitchen, looking at the other man thoughtfully.

"You mean a lot to her," he finally said in a carefully neutral voice. "It's good that you decided to join us; having you behind her will make her a stronger warrior, when the time comes."

[tasteoftruth]

The offer was accepted, and Badd cleaned up the counters more than usual while wondering if Novoc even cared about kitchen hygeine.

"I hope so." Japanifornia had different opinions on child-rearing than the mandos. THe idea of Kay as a warrior, when she was so young and so fragile, felt disturbing to Badd. "Byrne never talked much about it...I'm sure he would, if I'd asked. I didn't ask about a lot of things I should have."

He was supposed to go first, not Byrne. That had been an unconscious certainty for him.

"So how do I start?"

[scarred_warrior]

"That's what we need to figure out," Novoc said. He sat back down at the table, folding his hands under his chin. Badd was moving awkwardly, like he didn't know what to do with himself; Novoc doubted he normally allowed this level of scrutiny, or the invasion into his private space. "I figured something was wrong when Byrne didn't answer Mand'alor's call, but...the situation here's a lot more complicated than I was expecting."

"What happened to Byrne's armor?" he asked, looking over at Badd. He'd noticed the absence, while Kaye was showing him around, and he didn't like the implications of that. "Why isn't it here?"

[tasteoftruth]

Badd sighed, putting the final dish into the cupboard.

"I don't know. He usually kept it in the house, we're not exactly an army base here, but he was out practicing with it the night before he died. Brought the helmet into court with him in a box but that's all I've got left." Practicing breaking and entry, technically, but Novoc didn't need to know that. Would probably tarnish his memory or some shit like that, he didn't know how the Mandos looked at vigilantism.

"There was a secret cache where he kept stuff he wanted private. He was a lawyer, a lot of them have secret compartments under the floorboards or whatever. I'd guess it was there. Problem is, he moved it the night before, we thought we might have had some kind of leak." There was a soft click as the lollipop knocked against Badd's teeth. He turned it over in his mouth a few times before the self-hatred fell again from a rolling boil. "I didn't ask. Assumed he'd tell me later. We had a case, we were busy."

God. They'd had years to talk and he'd missed so much.

[scarred_warrior]

"We need to get that armor back." Novoc's words were firm and colored with urgency. Badd had already mentioned that Byrne had been murdered; in Novoc's current frame of mind, it felt natural to assume that his killers had taken it. "It belongs to Kaye now. And the beskar, the tech...Not the kind of stuff we want to leave in foreign hands, especially at a time like this." Not that it was likely that anyone on this station had the skills to hack Byrne's encryptions, but they could always send to it someone else, or just cut it up and re-use the beskar. A proper mando'ad would choose that fate for themselves over letting it happen to their armor.

[tasteoftruth]

"I know, I know." The last was said with gritted teeth, the lollipop beginning to fracture between his jaws. He took it out and used it to point at the other room. "Look, maybe take a glance over his helmet. I can't figure out how to work it but maybe you can."

[scarred_warrior]

"Good idea." And good to see Badd could use his anger constructively. Maybe this wouldn't be so difficult after all. He stood, following the gesture into the next room. But it would be up to Badd to bring the helmet out. He wasn't about to digging through somebody else's stuff, unless he knew them really well.

[tasteoftruth]

Badd had it hidden in the back of the closet in a beaten-up box. If you locked it up people could still take the box, and it would be more likely to be taken in the first place. Nothing useful would come out of a box that had five holes and twelve sparkly heart stickers.

The helmet would be easily recognizable as Byrne's, if Novoc had seen it before. Badd ran his thumb over the crest above the eyepieces before reluctantly passing it over to the Mando.

[scarred_warrior]

Oh, Novoc recognized it all right. His face was solemn as he took it from Badd, gaze lingering for a moment on the view plate. Almost as good as a glimpse of Byrne's face, to a mando'ad -- but only almost.

It felt uncomfortably tight over his braids as he slipped it on, but hopefully he wouldn't have to wear it long enough to matter. The on-board computer responded to his body heat, booting up immediately. Good; it would have been awkward if Byrne had keyed it to his specific biometrics.

"I'm accessing the helmet's records," he informed Badd, voice muffled slightly by the helmet. "Any idea what I should be looking for?"

[tasteoftruth]

Badd had worn the helmet before, mainly at Kay's insistence and once when Byrne was showing off the first version of Little Thief. He'd tried it on after Byrne's death, just to find the rest of it, but it was all in mando'ade.

Kay could have read it. But Kay didn't need to know what her father had really been doing with his evenings. Ideally Novoc would see it that way too, if things ever spilled out to him.

"Is there some kind of tracking device for the rest of the armor? Maybe a listing of cache locations? This station's pretty old, there's plety of little niches and vents that everyone else has forgotten about." Badd sat on the couch arm, lollipop dangling from his fingertips.

[scarred_warrior]

"Let's see..." Pulling up a map of the station was a matter of a few pointed eye movements and blinks; doing anything much more complicated than this would be tricky without the armor's gauntlets, and the extra sensors they contained, but for now he wasn't having any trouble. He could also see Badd through the helmet's visor, watching him impatiently.

The map came up with a folder prosaically labeled "Filters", but when he tried to access it, the screen greyed out. Access restricted?

"There's a lock on the map," he informed Badd, surprised. Why seal off this program, but not the entire helmet? On a hunch, he back out, checked the language settings -- yes, it could be set to either mando'a or Basic -- and switched it over. Then he went back into the map, took the helmet off, and handed it to Badd. "Here," he said. "Give it a try now."

[tasteoftruth]

The helmet digs into his forehead as he puts it on, hiding his scowl. "Isn't going to work, I can't read a damn thing in your language and I definitely don't know how this thing works."

He sees the same notification pop up when he dons the helmet as he did the last time he'd tried it. In mando'a, he'd assumed it was some kind of welcome message, or a keep out error.

HI, DETECTIVE.

Badd lets out a loud, rough chuckle. His hand presses to the side of the helmet, as if touching someone else's cheek.

"That asshole, he must have stolen my biometrics out of my file at work and programmed them into the helmet..." Badd's voice is full of adoration for his asshole of a partner. "Whatever you did, I can read the words now. How do I make it work?"

VOICE ACTIVATION, DI'KUT.

The letters were basic, but Byrne hadn't bothered to translate that particular word. Didn't need to. Badd knew a handful of mando'a phrases and Byrne adored throwing that one at him and teasing that it meant this or that glorious honorific, until Badd 'interrogated' its true meaning out of him. Di'kut--someone so stupid they couldn't even get their pants on properly.

"Find Byrne's armor," he said, how holding the sides of the helmet in both hands. "No, put it on a map, I can't read that. Okay. Oh, hell."

He turned his head towards Novoc. "I found it. It's not far from here, it's in the business district. Byrne brought the helmet back but looks like he couldn't sneak the rest of the armor home without attracting attention."

Wait. Badd sat up a little straighter. "Can this thing export data? From its cameras, or whatever? There might be something on it I can use." Whatever Byrne found that night was valuable enough that they'd killed him for it, when before they'd been willing to leave the tripartite bird alone. And if they didn't want Byrne to have it, Badd wanted the whole damn world to see it.

[scarred_warrior]

"Probably, yeah," Novoc said, unconsciously mirroring Badd's pose. He couldn't actually leave the room while the other man was communing with Byrne's helmet, but that didn't mean he was comfortable just sitting there listening.

"Assuming there's not another biolock, we could set it to download data to any computer in the apartment." Getting a Mandalorian computer to recognize foreign tech could sometimes get a little tricky, but after living out here for so long Byrne's helmet was probably half foreign anyway. He'd have had to do nearly all of his own repairwork, all these years.

"What's your plan?" he asked, eagerly.

[tasteoftruth]

"I wasn't with Byrne the night before he died, just that morning. I know he found something, I know the bare basics, but I don't know what about it was so groundbreaking that it made them finally decide to knock us off. If I can get that data, we might be able to nail the bastards to the wall anyway."

The first hints of real, strong emotion were starting to creep back into his voice after hours of running on steel-eyed noir deadpan. Maybe their bird was missing a leg or two, but it might still be able to take one last flight.

Badd got to his feet and felt around for his own tablet, having trouble navigating the helmet's HUD with the map in front of it. Nail them up over the entire damn city and let everyone else watch while they writhed...

"Hey, you. Helmet. Novoc Vevut, profile." The helmet obligingly came up with the helmet's data on Novoc. Badd took a moment to look it over for warning flags, just in case there was something that Byrne had wanted to keep from him, but that the man looked clean. "Give my level of access to Novoc Vevut for the next twelve hours. Okay? That'll be the next user after me."

ACCESS GRANTED TO NOVOC VEVUT.

Badd tugged the helmet up and over his head. He finally pushed it up and Novoc could see there was an actual smile on his face, narrow and sharp. "Here."