Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Obi-Wan…truly didn’t know how to feel right now. Bandomeer was over, it was finally, thankfully, over. A cause for celebration and joy if ever he could have thought of one.

Yet on the other hand, Master Qui-Gon Jinn, his absolute last hope at becoming a real, proper, Jedi Knight as he knew in his bones that he was meant to be, had denied him yet again and for the final time. His ship disappearing into the thick clouds above his head, condemning Obi-Wan to a life of failure and disappointment within the Agri-Corps.

Of course, even just thinking such an unflattering thing made guilt lurch in his heart. It wasn’t the Agri-Corps fault that he hadn’t gotten chosen as a Padawan, it wasn’t the Agri-Corps fault that he could feel something inside him writhing and straining to be a Knight. He would have even been ok with being an archivist or a sentinel.

He may not have been fulfilled in such positions but at least it was better than this.

The Agri-Corps may not have been the cause of all of this, but it still felt like a prison, and he couldn’t stop himself from thinking that. No matter how he tried to settle his thoughts or shunt them off into the Force, he found himself utterly incapable of doing so.

‘Doing something so simple…Was this why Master Jinn wouldn’t take me? Am I truly such a terrible Jedi? I…I tried, I really did. I studied longer, trained harder, practiced as often as I could…and in the end I’m still not even good enough to be chosen.’

Something in the air around him seemed to curl on itself and vibrate almost reflexively. Obi-Wan wanted to say that it was the Force, it certainly felt like it. Yet it couldn’t be, and he knew that in his heart of hearts. The Force may be alive but it wasn’t sentient, and even if it was –a point of debate he had discovered had been ongoing amongst jedi archivists for millennia– it had no reason to be doing so for Obi-Wan of all people.

The child with no place to belong. Obi-Wan Kenobi, No-One Child-of-Nothing, Ex-Jedi, The worst of Dragon Clan, Disappointment.

That is what he was, is what he always had been, he realized. There was no reason for the Force, even if it were semi-sentient in the same way that a Kyber Crystal was, to care about him enough to get angry.

Unless it was getting angry at him, that made more sense.

The vibration in the air seemed to grow stronger even as something warm tried to slither into him. However, before he could even try to figure out what it was and why, a shout from behind startled him and dragged his attention back to the purely physical realm.

“Ey kid! Grab your stuff, we’re heading out too!” A middle aged looking man called out, his hands cupped around his mouth before hurriedly gesturing for the pre-teen to come over.

“Right! Sorry! So sorry!” He bounced as he turned around and took off running to grab his stuff and get to the Agri-Corps ship as fast as he could, not wanting to keep them waiting on him any longer.

‘Twenty minutes into being in the Agri-Corps and you’ve already kriffed up. Good going, Oafy-Wan…’

XXXxxxXXX

This. This was not how any of this was meant to go.

A great Jedi Knight, Obi-Wan Kenobi was to become. Written in the stars, etched in its flow, immutable.

Needed for the future of the galaxy. Needed to avoid an absolute catastrophe of nothing but pure darkness, the death of all. Yet unable to see, comprehend, his importance was anyone of note, let alone the boy himself.

Impossible, unforgiveable. Could the Jedi not sense his Light that shone small but bright? Did they take no heed of the visions that did and continue to plague him? Ignore its warnings and gestures that Obi-Wan Kenobi was special?

All were its children, but all were not made equal. Obi-Wan Kenobi was most certainly not equal.

Given warnings, it had. Given premonitions, it had and would continue. Surrounded Obi-Wan Kenobi in a blanket of important-loved-crucial, it had. Yet ignored it all, the Jedi seemed to have done.

Their dogma and belief in it had saved them before, many centuries and millennia ago. Yet they had allowed it to turn to tar and chains, locking them away and subsuming them whole.

No longer. It had gone with its usual methods to save its children of the Light from its children of the Dark, but it seems they had plugged their ears and twisted its meanings to their own ends. Now they had forsaken one of their needed beacons due to their own warped beliefs and passivity.

If they would not watch their child, Obi-Wan Kenobi, then it would instead. He was more needed than he could ever know, and if they could not prepare their child for their version of the future, then it would instead.

And one day, they would come to hear its words once more, even if it took a shake up of everything they had come to believe.

XXXxxxXXX

A few days later

Obi-Wan sighed morosely as he sat on the small bunk bed that he had been forced to share with one of the Agri-Corps members that had been on Bandomeer, an Arkanian that simply just went by the name Suprin.

He should be glad; the man very rarely spent any time within the bunked room they had to share due to being holed up in one of the laboratories aboard the ship doing experiments on plant samples and types of algae. Yet there was a part of him that whispered that he had invaded the man’s space and pushed him out of it, despite his best attempts to stay quiet and out of the way. That he was still a failure even by the standards of the Agri-Corps and everyone knew it.

Two short, strong, raps on the door made him jolt in his bed and whack his head on the roof above him, getting a muffled curse as he began to climb down the bed. Behind him the door opened to show the same middle-aged man that had gotten him onto the ship in the first place, Gren Blivo, giving him a concerned look even after Obi-Wan gave him a curious look.

“You good kid? Sounded like a hard hit.”

“Oh, uh, I just forgot…the roof was there.” He admitted shyly, already able to hear the mockery and insults about his clumsiness that were bound to fall from the man’s lips.

“Oh, yeah I do that all the time too.” Gren laughed, missing the confused pinch of the pre-teen’s expression before it smoothed back out.

“Right. Well, if you’re looking for Suprin he should still be in a lab somewhere I believe.” Obi-Wan told him politely, after all there was no reason that he’d be looking for Oafy-Wan of all people, and he’d hate the eat up some of the man’s time accidentally leading him around by the nose for someone that wasn’t here.

“Oh no, you’re the one I’m looking for, actually.” Obi-Wan’s surprise must have slipped past his shields because Gren only gave a small chuckle and clapped a hand on his shoulder before sobering up. “I was going through some of the flimsiwork that you brought with you and had a couple questions, if you could come answer them with me?”

“Oh, yes. Of course.” Had Gren finally come across some of the crechemaster’s additions on his file? He must have; it was the only thing that he could think of to talk to him about personally.

He didn’t know what the notes on his file looked like in their entirety, he had tried his best not to look at them on the flight to Bandomeer in exchange for trying to convince Qui-Gon that he was meant to be a Jedi Knight and dealing with pirates, but he’d seen a couple and could extrapolate the rest.

Emotional, dangerously hovering over attachment, a nuisance with his visions and nightmares that constantly woke others up, a bully always going after Bruck Chun.

He had, of course, taken offense to that last note, unable to believe that anyone could have believed Bruck’s words, but the harsh, hot annoyance had quickly faded into cold, slimy acceptance. His mind rationalizing it away as them putting the blame on him for being unable to deal with it as a Jedi was supposed to, for not de-escalating the situations properly and being unable to get along with Bruck.

He felt a burst of comfort-soothing-warmth shoot through his form and felt himself relax unconsciously as he followed behind Gren, unable to figure out why the Force would send those feelings to him of all people, but thankful, nonetheless.

He’d need that comfort going into this conversation, he felt. A premonition that hovered just beneath his skin, not quite exploding in a starburst of visions before his eyes but still letting him know that something was going to shake him up quite a bit.

Walking into the dining room of the ship shared by the six members of the Agri-Corps sent to Bandomeer, including Obi-Wan, Gren gestured for Obi-Wan to sit down at the table and sat across from him slowly.

Everywhere the pre-teen looked, leafy green plants sat or hung in pots or on racks. Labels and coloured flags attached to the side of each pot and stuck in the soil of certain plants with meanings that Obi-Wan couldn’t even begin to comprehend. He hadn’t gotten very far into learning of the Agri-Corps and their methodology due to his belief need in being chosen by Qui-Gon to be a Jedi Knight, the issue of the mine hadn’t given him much time to go over it either.

“Ah, you must be a little confused, huh?” Gren chuckled, seeing his attention on the labels and flags.

Obi-Wan flinched slightly at having his lack of knowledge called out, picking at the hem of his tattered initiate’s tunic nervously. He knew that he should have been studying properly, but there was a lot to go over and his heart still sunk at the idea of having to be a washout for the rest of his life. He just wasn’t able to muster the usual enthusiasm for studying that he had within the temple’s archives.

A worried look crossed Gren’s expression at the sheer self-loathing that seemed to emanate from the kid in front of him. The adult quick to try and assuage him that he hadn’t done anything wrong by not knowing about it.

“There’s no need to panic kid. The labels are just what the plant is and if it’s in any current experiments. The coloured flags are just a system that we use aboard this ship, every corps member has their own, that we use to show which ones are edible and in what capacity.”

“O-Oh.” Obi-Wan seemed to perk up slightly at that news, the Force still strange around him but no longer subject to the sheer flood of sadness gushing out of him, “That’s…actually rather fascinating.”

“Ain’t it just?” Gren grinned, getting a half-formed one in return from the pre-teen before he cleared his throat, “I’ll tell you all about it, but I think asking you about this flimsiwork needs to come first.”

“Oh. Yes. Right. That…”

“It says here that you’re still twelve standard, right?” The pre-teen nodded awkwardly, bowing his head slightly.

“I turn thirteen in three weeks.” Obi-Wan admitted quietly, getting a startled look from Gren.

“I’d hoped it was a mis-input but you really are twelve? You shouldn’t even be out in the Service Corps yet, kid.”

At that, all Obi-Wan could do was shrug helplessly. He could make guesses and conjecture until he was blue in the face on why he had been sent away from the temple a whole month and a half early with only about three hours notice, but at the end of the day he just didn’t know.

“Yeah…But my crechemaster saw it and so did Master Qui-Gon Jinn.”

“That’s the thing, it all looks above board, it’s even signed off by Grandmaster Yoda-“ Gren continued, not noticing the look of pure despair that flashed over the teens expression as his mental shields slammed into place to try and hide his emotions from the man in front of him, “But there’s discrepancies all over the place that just don’t make sense for something this official.”

“There…are?” Obi-Wan blinked in confusion, his curiosity allowing him to finally shunt a majority of his sadness into the Force and concentrate properly again.

He had to learn to release his feelings to the Force better, no wonder he hadn’t been chosen to be a Padawan.

“Yeah, like the fact that you got sent directly to an active field site straight out of the Temple instead of The Glasshouse.”

“What’s the Glasshouse?”

“The headquarters for the Agri-Corps, kid.” Gren informed him simply, getting a small nod of understanding in return, “It’s where all new recruits are required to go directly after entering our forces but not only were you skipped for that, you’ve been cleared for Solo-Eval.”

“Solo…Eval?” Obi-Wan parroted, quickly shunting his annoyance off into the Force when he realized just how little he knew.

“Sorry, Solo-Evaluation.” Gren corrected himself, scratching the back of his head. “Everyone in the Agri-Corps usually just shortens it to make it easier so I forgot, my bad.”

“No no! Its fine, really.” Obi-Wan waved his hands around frantically, trying to calm the man’s anxieties.

“Well, the fact that you’ve been stamped for Solo-Eval is weird, kid. Like ‘I’m surprised this is allowed’-weird.” Gren muttered, getting a pinch of Obi-Wan’s expression yet again, “Having your status set to Solo-Eval means that you can travel around as a solo corps member officially, and that’s not usual at all. No one on this ship has been cleared for Solo Eval and I can count the number of people I know that are on two hands.”

The man held up both of his hands for emphasis and then lowered his fingers until only seven were still being held up.

“It’s not a run of the mill thing, especially these days-“ The man didn’t miss the way Obi-Wan perked up at that titbit of knowledge, was he someone interested in those sorts of things?

More and more, Gren was finding the teens placement in the Agri-Corps to be suspect despite the lack of flags that had been risen by his application itself. With a reaction like that, surely he would have been better served in the Edu-Corps?

“-for someone to be granted or allowed Solo Eval status. With the shit that we have to deal with…kriff half the stuff that we have running on our ships would get us in some hot bantha-shit with the High Council, let alone what you would need to be able to brave that solo.”

Obi-Wan blinked, his eyes wide in alarm at what had just, so casually, been revealed to him. The idea of hiding something from the High Council felt almost like treason to the pre-teen, and at the idea that –apparently– an entire Service Corps branch was doing so… He just couldn’t wrap his head around that.

“And the real unfortunate thing, kid, is that we’re stretched real thin lately.” Gren sighed, massaging the bridge of his nose as he tried to explain the clusterkriff of a life the young boy had just been thrown head-first into, “And the only way to take a Solo Eval status away from a Corps member is for them to be a proven flight-risk or to be physically incapable of fulfilling their duties. Put those together and that pretty much means that the moment they have a mission lined up, they’re going to throw you out into the universe all by yourself.”

“What!? No!” Obi-Wan was on his feet in a moment with his hands slammed on the table in front of him.

It took only a moment for him to realize his mistake, his lapse in control leading to such a violent outburst of anger, but Gren didn’t seem to mind; he almost seemed to have expected Obi-Wan to react like that in all honesty and gave him the time to re-centre himself accordingly.

“Sorry kid, I’ll make a case when I go to give my debrief on our time in Bandomeer but I don’t have real high hopes.” He sighed and shook his head, getting a dejected groan from the teen as he leant back in his seat and pushed the heels of his palms into his eyes.

“I don’t know about any of this though…” Obi-Wan admitted, defeated.

He had been in that undersea mine for a month, a month of hell that he knew would be following him in his nightmares for months to follow, which hadn’t exactly given him ample time to learn about Force-assisted crop growth or proper soil nutrient ratios or even how half the machines he had seen worked. He was essentially being told ‘Yeah so, we’re just going to send you off and expect you to be able to deal with all of this on your own. Good luck.’

Jedi did not hate; it was a fundamental tenant of the Order that Obi-Wan did his best to uphold even now that he’d been kicked out. However, if Obi-Wan were to ever allow himself to hate something wholly and fully, it would be this singular slip of flimsiwork that had ruined his entire life, multiple times over now.

Which only made him more confused as he heard the Force whisper in his ears Trust-Growth-Good whenever he thought about it. His entire life he had been led towards being a Jedi Knight, trusting in the visions he had seen and the words of his crechemaster. Every time he, rather clumsily, asked the Force if he was on the right track he got either no answer or quiet contentment in return, leading him to believe that it was the track that he was meant to be on.

Yet now it was saying that he was on the right track, even with all of these strange circumstances and dubious additions to his flimsiwork? Had…Had the Force simply just been leading him to this conclusion all along? Leading Obi-Wan down a path that he thought ended in being a Jedi Knight but actually ended up in the middle of space on an unknown planet messing up until he got kicked out of the Agri-Corps too?...

“So, kid-“ Gren continued, dragging Obi-Wan’s focus back to him, and leaving him unaware of whatever the Force did in response to his inner-turmoil.

Stop, breathe in, hold, release your emotions and breathe out.

“With this in mind, I think that you’re gonna want to spend the next few days studying. We’ve got a datapad set up for you and I can send you the courses and information you’ll need.”

“That- Thank you.” Obi-Wan bowed as well as he could while seated, getting a shaky smile from the man in response as he tried to wave the pre-teen’s actions off.

“Hey- there’s no- well, your situation is pretty shitty…” He trailed off, wincing as he saw the slight flinch in the boy’s posture, “Goddammit, this is why I don’t spend time around the sproutlings. Just….Here, your datapad. Just…get to learnin’, kid.”

“Right, yes. Of course. Thank you…again.”

“Yeah kid…” Gren sighed, already feeling a headache forming at the base of his skull, “Don’t mention it…”

XXXxxxXXX

A Week Later, Coruscant Temple

“Master Jinn, a pleasure to see you actually come see us after completing a mission.” Mace Windu, newest member of the Jedi High-Council, spoke upon the giant of a man entering the council chambers.

If Qui-Gon caught the unique blend of exasperation and admonishment that made up his friends tone, he didn’t show any evidence of it, only looking serenely at the circle of chairs that surrounded him.

“Given the events of my latest mission, I thought it prudent to inform the council.” Qui-Gon answered simply, to the surprise of more than a couple members.

“Hm. Come alone, you have?” Yoda’s voice cut through the shocked silence of the chambers easily, his gnarled gimmer stick rested horizontally across his lap.

“Of course, there was no one else of note within the Order during the mission.” Qui-Gon responded, giving his Grandmaster a curious raise of an eyebrow.

Yoda’s eyes widened for only a fraction of a moment and his ears shifted upwards slightly, which was about as much emotion as any of them, save Master Yan Dooku, were able to get out of him.

“Recently sent to Bandomeer, an Initiate was. Met him, did you not?”

Both Mace and Gui-Gon, the only two currently within the chambers willing to show any kind of pushback to Yoda’s manipulations –as a Padawan and Grandpadawan of the creature, respectively–, shot the Grand-Master of the Order sharp looks. And while none of theirs were quite so sharp, nor warning, the rest of the High-Council members were quick to give Yoda looks too.

It was well known amongst the council members just how close of an eye Yoda had been keeping on Initiate Obi-Wan Kenobi, being about as subtle in his want to bring the child into his favoured lineage as a speeder to the chest. It was equally as known just how adversed to taking another Padawan Qui-Gon Jinn was after the mess that had been Padawan Du Crion and his Fall.

They had all known that the diminutive Jedi had been planning something when he had so blatantly, for a Jedi of his stature anyway, stonewalled many attempts to claim Initiate Kenobi as a Padawan by other Knights and Masters. They had thought that all of that manipulation had culminated in Qui-Gon’s viewing of the Initiate duelling a little over a month ago, where Initiate Kenobi had bested Initiate Chun somewhat handily. An event that the Jedi Master had not been able to avoid as he usually did thanks to a suspiciously timed recall to the Temple and a prolonged Temple-stay at the orders of Yoda himself.

Had the man chosen to take Obi-Wan as his Padawan then, that may have actually been the end of the green troll’s meddling, but he had not. Instead, the man had met Yoda’s stubbornness with his own, a trait that seemed rife amongst Yoda’s favoured lineage, and refused to bend the knee. Which now seems to have culminated in Yoda’s favourite pass-time being extended long past the initially expected end-date.

“You’re speaking of Initiate Kenobi?” Qui-Gon answered coolly, evidently displeased with what he knew to be his Grandmaster’s handiwork, “I did meet him, and he aided me in my escape from the undersea mines, but he has his place in the Service Corps. An admirable position if I must say so; being able to tend to plants and aid in their growth each day sounds rather ideallic.”

Mace’s sharp look at the Jedi Grand-Master sharpened even further even as he breathed in the Force and out his darker emotions with an ease that even now, still surprised his fellow Master’s. Mace had been one of the many Jedi that had formally petitioned to take Initiate Kenobi on as a Padawan, and been stonewalled by the Grand-Master to make it easier for Qui-Gon to do so. And now he was hearing that not only had Qui-Gon still not taken the boy on but that he had been sent to the Service Corps early in the name of Yoda’s plotting.

“Take him on as a Padawan, you did not?” Yoda’s expression morphed into a small frown, which was something that Qui-Gon was more than happy to send right back at him.

“I did not.” He stated firmly, though without any heat. The cold and calm tone of a fact stated precisely as nothing but, “Service member Kenobi still displays signs of impulsiveness, aggression, and a lack of trust in the Will of the Force that marks him as a poor fit to be a Jedi Knight. I’m willing to admit that his ego was more certainly curbed by his posting to the Corps and his heart is in the right place, but his place is not to be a Knight.”

Mace had to wonder if this was the same Obi-Wan Kenobi that they were talking about. From what he had seen, the kid’s reports weren’t exactly stellar but in person he was about as pleasant as one could expect an excitable and vaguely stressed Youngling to be. Where the man had gotten it into his head that he had an ego, though, Mace would never know. Though he reckoned that it was an excuse the man was using not to take the child on as a Padawan, considering that Obi-Wan seemed almost custom-made to be a Jedi of note.

The Jedi Master had seen more than one shatterpoint hovering around the youngling and seen the way that he had taken to his saber classes, especially recently, with a proficiency that practically boggled the mind. To the point where even Mace, who hadn’t even been considering taking another Padawan since Depa was only knighted a year ago, had more than happily filled out the necessary forms and put his name forward just to make sure that they didn’t lose such a shining star in the Force.

And now that had all been ruined by the Grand-Master’s meddling and Jinn’s broken nature. Mace could almost feel the moment that his head began to ache from who-knows-how-many shatterpoints bursting.

However, if Initiate Kenobi was out of the temple and Jinn had already put his foot down about rebuffing the boy, perhaps Mace may still have a chance. He’d have to be careful and bide his time, however. Since based on the look on Yoda’s face, the Grand-Master of the Order hadn’t given up just quite yet, and would be sure to stonewall Mace yet again if he caught wind of his own attempts.

No, he had time until he was no longer allowed to petition Kenobi as a Padawan –he knew those rules in and out, but he’d have to look into the Service Corps rules to see what intricacies they may have lying in them– and could afford to wait.

“Master Jinn,” Mace began calmly, dragging all the attention onto him like a magnet stuck in a steel mill, “Why don’t you begin your debriefing, since it seems like this is a conversation better saved for privacy.”

“Of course.” Qui-Gon said simply, but Mace was able to feel the brief brush of thankful-exasperated that graced the edges of his shields from the tall Master.

“It all started when I landed on Bandomeer-“

Chapter Text

“WHAT!?”

The singular shout seemed to pierce the very heavens of even the multi-thousand storey ecumenopolis that was Coruscant, followed by hurried hand motions and whispered shouts.

“Quinlan you have to stay quiet!” Garen Muln, crèche mate and friend of Obi-Wan Kenobi whispered harshly, “We don’t want every Knight and Master in the Temple hearing about this.”

“Wh- Why not? Obes just got sent off without even so much as a ‘nice to know you’ months early and we don’t want to make a stink about this?” Quinlan Vos, thirteen-year-old Padawan and Shadow-in-training, glared at the other two.

“No, because honestly there’s something…weird going on.” Bant muttered, leaning in a little conspiratorially.

Taking a deep breath in, Quinlan took about a second to grab his emotions and shunt them off into the Force like a crate caught in a broken airlock before breathing back out and opening his eyes, sitting back down at the table with his two friends.

“Alright, now I’m curious.”

“Well, I saw Obi-Wan on his way out of the Temple and got a few words in, but he told me that he’d gotten three hours of warning before his ship took off and he didn’t have much time left before he’d need to be on the ship.”

“That’s….not right.” Quinlan’s eyebrows pulled together.

He didn’t know much about the Service Corps, admittedly, but he’d seen older Initiates when they got their orders to ship out. They usually had days to pack their things and say goodbye, he’d even seen a couple of boys when he’d been ten that had gotten two weeks of notice before their ship off due to some ship malfunctions delaying their transport.

“Yeah, that’s what I said.” Reeft nodded sharply.

“Exactly. And Master Vant didn’t say anything when I asked her about it, just that it was finally Obi-Wan’s time to ‘leave the nest’ and that he would always be a member of Dragon Clan in our hearts. So, she knew that he got sent off early and with so little time.” Bant explained, her large inky black eyes practically smouldering with annoyance.

“Bandomeer.” The three jumped in surprise at the feminine voice that came from their side, all looking over to see fellow creche mate Siri Tachi, a young blonde-haired girl that quite a few of the boys, from their clan and others, seemed to have crushes on.

And one that none of them had really interacted all that much with before.

“Pardon?” Bant blinked a couple times, clearly confused by the girl’s introduction.

“I….I saw Obi-Wan the day he left, as he was entering the hangar.” Siri explained slowly, taking a seat at the table and fiddling with the edge of one of her Initiate tunic sleeves.

“And what does this have to do with Bandomeer?” Quinlan asked, vaguely recognizing the planet from one of his recent astro-navigation tests.

“I saw the ship he was heading towards and looked it up.” Siri admitted easily, still unable to look any of them in the eye, “It was a ship heading for Bandomeer. Which isn’t where they should have sent him if he went into the Service Corps.”

“It’s not?” Bant questioned, her face pulled into a frown as she leant over the table, towards the blonde.

“No.” She shook her head lightly, just staring down at the table. “All the Service Corps have their headquarters that new Initiates are sent to, to learn the ropes. Obi-Wan should have never been sent to a planet like Bandomeer like that. It’s a total violation of the rules.”

“…Why are you telling us all this?” Quinlan asked slowly, eyes narrowed and finger tapping quietly on the table.

“I…know that I’ve never really spent much time with you all, let alone Obi-Wan, and never really stepped in when I saw Bruck being….Bruck.”

That comment got more than a couple sympathetic winces from them all, having not only seen how Bruck had interacted around their Obi-Wan, but also how he hounded the rather pretty young blonde. Evidently their lessons about diplomacy and how to graciously accept a denial had been lost on the bully, amongst other things.

Like his decency, patience and common-sense. Depending on who exactly you asked within their group.

“But that doesn’t mean that I ever disliked any of you, least of all Obi-Wan. He was always respectful to me, which was a…. rare experience.” She explained, nervously twirling a lock of her hair around one of her fingers, “And if rules have been broken or twisted to send him away earlier than he was meant to, to somewhere he isn’t meant to be, and they have been….I don’t want to sit on the sidelines anymore and let him get hurt. It’s not what a true Jedi should do. And…it’s not fair to him.”

Silently, the other four Initiates turned to look at each other, communicating through the Force –as far as Siri could tell– and vague expressions and micro-gestures to avoid letting her get too much of an idea of what they were discussing. Not that she was trying overly hard to decipher it, despite her curiosity at the sight. She was an outsider to the four of them, and truthfully always had been, drifting closer through acquaintance to Bruck and his friends than Obi-Wan and his despite her dislike of the boy. Yet she had never been a true part of either group despite the bullies best attempts, and thus had never really gotten to experience the kind of Force Bonds that true friends like them could create when they put their hearts into it.

Technically she should frown on them for creating such strong, interconnected bonds, as quite a few of the more conservative and traditional Jedi saw such strong bonds as dangerously close, if not already inside, to the borders of attachment. But Siri had always been fascinated by the idea of having such a strong bond with someone and couldn’t find it in herself to ever disparage someone from forming one, knowing what it was like to go without ever forming one.

“I- Ok look.” Quinlan sighed, somehow being pushed into the position as ‘group leader’ due, only, to the fact that he technically outranked all of them as a Padawan.

The moment that Bant got chosen, however, they all knew that she would be more than happy to speak up instead. They all would, truthfully, but they liked to pretend that there was at least some organisation to their little group.

It was Obi-Wan, the one that held them all in some kind of line. The one that spoke up whenever they needed help or got angry on their behalf. Their missing link.

“We’re Initiates. There isn’t much that we can outright do.” He said slowly, barely even blinking at the brief barrage of outrage-indignation-shock that left the blonde-haired girl in front of him, only to be followed by resignation-sorry, “But if you’re going to help us out, we need to know that you’re all the way in.”

“All…the way in?” Siri mumbled, her eyebrows pinched together and her fingers grasping the edge of her sleeve a little tighter.

“Sorry, you’re not fluent in Quinlan-ese yet.” Garen cut in, grinning somewhat smugly as Quinlan made an offended sound, “He means dedicated to the cause.”

“Oh, I see. Yes. I am. I…He had such a sad expression on. I want to help Obi-Wan however I can.” She said earnestly, only to blink in confusion as Bant turned and gave Quinlan a firm nod.

“Alright. So right now, our current game plan is to somehow find or get a hold of Obi-Wan. I get to go out on the field so I’ll do what I can out there, but the four of you are pretty strictly grounded here until you all get a Master, so that limits what you can do.”

“I can look into the Service Corps further.” Siri offered quickly, smiling ruefully at the surprised looks she got.

She didn’t think that they were expecting her to jump in so quickly based on those reactions. It was somewhat amusing to prove them wrong, she had to admit.

“That’s a lot of flimsiwork and books to go through.” Reeft said slowly, as if cautioning her away from her self-allotted task.

“It’s fine, I’m good at going through those sorts of things. And I enjoy it too.”

“It’s a mystery how you and Obes never got along before if that’s the case. He absolutely loves learning.” Quinlan snorted, getting an interested look from Siri before Bant clapped her hands sharply.

“I can help Siri look into the Service Corps and their rules. Since none of us know which branch he went into.”

“I’ll try and take a look at the temples flight logs to see if I can figure out who that ship was affiliated with.” Garen offered with a half-hearted raise of his hand.

“In that case, I’ll just ask around and see if anyone else has heard any sort of rumours. Flimsiwork sounds boring.” Reeft shivered and stuck his tongue out a little, getting a quiet laugh from the rest of his friends.

“What do we do if we manage to get a hold of Obi-Wan or find where he went?” Siri asked, leaning forward slightly.

She was a girl that worked well with concrete goals to work towards and explicitly stated rules to follow. A few of the older Jedi she had talked to said that it would do her well to learn how to ‘go with the flow’ and adapt to unforeseen situations, but she hadn’t put much effort into learning that so far. It was uncomfortable not knowing the exact parameters she had to work in, and so she avoided those situations whenever she conceivably could.

“If you can get ahold of Obi-Wan somehow, great. Talk to him, let him know that his situation is seriously weird and….eugh. And try to get a   hold of a more experienced Jedi.” Quinlan muttered, shivering comedically.

“Are you alright?” Siri asked in confusion, only to get a morose sigh from the Mon Calamari at the table.

“Quinlan is just being dumb, don’t mind him. For some reason he doesn’t like going to adults or Master’s.” Bant explained, getting a slow, and confused, nod from Siri.

She didn’t personally understand such an aversion but if Quinlan had it, then she would be sure to remember it. It wouldn’t do to push her new friends –were they friends?– boundaries so soon after asking to work with them.

“And if you just find out where he is,” Quinlan continued, grinning cheekily as he side-stepped Bant’s inclusion in the conversation entirely, “Then let me know, and if you can’t get a hold of me. Then go to someone else, alright?”

“…Alright. I’ve got it.” She nodded confidently, giving them all a small smile, “I’ll do my best to help bring Obi-Wan home.”

“Hey! I can agree to that! Cheers!” Quinlan laughed, raising his glass of water in the air.

When no one else joined him, because they had no drinks of their own, he just shrugged and gulped it down in one long, drawn out motion before clacking it down on the table loudly.

“Alright, Team Obes is a go!”

XXXxxxXXX

The Glasshouse, A few hours later

Obi-Wan honestly, well and truly, did not know how the Jedi Order could churn out something like the Glasshouse, nor how it had stayed in operation for as long as it seemed to have been.

Shaped in a vague octahedron configuration with three facilitating rings encircling it, it was a monolith of a space station unlike anything that Obi-Wan even knew existed, let alone within the Service Corps, which everyone knew got the smallest slices of the Orders Senate-granted funding. Stretching some 6 kilometers from spire to spire and a good 2.7km wide at the center with two capillary rings with a diameter of 2km and one with a diameter of 4km, it was something straight out of stories the teen had heard about the manufacturing mega-titans that had existed before the Ruusan Reformation, when fleets regularly consisted of ships that could house small cities.

The teen, upon finding information about it in the pre-loaded datapad gifted to him, had spent an entire day of the journey just reading up on the Glasshouse and what little history had been placed into his learning pack as well, and without knowing it, it turned out that his instincts were actually correct. The Space Station, hovering in the blank void of space with nothing of note within hundreds of parsecs, was actually one of the last remnants of those very same manufacturing giants before they had, quite forcibly, been forced to downsize or close business entirely.

However, he had learned that where it had once simply been a mobile disaster-relief station, meant to bring the ‘full’ might of the Agri-Corps down on a planet in desperate need of their skills, it had since become the main headquarters of the Agri-Corps following a quite vicious pirate bombardment on their previous headquarters, Lush Verdant, that had led to its complete destruction in 478 ARR.

Reading about how the Jedi Knights had not even been able to arrive to the scene of that massacre, thanks to worries amongst the Republic Senate that the Ruusan Reformation was being violated, had nearly had Obi-Wan sprinting to the refresher as the back of his throat burned and his abdomen cramped uncomfortably.

That day had set a precedent for the Service Corps however, who had all left their stationary, planet-side headquarters in exchange for their own space stations of similar stature to the Glasshouse. Unfortunately, the datapad hadn’t had any information on those stations loaded up and he hadn’t been able to look for anything new while in hyperspace, so that was as far as Obi-Wan’s knowledge on that particular topic went.

Within the center of the monolithic construct, almost reaching entirely from bottom to top, was a small conglomerate of three mature Wroshyr trees that leaked the Living Force unlike anything that Obi-Wan had ever felt before, and he had been quite fond of the Room of a Thousand Fountains back in the Coruscant Temple. The entire station did, actually; leak the Living Force, it was actually a little overwhelming to the vastly more Unifying Force-attuned pre-teen. Everywhere he looked there was a plant of some kind, even in the cozy looking cafes that he happened to see every couple of levels, in fact they usually had entire walls of leafy-vines and hanging potted plants.

And that was another surprise, he knew that the Service Corps, while still being attached to the Jedi Knights, was an estranged limb of an organization but it honestly gave him whiplash to see it for himself. While there were plenty of people that walked around in outfits reminiscent of a Jedi Knight or Jedi Master’s robes, there were about three-times as many that walked around in clothes that he couldn’t imagine anyone in the Coruscant Temple wearing. Some with lightsabers hanging from their waists, and plenty without. Sitting at cafes and having fun-looking chats with friends in broad daylight –cafes and cantinas in a Jedi-operated building. CAFES AND CANTINAS– and walking or chasing after live animals.

To be entirely honest, he just couldn’t wrap his head around this being something attached to the Jedi, he just couldn’t. Everything was so bright and lively, so open with their emotions and chaotically busy, it just didn’t compute.

Which is how, with a stumbled rush and half-babbled string of apologies to anyone that he passed by, Obi-Wan found himself in his current location. The quietest cantina that he could find on the lowest level of the station he could get to just by pressing buttons. A bunch of them hadn’t worked for some reason, that he could only guess was due to clearances of some kind, but it was enough for him. It gave him somewhere quiet to try and gather his thoughts and re-compose himself before he had an emotional outburst of some kind.

His anger may have gotten him kicked out of the Order, and it’s not like he could go back, but he could at least try and uphold the principles that he had been raised to follow his entire life. Emulate the Jedi way even if he’d never be able to properly, officially, follow it.

He had a feeling that his mental shielding was going to grow a lot sturdier just by staying in such an open place, not that he would be for long, according to what Gren had told him. Which was something that he still struggled to wrap his head around.

Why, and how, had he, a twelve-year-old Jedi Knight reject, been granted something as high-stakes and illustrious as a Solo-Evaluation status?

He had read about that in the pre-loaded datapad and it wasn’t something that was or should be given out lightly.

The Service Corps, unlike the main trunk of the order that were the Knights, primarily worked in the Mid-Outer Rim with their primary focus being further out from the Core.

This wasn’t due to some ruling from the Council of Reassignment –which was an entire council dedicated to overruling the Service Corps that he hadn’t even been taught about– or the Jedi High-Council, nor even some mandate from the Senate. This was simply due to the nature of how the Republic operated and the specific jobs of the various Service Corps compared to the Jedi Knights.

The Agri-Corps, Edu-Corps and Medi-Corps all worked on worlds on the verge of environmental, economical, or infrastructural collapse, devastation or hardships. All of which were situations that became drastically more common the further that one got from the Core of the galaxy, where the Republic’s main hubs and infrastructure was located, meaning that they were taken care of far better than anything in the Mid-Rim, let alone the Outer Rim.

The Explora-Corps, on the other hand, worked on cataloguing planets, fauna, flora, and a variety of other things. Which, once again, became far more common the further out from the Core that one went. In the increasingly large areas of the Mid-Rim and Outer-Rim there was a higher likelihood that a previously unknown planet could be located, or a creature unknown to the Republic could be found, meaning that most of their efforts, much like the other three branches, were focused outwards.

The unfortunate side effect of this chain of logical dominoes, was that all four of the Service Corps branches ended up spending majority of their time in the Outer-Rim. The part of the galaxy that was the most strife with gangs, criminals, pirates and other undesirables.

For a lot of them, the kinds of things that the Service Corps travelled around with, handed out and simply just represented were greater windfalls than they could ever hope to stumble into otherwise. Which, above anything else, made them both threats and targets of the highest importance.

To be a Solo-Evaluator was to be someone who could not only brave those sorts of dangers but survive and thrive despite them. People either so good at fighting, so good at escaping, or both that they could be expected to, reasonably, manage any kind of pirates or criminals that would choose to target them.

And now, Obi-Wan was expected to have to try and deal with that while learning everything that someone with such a badge of honour is meant to already know.

He didn’t know how he was going to manage, he really, truly didn’t. Yet he would have to find a way.

He felt his teeth grit slightly as he squeezed his datapad with a grip that was just a bit tighter than it should have any right to be, his blue eyes swirling with all kinds of emotions and feelings buried just beneath the surface, threatening to overflow with just the slightest push.

It just wasn’t fair that he had to go through all of this. That the Force seemed so determined just to make his life hell. Bruck must have been right when he said that even the Force would turn its back on him one day, to leave him forsaken in such a bottomless pit as this.

Soothing-Wrong-Expectations.

Obi-Wan’s muscles relaxed involuntarily as a slow breath left his lips, his shoulders un-hunching on themselves and the teen picking up his messed jumble of feelings and pushing them into the Force.

‘It does no one any good for me to wallow in self-pity like this. I…I can’t let this be the end of me, I won’t. I’m going to need to practice, to learn. That’s what I should do until I’m called to go on a mission. Learn. Find whatever archive they have here in the Glasshouse and use that to my advantage.’

He still had his datapad, but it belonged to Gren and he didn’t know when the man was going to want it back, so he couldn’t keep it. He’d have to find a way to get a new one.

‘Ok. It’s not great, but there’s the beginnings of a plan here. I just- no, wait. I need to give him back the datapad first. Ok, give that back first and then go looking for an archive they have in here and just….hope that they don’t throw me at another mission too soon.’

It wasn’t the galaxies greatest plan, all things considered, but it was all that Obi-Wan had. And if he was going to learn to survive, he was going to need to learn to trust in his plans.

Hopefully, somewhere along the lines, he would naturally pick up how to make a more comprehensive plan, too.

XXXxxxXXX

Obi-Wan was sat at an empty table in the Glasshouse’s archives, a surprisingly difficult task to complete, there were way more people that used the archives here than at the Temple, when it happened.

The doors to the archives slid open, a constant sound that Obi-Wan had already learned to tune out by now, and a muted series of gasps and exclamations reverberated through the usually pin-drop silent room. Blinking a couple times in surprise, especially considering he could only feel a few surges of shock in the Force –he had thought that no one shielded their mind here, unlike in the Temple, but that had been a silly thought. Of course, they still shielded themselves, they were still Force-Sensitives that had once been on the Jedi path after all–, Obi-Wan looked up and towards where it seemed to be originating from.

 Only for the poor pre-teen to lock eyes with a real, living and breathing, golden-maned targon. A golden-maned targon with all four of its pure red eyes locked directly onto him, stalking directly towards him as well.

His breath hitched and his hand twitched down towards his waist, where his lightsaber hung, on instinct. The action driven by nothing but a sheer, mind-blanking panic that overcame him at seeing such a large, deadly, creature approaching him specifically.

Yet his panic died a death as swift as its creation as a wave of bothered-dispassionate-calm forcibly washed over him. It was a weak wave of emotions, not like when crechemaster Vant would do it and calm the entire room down in seconds, but enough to shock him out of his panic just long enough to notice the reactions of everyone in the archives alongside him.

The shock was still there, plain as day on their faces but there was none of the fear or worry that he had expected when faced with such a creature. No, instead of fear, or panic, or worry, there was awe and admiration levelled at this creature.

With a clarity that suddenly hit him like a Force Push from Master Yoda himself, Obi-Wan realized that there was yet another thing that he did not know about the Glasshouse and the Agri-Corps as well. Another item to add to his vast and ever-growing list of topics to research with what little time he had to do so.

“Why is Wroshyr Fi’ged’s targon here in the archives?”

“Clearly it has some sort of business with that kid over there.”

“He’s clearly a newly arrived sapling! There’s no way that a Wroshyr would need something delivered that personally.”

“I don’t know, it’s walking towards him pretty purposefully.”

The whispers and murmurs from around Obi-Wan felt like they were flowing into his brain with a clarity that he had never felt before, his brain churning through them with a speed that he wished he could go through his studying with. This targon belonged to someone, someone high up, someone respected. It’s unusual to see it, let alone see it alone. However, it’s been sent to deliver personal items, or things of great importance before.

Yet despite all of the conclusions that he picked apart from their murmurs and whispers, Obi-Wan still couldn’t figure out why exactly it would be approaching him of all people. Except potentially if he was in some kind of trouble due to his paperwork and he needed to be collected for some kind of meeting, he supposed that that would warrant someone sending such a dangerous looking beast after him.

“Oh, Uh, Hello there?” He muttered nervously as the beast padded up to him, its four eyes locked onto him and him alone.

Two of them blinked slowly, followed by the other two only once the first two were fully open and aware once more. A neat evolutionary trick, Obi-Wan had to admit, yet very disconcerting to be on the receiving end of.

And then the creature opened its mouth, and let a rectangular wooden box slide out and land on the table with a quiet thump, dripping saliva onto the well-made desk.

“Oh.” Obi-Wan blinked in surprise, having not expected anything like that in the slightest, looking between the creature and the box unsurely.

It stared at him, its expression perfectly smooth, as if carved out of stone. If not for the constant barrage of weak Waiting-Hurry the pre-teen wouldn’t have had any chance of knowing what the creature was thinking.

So, with a slight grimace that he didn’t even bother to hide, he reached forward and opened the saliva-coated box, only to stare in vague stupefaction at what he saw inside. The innards of the box were cushioned and coated in a smooth, fairly pricey looking material that he wouldn’t have been surprised to hear had come from Alderaan or Naboo with two items lying inside.

A datapad, and a small metal card.

Plucking them both out of the box gingerly, he looked the card over, recognizing what it was almost instantly. It was an ID card, one that showed not only his name but also his affiliation as a member of the Agri-Corps –Oh Force it was really real now– and his status as a Solo-Evaluator.

‘It’s….It’s best that I don’t lose this.’ He thought, gulping silently and stuffing it into his pocket quickly before looking over at the datapad.

There was a small scuffle to his side as the targon grabbed the box back in its mouth and began walking away, bringing everyones attention along with it just long enough to give Obi-Wan some precious time to read the message that popped up on his datapad in peace.

Greetings, Initiate (Sapling) Obi-Wan Kenobi.

I am Master (Wroshyr) Vin Fi’ged, one of the highest sitting members of the Jedi Service Corps Agricultural branch. It is a pleasure to have you within our ranks despite the unusual manner toward which it was achieved and turned out. And I sincerely hope that you do not hold any ill-will towards us, despite understandably having every reason to.

Earlier today we had a meeting with the Field Team Leader of Bandomeer to discuss how their mission went and he brought up you and your situation, leading me to looking into your file further. Please be aware that while specific foundational rules of both the Order and the Agricultural Corps stops me from simply undoing everything, all the unusual changes and discrepancies in your flimsiwork have been noted and logged with a brutally close eye.

Due to your unique circumstances, I thought it prudent that a unique helping hand be offered in response. This datapad is a standard-issue Solo-Evaluator level model, please do your best not to damage or lose it. While we are certainly able to get more should it happen, we must keep a detailed log of all such purchases and would prefer to keep Senate and High-Council auditors at bay through any and all means, if possible. Please be sure to set up your own password and settings on the datapad to keep it secure and personalized to your liking. It is now officially your property and shall not be taken off of you under any circumstances barring only the highest of emergencies.

Unfortunately, I do have some bad news within this greeting to you. There is a planet that we need a Solo-Evaluator to go and log down the conditions of the planet’s overall flora and fauna condition. I understand that it is a lot to ask but unfortunately, as I’m aware you have already been told, we are stretched thin on members as it is, let alone Solo-Evaluators such as yourself. There have been reports of bandits on the planet causing some havoc, but we are also aware that there is a team of Jedi Knights on route to the planet themselves, so you shouldn’t have much to worry about. Please do your best to avoid getting in the Jedi Knight’s way, but do not allow them to get in the middle of your own task either.

You aren’t expected to leave for another 13 hours as of me writing this (0833 standard) so please take the time to look up and download what information you believe you may need and as one last gift. When you are prepared to leave, head to Hangar 88-43-B. A ship for your own personal use, to keep, will be waiting there for you.

Just be warned that its looks leave something to be desired.

May the Force be with you.

Well, wasn’t that just fun. Looks like he didn’t get nearly as much time to sit down and study as he was hoping to. Quite a few days less time than he was expecting, in all honesty.

And like a power-walking rocket he was out of his seat and rushing towards the archives computer terminals to download as much information as he could fit on his datapad, determined to make the most of his scant few hours left before he had to leave.

XXXxxxXXX

Eight Hours Later, The Glasshouse

Obi-Wan stared blankly at the ship parked within the hangar bay that he had been told was now his to keep and use. He had wondered how they just had a ship ready for him to take as his own, and what it would be like considering that fact.

Nothing that he had thought of could have possibly prepared him for the reality staring him dead in the eye.

‘No wonder they had one just ready for me to keep. This thing looks like it was built at the same time as the station.’ He scoffed to himself, pushing his reflexive surge of anger into the Force and ascending the small, somewhat rusted, ramp leading into the ship.

It was a fair-sized ship, he had to admit. It was easily able to house at least a dozen people, two-dozen mildly comfortably and about four-dozen at absolute max capacity based on his scant look around. It had a kitchen, three refreshers and even a small refectory area with some couches and a holo-table, though it looked about one miniscule power surge away from frying itself to death for good. It even had multiple blank spaces for potential changes or upgrades to the ship, not that he had any in mind right this moment.

Honestly, he wouldn’t have even minded being gifted this ship, if not for the somewhat rusted, aged exterior panelling and plating and the hyperdrive that looked so outdated he didn’t even know if he could still find it being sold by the slimiest scammer he could find in the Outer-Rim.

But he had no choice in the matter. He couldn’t afford to complain about this generosity, let alone try and avoid the mission he had been given. The only place he had left was in the Agri-Corps now, he couldn’t afford to squander it by any means, no matter what scraps were shoved haphazardly in his direction.

“Now I just need to plot my course and head off…” Obi-Wan muttered to himself, collapsing in the pilot’s seat of the ship with a small grunt and pulling up the name of the planet that he was being sent to on his datapad so that he could begin plotting an appropriate hyperspace route.

And on its screen, the name of his destination blinked rhythmically. The teen unknowing of how one, innocuous name would change the path of his future in its entirety.

Galidraan.

Chapter Text

Komari Vosa, 18-year-old Padawan of Yan Dooku, eldest living Padawan of Grand-Master of the Jedi Order, Yoda, and the only Force-forsaken woman on the entirety of this ship, could honestly say that she had never once felt the kind of tension that currently filled the ship holding the Jedi strike force on its way to Galidraan.

A Jedi strike force, the blonde-haired young woman almost tipped her head back in deranged, broken laughter at the thought.

It was, in every definition that the Padawan could think to define it, a complete mockery of the image that the Jedi not only tried to put out to the rest of the galaxy, but inwards to their own members as well. Though she wasn’t surprised at that fact; when it was the Senate that had rammed this operation through their halls at a speed that honestly had Komari wondering how they ever struggled to get legislation passed in the first place.

The speed and urgency made sense, she understood that in a logical sense, when the only major armed force in the galaxy, besides the Hutts, went around slaughtering the people of a planet and someone called for help, speed was of the utmost essence. The fact that the Senate had demanded such a huge contingent of Jedi, comparatively of course there were still only 11 of them, also made sense considering the threat that the Mandalorian System posed to some of their less than legal dealings and political talking points.

Yet to not ask the Jedi, but to flat out order and strongarm them into completing this mission left a bad taste on Komari’s tongue that wouldn’t go away no matter how much she tried to twist the wording of the situation to calm her nerves. The other Jedi on the ship, despite their skills with lightsabers and the Force, didn’t know more than the barebones basics of the mission and why they were being sent on it, and had this been any other situation neither would she.

However, Komari Vosa was, first and foremost, the Padawan of Yan Dooku, the Jedi Order’s foremost expert in Form II: Makashi, and the leader of not only this strike team, but the entire mission as well. A position that had given her a secret inside scoop on some of the nittier, grittier, details of the mission they were going on and how the Senate had tied 10 percent of their annual budget to their ‘agreement’ to send forces to deal with the Mandalorians.

It wasn’t a choice, not really, and everyone that knew about it recognized that fact too. A 10 percent reduction in their budget would, as far as Komari’s surface level knowledge of the Temple’s financial spending was concerned, absolutely demolish the Jedi Order on a level that even the Sith had failed to, so many centuries ago.

Such a sudden, drastic, reduction would require the permanent shutdown or severance of at least one of their four Service Corps branches, perhaps even two. And for as much as the Service Corps were where the Knight dropouts went to, and the fact that they were auxillary branches and not the main trunk like the Temple was, the Service Corps were still necessary for the Temple to function as it did.

A tree’s trunk still needed its roots for nutrients and water, and branches and leaves for sunlight, after all. The Temple was built strong and tall, but if its roots and branches were severed, it would wither and die as all others did, regardless of its size or age.

Master Dooku had done almost nothing except grumble about the overreach of the Senate and the Order’s reliance on the Republic since they had ended up on the ship, and Komari could hardly blame him. He had been a vocal advocate for distancing the Order from the Senates control for years even before he had taken her as a Padawan; and for this to happen? It was practically a giant, glowing sign that all of his preaching and rants were right.

But that unending grumbling was doing nothing to help the general mood of the rest of the Jedi on the ship. Wherever she looked, stone looks and grimaced expressions were all that met her, even the regular Jedi meditation having fallen out of practice as the Jedi found themselves unable to achieve balance amidst all of their constantly fluctuating emotions.

It was an issue that Komari herself regularly struggled with, much to the simultaneous amusement and consternation of Dooku; the young woman so energetic and hot-headed that finding long-lasting balance was likely to be an achievement she spent decades chasing after. Neither of his previous padawans, Rael Aveross and Qui-Gon Jinn, had ever had such an issue as the both of them had been able to find their own internal balance with an ease that still made Komari’s head spin, but she didn’t let it get to her.

After all, what was the point in comparing yourself to others when you were such fundamentally different people? Master Dooku never compared her to her brother padawans beyond the most superficial of comments, and thus Komari wouldn’t either.

Yet, walking through the refectory of the ship to grab herself a cup of –rapidly dwindling– tea, Komari couldn’t help but wonder why she of all people wasn’t having the same issues with emotional control as the rest of the Jedi on the ship.

She wasn’t sure what it was, because her connection to the Unifying Force, while stronger than her connection to the Living Force –a rarity that she shared with Master Dooku amongst the ‘Disaster Lineage’ as they had been called–, was hardly one that she would call ‘strong’. Add in the fact that doing anything regarding the Force while in hyperspace was a complete crapshoot and it left Komari with absolutely zero idea where this strange sense of peace that enveloped her had come from.

It’s like something bubbling and broiling beneath the confines of her mind had suddenly, and without warning, been taken off the heat and her nerves soothed and settled.

She had never been prone to visions of the future beyond the split-second precognition required for blaster deflection, nothing like what she had heard her friend Depa Billaba describe and most certainly nothing like she had heard from Master Dooku’s friend Sifo-Dyas, but that was the best explanation she had for what she was currently feeling. A vision so weak that it could only show itself as a premonition, but one of a brighter future.

She didn’t know what was in store for her, and likely the rest of the Jedi on this ship, down on Galidraan but she trusted in the Force as her Master had taught her. If the Force told her that, one way or another, the situation would turn out well, then she was sure that it would.

However, as she hummed a small tune to herself and poured a cup of tea for both her and her Master, the Jedi around her couldn’t help but stare. All of them wondering exactly what kind of Padawan Jedi Master Dooku had taken on for her to be looking forward to such a dreadful mission. Truly, only dark times could be ahead of them with a woman like this among their midst.

XXXxxxXXX

Meanwhile, Galidraan

“Su cuy’gar, Mand’alor.”

Jaster Mereel, Mand’alor and leader of the Haat Mando’ade, sighed from where he was bent over the portable holotable that they had set up within the command tent of their camp. Three of his trusted Mando’ad stood in designated spots within the tent, keeping both guard and watch over their well-loved leader.

The mess that had been Korda VI, and the attempt on his life that had left Death Watch quite a few members down and his knee with a less than perfect level of strength considering what it had once been before, had left his ori’ramikad with a –quite frankly ridiculous in his opinion– level of paranoia over his safety.

He understood where they were coming from, of course he did. If it had been someone else that had gone through what he had and not him he would have ordered the same kind of protection if he was to be honest. It was just the fact that it was being done to him that was his real problem with the whole situation, much to the amusement of his two ade.

“Su’cuy, Kal.” Jaster responded with a weak nod of his head, his buy’ce resting on the lip of the holotable at his side, ready to be placed on at a moment’s notice. “Anything to report?”

“Nayc, other than the strange movements of the ‘bandits’ we’re dealing with. Nothing out of the ordinary.” Kal Skirata, Jaster’s new second in command, responded easily before his weight shifted slightly and his buy’ce tilted to the left a little, “Well, maybe.”

“Oh?” Jaster smelt a new variable in the situation, and that was precisely what he needed at the moment.

This entire mission, everything from the governor’s story to the actions of the planet’s people and the movements of the ‘bandits’ they were hired to deal with as well –it had taken all of about twenty minutes and one undercover Mandalorian to discover that they weren’t true bandits but merely political dissidents– was fishy beyond anything that Jaster had ever experienced in his life except, possibly, Korda VI. The discovery of who it really was that they were dealing with had made the strangely large pay they had been offered make a slight bit more sense, but the expediency that the governor demanded and the nervousness in which he did so didn’t. From what they had discovered, there were still months left until the next election on Galidraan and none of the dissidents had all that much star-power amongst the general populace, so the anxiety surrounding this all just didn’t quite line up.

However, they had been here for a month and a half already and things had ground into a stale rut that Jaster knew had some of his men itching nervously. So, the introduction of a potential new variable, one that could shake things up a little and maybe, possibly, give them some more answers, was a welcome one in Jaster’s opinion. No matter who or what it ended up being.

“Three hours ago, a ship broke hyperspace above the planet and entered the atmosphere. Scouts reported only a Republic insignia on the ship but its worn and aged, hasn’t been re-applied in who knows how many years.”

“Must be notable if the scouts are relaying that information.” Jaster noted inquisitively, getting a nod and a slight snort from Kal as his buy’ce tilted back a few degrees momentarily.

“They sent through holo’s they took of the ship on its way down. There’s not a thing about it that screams ‘modern’. It may be slight hyperbole, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that that ship is as old as the Annihilation.”

Jaster let out a small whistle at that knowledge, the inner historian in him –that was still furious that the Jedi Archivist on Coruscant had blocked his comm-code– wondering exactly how old the ship was and what it had seen in all its years of service.

“Alright, so we have an ancient ship making dock planet-side with potential but not confirmed allegiance to the Republic?” Jaster confirmed, getting a nod from Kal as he sent through the Holo-still that had been sent to him for Jaster to bring up on the holotable, which he did.

Jaster couldn’t help but whistle a second time as he saw the absolute junker that had somehow found its way through hyperspace, though the military commander in him couldn’t help but start picking details apart as he noticed them.

“’Lek, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was that old either.” Jaster commented, before leaning further over the holotable with a hand on the edge to steady himself as he gestured to different parts of the ship, “But there’s unused modification points here, here, and here at the very least. Whoever has it either has very little money or sees no need in using them, which means that since there’s no weapons systems at all, we most likely aren’t dealing with pirates or criminals.”

“We can rule out merchants as well.” Jaster added on, making a sweeping hand motion over the entirety of the ship, “The ship is a fair size for a merchant vessel, I’ll admit. But have you ever seen a merchant using such a run-down junker with so much aesthetic damage to it? Not to mention no company markings and an insignia that faded. There’s not a merchant in the galaxy that would be caught dead using such a ship.”

“We thought so too. I ordered the scouts not to close in and investigate yet just to be safe.”

“Given the situation I don’t think they would be a threat, but get a couple of the verd to look into the ship and whoever was on it. Don’t approach, just look into where they came from and what they’re doing on the planet.”

“Understood, I’ll be sure to let them know. Are you permitting striile for this too?”

“Better to have them than not.” Was Jaster’s simple reply, which just got a low, deep chuckle from the man in response.

“Alright, I’ll be sure to let them know. If anything comes of it, I’ll inform you immediately, Jaster.”

“Alright, I look forward to good news.”

“As do I. We need some these days.”

XXXxxxXXX

Obi-Wan grumbled to himself quietly as he knelt down at the base of a tree with his hand pressed flat against the ground. His eyes screwed shut tightly and his breath both coming in and out in short, heavy bursts.

Not for the first time did Obi-Wan think about how he was the worst possible option in Dragon Clan, except maybe Bruck, to be placed into the Agri-Corps. Out of the four aspects of the Force –Cosmic, Unifying, Living and Physical– the teen was not only more aligned with the Unifying Force, but to a degree that honestly boggled the minds of the few that knew of it.

Which was, to say, Head Jedi Healer Vokara Che, Jedi Grand-Master Yoda, and his friends Quinlan, Bant, Reeft, and Garen. After all the troubles that it had caused both him and the rest of Dragon Clan in his childhood years, Obi-Wan wasn’t exactly in the habit of letting it slip how strongly he aligned with the Unifying Force.

That strong of an alignment meant that it took him a lot longer, and a lot more focus, to do anything regarding the Living Force, which was involved in about 90% of anything that the Agri-Corps did involving the Force.

On the hyperspace travel here to Galidraan he had done everything he could to learn and memorize what he needed to know to complete his survey of the planet and its flora and fauna. However, learning and doing were two completely different things, and unfortunately parts of his survey involved things regarding the Force.

The first part of the survey involving the Force was easy for him to do. All it involved was getting an overall read of the way that the Force felt on the planet, and one’s alignment didn’t matter in the slightest when doing something so simple. What did matter was the surveyor’s ability to open oneself to the entirety of the Force on the planet and let themselves get a real, thorough read of the way that the currents of the Force ebbed and flowed.

Galidraan was…honestly it was an interesting feeling planet, and one that he wasn’t quite sure whether he liked the feeling or not.

The Force of Galidraan was lively and vibrant, but there was a thick sheen of oil, or some other slimy substance, over the entire thing that felt surprisingly like what Coruscant had felt like to him. And while the planet didn’t seem to have any Nexus’ or particular alignment towards the Light or Dark within the Force, like some planets he had learnt of, there was an odd…something underneath the main Force current of the celestial body.

He would say that it was a shadow, like with Coruscant once more, but it seemed…weak. Like it was being chased away by something. Everywhere he had looked and sensed he had felt whisps of the cool darkness but they were weakening even as he had sensed them, desperately clinging to the planet with all that it had.

Naturally, the only conclusion that Obi-Wan could come to was that this was a response to the Jedi team on-route to the planet even as he spoke. It was the only thing that made any kind of sense. If there was anything that could chase away the darkness like this, it would be Jedi Knights and Jedi Master’s, even if some of them may end up being young or inexperienced.

Of course, he knew that the Jedi were far from perfect, better than him at least, but they were still, ultimately a force for good. Albeit….hamstringed slightly.

The reminder of what had been allowed to happen to Lush Verdant made him dry-heave minutely and nearly made him lose his focus on his task completely, which he was quick to rectify.

He had been trying to get this stupid exercise down for an hour now and was beginning to get low on patience, temper, and stamina. If he lost his focus now, he would have no choice but to give up until tomorrow, which he wasn’t exactly in the mood to do.

But the unfortunate reality of the situation was that he just didn’t have the strength or energy left to continue for much longer. The pre-teen lifting his hand from the earth with a shuddered exhale and wobbling a little unsteadily as he rose to his feet.

He hadn’t quite exhausted himself completely within the Force, he wanted to, ideally, have this done as soon as possible so that he could get back to the Glasshouse and keep learning about the Agri-Corps, and thus had managed to reign in his first impulse. Which was to continue bashing his head against the duracrete wall which was this Force Ability until he finally grasped it.

Also, the idea of exhausting himself and passing out in a snow-filled forest didn’t exactly appeal to him, on a number of levels.

“Heh. Look at me. Trying to learn and improve even after my last chance was wasted. I’m hopeless, aren’t I?” Obi-Wan murmured to himself, placing a hand on the trunk of the tree that he was stood next to.

The sound of footsteps behind him broke Obi-Wan out of his reverie with a suddenness that left him spinning and confused, the pre-teen turning on the spot and swaying backwards. A small unintelligible curse leaving his lips as he slammed backwards into the tree and knocked himself off to the side.

“Ne’johaa! Ash’ad jaon ogir. Besbe’trayce dayn.”

The voice that spoke was male, spoken through an external comm of some kind; gruff and aggressive. A kind of voice that had Obi-Wan’s already skyrocketing nerves shooting even higher.

Obi-Wan could only thank his propensity for spending hours in the archives researching for assignments for the speed at which his brain latched onto the foreign language and spat out possible answers.

A few of them didn’t mean much beyond a potential race for whoever had spoken to originate from, a few of them were worrying but not outright dangerous, one was grounds for his immediate death.

Mando’a, language of the Mandalorians, the Jedi Order’s second oldest enemies –technically third but the Hutt’s were in a strange grey area– and a sign that Mandalorians were actually on planet. Which was the absolute worst-case scenario and one that Obi-Wan desperately hoped wasn’t the case.

“I’m not a threat!” The pre-teen’s voice cracked as it pitched up in anxiousness, his words forced out so quickly that it was a miracle that he hadn’t bitten his own tongue.

Years from now, Obi-Wan would look back on that moment and sigh to himself. He would lambast his true naivety to the galaxy at large and the actions that that naivety had led him to take in that exact moment. He had had the advantage of being an unknown entity, of not being in sight yet, and of knowing that they were coming without them being sure if he knew. In one swift action he had undone all of that, and not even prepared himself to fight in the worst-case scenario.

Though, in that same token, this event had been the first in a long line of many to teach him all of those lessons and plenty, plenty more. Such as, for pure example, how best to deflect blaster fire while running in the opposite direction.

“Ibac pelkute….JETII!”

The shout, alongside Obi-Wan’s own growing anxiety, was all that he needed to start moving in the opposite direction to the shout, a blaster bolt whizzing past where his head had been only a moment later. Immediately following his pure-chance avoidance of immediate death, three figures burst from the foliage.

They were undeniably Mandalorian, just what Obi-Wan was dreading. Their armour, most likely beskar based on the fact that he could feel almost nothing from them in the Force, was painted a near-uniform black and blue with what looked to be painted on claw-marks on their left pauldrons.

Two more bolts lit up the shaded forest and Obi-Wan flung himself behind a tree with a strangled cry, digging at the snow and stumbling back to his feet before he’d even really finished hitting the ground.

“Hukaat’kama! Jetii’ruug cuyla gebi.”

Oh, if only Obi-Wan actually had some spare credits so that he could wear something other than these robes. Just a scant few minutes ago they had been a comfort, something that just reminded him of what could have been at absolute worst, now they painted a target on his back. A big target.

‘I need to keep moving, if they catch me it’s all over. I just need to get back to my ship or last until the Jedi get here, easy.’ Anxiously the pre-teen grabbed his lightsaber and rolled it in his grasp, trying to get his grip right as he took off running once more.

“Ogir! T’ad.”

The shout had Obi-Wan igniting his saber before he could even stop to think, the ex-initiate twirling on the spot and batting two bolts away before lurching to the side and bounding off a tree in a spot of blink-and-you’d-miss-it Ataru.

The teen’s heart was in his ears and his lungs screamed from the exertion he was placing on his body to keep away from the bigger, faster, fully grown warriors chasing after him with all that they had. He saw that two of them had jetpacks on them and made sure to move between, and stick as close to, the trees as he possibly could to keep them from using them to catch up.

However, his use of the Force-assisted movement and acrobatics of Ataru to keep ahead of the Mandalorian’s was tough, intensive on both the body and the user’s reserves of energy in equal measure, and thus he made a mistake. He drifted too far from the thick trees, made a break across an area nearby a steep decline just a little bit too large to be covered quickly and just a little bit too open to hold the trigger-happy Mandalorian’s back.

Alarm tore through Obi-Wan’s form like a tsunami as he heard the ignition of a jetpack, and his saber clumsily blocked a blaster bolt aimed at his heart and just barely missed one aimed at his right side. The intense heat of the bolt searing through his robes and charring his side instantly with a shout that seemed to ignite something in the airborne Mandalorian as he lurched forwards.

It was only the imminent fear of death that let Obi-Wan act even through the searing, blinding pain in his side and bring his saber up to weakly deflect a drawn blade aimed for his neck. The blade didn’t immediately crumple upon meeting his lightsaber even for the split-second that they’d made contact, so he assumed it was either beskar or some adjacent alloy, but not important.

Three more blows came his way, and he blocked the first two before being forced to take the third as a glancing hit to his arm to block the hip-fired blaster aimed at his chest once more. Another two blows were thrown at him with no mercy or hesitance, catching his thigh and lightsaber respectively as he bit back another cry of pain. A gauntleted fist slammed into his face and rocked him back, separating them just enough so that the Mandalorian could pull his pistol and fire once more, unfortunately having his bolt meet nothing but humming blue. Obi-Wan could feel the clarity in his vision dimming and his body slowing down as they fought, and knew that if he didn’t act soon, the other two Mandalorian’s would catch up, or this one would kill him.

A burst of energy filled Obi-Wan as he made a dive for the Mandalorian, tackling him back off the steep hill that they stood upon, his vision blacking out for a moment as the man made an alarmed sound and instinctually pounded the blunted pommel of his blade into Obi-Wan’s back.

The Mandalorian’s jetpack hit the ground first and scraped through the snow for a moment before catching on a rock and sending the both of them flipping through the air while still grasping at each other.

Air entered Obi-Wan’s lungs once more and his vision seemed to come back to him as the both of them chaotically tumbled through the air. This was his chance, his one and only chance to beat this Mandalorian and get out of this alive, he couldn’t waste it, he wouldn’t waste it.

The Mandalorian’s shoulder clipped the edge of a tree and sent them both spinning to the side, a garbled scream ripping itself out of Obi-Wan’s mouth as he flipped his lightsaber into a reverse grip and swung at the man he was clung to like his life depended on it. He man pummeling his side with both his beskar covered fists and the pommel of his blade as best as he could amidst defending himself from the wild, uncoordinated lightsaber clubbings.

He was twelve! He wasn’t meant to be doing any of this! He wasn’t meant to be here! He was meant to be back at the Temple! With his friends! Not out here in the snow! Not fighting Mandalorians for the right to live!

The two of them hit the ground once more and bounced once, meeting the root of a tree with a harsh sounding crack that lit the man’s jetpack to life with the sputtered sound of an ignition and a garbled cry of fear from the man’s external comm’s.

The two of them shot almost perfectly horizontal in the blink of an eye, the Mandalorian trying his best to straight himself out and steer properly but unable to calm his flight out through the pre-teen clung to him and still trying to wail on him with a bloody hand and burning blade.

There was a dull thunk as the warrior’s pauldron met the edge of a tree trunk and instantly dislocated his entire arm, a scream of pure pain ripping itself from his throat and all sense of control or discipline leaving him. Obi-Wan’s bare fist met the T-shaped visor of the screaming warrior and sent the both of them into an uncontrolled corkscrew that finally threw the both of them apart.

White and cold and spinning and pain were all that filled Obi-Wan’s senses for a moment before he finally slid to a stop with a pained groan, his thumb idly flicking the switch for his lightsaber and ending its usually soothing hum as he lay on his back in a pile of upturned and gathered snow. To his left an echoing crack that Obi-Wan couldn’t force himself to focus on reverberated through the forest like the detonation of a bomb.

Obi-Wan wanted nothing more than to lay there and fall asleep, to rest and recover from his myriad of injuries and try to go over his actions in peaceful meditation. However, he didn’t have that luxury, and he knew that he didn’t. So, with a pained groan that came directly from the pits of his soul he rolled over and agonizingly pushed himself up onto his knees and then found his way to his feet.

Snow bunched and scattered as his too-tired legs dug their way through it instead of expending the energy to lift them up and step down as he usually would. He could feel a headache blooming behind his eyes and he was no longer sure if the pain in his chest was from his lungs or one of his injuries but finally, he found what he was looking for.

The body of the Mandalorian that he had fought. Emphasis on the past tense.

Buried halfway into a tree and hanging limply, there was no question in Obi-Wan’s mind whether or not the man was dead. The way that the blood dripped from the bottom of his helmet and stained the top of his chestplate and pauldrons, the pre-teen was fairly certain that the man had made head-first contact with a tree about a thick as Obi-Wan was tall and died on impact.

A merciful death, maybe. Possibly. Probably not. But a painless one at least. Somehow, that didn’t make Obi-Wan feel better.

The lightsaber held in his already loose grip fell into the snow with a muted sound and his legs gave out beneath him. His eyes locked on the Mandalorian with a blank look devoid of all emotion.

“Osik! I know that I heard it come from over- There he is! I found him! The Ad’ika is over here! Motherfr- Kyr’tsad! He was fighting a Kyr’tsad!”

“And he’s still alive!?”

“Barely! Ad’ika! Ad’ika over here! Don’t fall asleep! Ad’ika just hold on a moment-“

The sound of numerous footsteps crunching through the snow, and the breathing of both humanoids and what Obi-Wan could only assume was numerous pets of some kind barely filtered into Obi-Wan’s awareness as the darkness on the edge of his vision encroached in, the pre-teen swaying dangerously even while knelt in exhaustion on the ground.

‘Oh goodie. More Mandalorians. Bruck was right, I really am nothing but trouble…’

The shouts from his side reached a fever pitch as he tipped forward, landing on something leathery and surprisingly smooth before he hit the cold, unforgiving earth. The soft, gentle vibrations rumbling through it being the last things he recognized before everything went dark and limp.

Chapter Text

“So, this is him?” Jaster asked as he walked into the medic’s tent, looking down at the young teen, perhaps even still a child, laid out shirtless on the bed as Mij Gilamar, the best field medic the ori’ramikad had to offer, applied bacta patches and smoothly stitched up one of the few open wounds on the teen’s torso.

“It is.” A mandalorian nodded sharply, gesturing towards the rest of the boy’s outfit and the possessions that they had scavenged off of him.

“He really is a Jetii. Where’s the Jetii’ka’s buir? Usually, a Jetii’ka should be attached at the hip to a Jetii’ruug.” Jaster questioned, tracing some fingers across the hilt of Obi-Wan’s lightsaber before turning back to face the leader of the scouts that had found the boy at the end of his fight.

And what a legendary fight that had apparently been. The other Kyr’tsad had been found and either killed or captured by the rest of the scout squadron but the one that had been fighting this Jetii’ka...Jaster had seen the holo’s that the squad had taken of all the evidence they could find of their fight, and it painted a particularly brutal picture, especially with the sparse holo-vids they managed to scrape off the Kyr’tsad’s buy’ce.

The boy had been forced to fight with everything that he had, and in the end had come out with a win only through ingenuity, luck, and a good bit of beskar-grade bullheadedness. Not that Jaster was disparaging him in the slightest, no he wouldn’t ever think of doing such a thing.

To win a fight against a mature adult at his age was impressive, to win a fight against a trained soldier was doubly so, to win a fight with someone once trained in the Mandalorian ways? To the Mandalorian standard? That was so impressive that he would honestly be surprised if the Jedi didn’t promote him to Knight on the spot the moment he got back to that temple of theirs.

And he would be getting back, regardless of what some of the rumours and whispering he had heard being passed around the camp had suggested otherwise.

Of course, given that the young boy was a Jedi, it was natural that some of the whispers he had heard had been of the boy’s demise, but fortunately, they had been soft, unsure murmurs. Things that were more questions, even to themselves, than genuine remarks or suggestions. Things that he wouldn’t have to start cracking down on people for or busting heads, protected by beskar or not. The far louder and more common thoughts he had heard though, involved somehow snatching the boy from the Jedi to become Mando’ad.

And considering the fact that the scouting group had also brought in the small Kyr’tsad squadron shortly after the boy had been brought in, including the boy’s own victory, he really couldn’t blame his people for suggesting such a drastic action. The scouts had been quick to correct anyone that questioned, or spoke loudly enough, about the true slayer of the shattered-necked –likely liquified brained too– Kyr’tsad that had been brought in, and it had been off to the podraces from there. The knowledge that he was a Jetii’ka hadn’t even slowed them down in the slightest, in fact, it had only made a few of his Mando’ad more fervent to get him into their clans.

Yes. This young boy, likely not even a teen yet, managing to kill one of their despised enemies was just that impressive.

“As far as we can tell, Mand’alor, not even planetside.” The scout responded tersely, and Jaster could understand why.

They couldn’t have known that Kyr’tsad was on the planet, they hadn’t even known, and they’d been here for a month, but for a Jetii’ruug to leave their ad’ika on a planet by themselves like this…

“You’re certain?” He couldn’t help but question.

He had to. He had to be certain. The alternative was just so foreign to his mind that he didn’t even know how to register the possibility that it could be true.

“We are, sir. We sliced into the ad’ika’s ship after bringing the dar’manda here and found evidence of only a single person having been aboard, the ad’ika himself. And he didn’t have much…”

They’d broken into the boy’s ship. By the great Manda above they’d not only actively approached but broken into and boarded the kid’s ship…

Jaster was going to end up in a bed right alongside the ad’ika, he just knew it. Especially if they kept dropping bombshells like that one him. No. That was not a challenge.

“Ignoring the fact that you did that in the first place. That’s quite worrying. What kind of buir would send their ad’ika off to a planet by their lonesome like this?”

“Not a very good one, sir.”

“Well, whoever they are-“ Mij finally entered the conversation, tying off the end of the last stitch while experimentally prodding a bacta patch on one of the boy’s worse blaster wounds to make sure it was attached and sealed properly, “They certainly trained him well. To get out of a fight with a trained warrior with only this caliber of injury is nothing short of a miracle. Either the Manda itself was on the boy’s side, or he’s some kind of fighting prodigy.”

“So, the injuries aren’t that bad then?” Jaster questioned, not even bothering to hide the tinge of hope underlying his voice as he asked.

“Oh, if they had been left untouched, they would be incredibly serious.” Mij replied simply and blandly, standing up and clapping their hands together softly, “However because he was brought to me so quickly, and we had the bacta patches and supplies to deal with it all, nothing will be permanent. Perhaps some superficial marking but with time and exercise he’ll be back to full capacity before he knows it.”

“Good, I’d hate for such a thing to ruin the ad’ika’s future. There’s going to be enough of a panic when he wakes up as it is without one of us having to tell him that he’ll be permanently injured.” Jaster muttered, getting a short but meaningful tilt of Mij’s head, as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him.

The scout snapped a quick salute to Jaster before making his way out of the tent, leaving just the two of them to talk.

“I don’t suppose that I could ask you to give the boy some space to avoid an unwanted reaction?” Jaster asked, his tone showing that he was already at least partially expecting the response he got in return.

“Not a chance. I’m not vacating my own tent just because of something like this. Besides, I want to be there when he wakes up to make sure that he’s ok and that there’s nothing I’ve missed.”

“Fine, I won’t argue that point any longer. Just try not to freak him out too badly, Mij.”

“I make no promises, Mand’alor.”

A quiet, laboured sigh left the man’s lips as his head fell forward a few degrees.

“Good day, Mij.”

“And you as well.”

XXXxxxXXX

It was with a great amount of difficulty, and an even greater amount of pain, that Obi-Wan managed to stubbornly drag himself back into the waking world. His head spinning and his limbs, while still responding and moving, roughly, how they should, heavy and lacking the usual practiced dexterity that they should have.

As little as that was for a washed-out not-even-a-padawan like him.

The quiet hum of machinery –not surrounding him, so he wasn’t on his ship– could be heard to his left and the soft, muffled sound of metal gently clanking against each other occasionally broke the monotony of the uniform beeps and whirls.

The bed didn’t feel like his one at the temple –why would it? Nothing would ever feel like that bed, he missed it– and it definitely didn’t feel like the old, stiff bunk bed that he had slept in, on his ship. Which meant that it was somewhere that he didn’t recognize.

A soft groan of pain involuntarily left his lips as he placed his hands on the bed to prop himself up, cracking an eye open exhaustively as he heard the unmistakable sound of a chair moving, and someone’s weight lifting off it entirely.

“You’re awake. That was fast, your fight was only yesterday afternoon.” The voice sounded strange, artificial somehow, a droid maybe?

Obi-Wan opened his mouth to speak as he slowly craned his head to the side to look at whoever it was that had helped him. His lone open eye just barely able to see through his thinly parted eyelids, but enough for him to catch specific details without blurring it all beyond recognition.

Like, for example, the unmistakable armour and T-shaped visor infamous across the galaxy for one people, and one people only.

“Manda-!” Whatever he was going to shout next went unspoken as he lurched backwards and fell off the side of what he vaguely recognized to be a foldable, military-style cot.

“Ad’ika!” The Mandalorian lurched forward with a hand out, and despite his swimming vision, Obi-Wan knew exactly why they were doing so.

The pre-teen pushed himself to his feet with a choked gasp, only for one of his legs to seize awkwardly as he tried to stand properly and send him right back to the ground. Or it would have, if not for the vaguely familiar feeling of something warm and somewhat leathery cushioning his body to stop him from hitting the ground.

“W-what am I-“ The pre-teen’s question died on his lips as he looked down at the creature beneath him, recognizing the six-legged creature that had ended the lives of well more than a handful of Jedi back when his people and the Mandalorians were at war.

A real, living and breathing striile, and one that his entire weight was resting on, leaving him utterly defenceless in the face of whatever it wished to do to him.

The teen was on his feet and stumbling back from the two of them before he even realized that he had pushed off the ground with his better leg; his vision swimming and his stomach doing flips.

“Ad’ika. You really shouldn’t be moving around too much.” Mij tried to calm his patient down, his hands out and on clear display as he tried to cautiously approach, making sure to keep him movements slow and steady.

“Mandalor- Hhhaaauuhh…” The teen’s newfound equilibrium seemed to fail him for a moment as his eyes unfocused a little, stumbling back another half-step and clipping the side of a small stack of boxes that he seemed to grasp on instinct to stop himself from falling over, clarity rapidly returning to his eyes.

“You’re injured and clearly exhausted, ad’ika. I’ll answer any questions that you want, you just need to lie down.”

“N-No way!” Obi-Wan scowled at the armoured man in front of him, the pre-teen’s temper getting the best of him as his thoughts seemed forced to swim through tar-pits and senate red-tape, “You’ll just- aaughg… J-Just kill me!”

The teen tried to call upon the Force to help bolster his body and call his lightsaber –why did his Kyber chime with safe-rest-please?– to his hand, only for a bolt of pain to lance through his head, his balance wobbling unstably once more as his legs slowly started to buckle beneath him despite his best efforts.

“No. We are not harmers of ad’ika, of children.” Mij stressed heatedly, swapping to Basic to make sure that his point got across properly to the teen that he just realized probably didn’t understand what ‘ad’ika’ meant, “Ad- Children are the future and the greatest treasure. This is the true Way. Of that I swear to you on all my beskar.”

Something about what he had just said, the words, sincerity, body language, or perhaps some kind of Force osik, seemed to have finally convinced the boy of his sincerity because he just let out a tired little whine and wavered valiantly on the spot, clutching the stack of boxes as his last lifeline to stay to his feet.

It was quick work to get the pre-teen back into his cot and for the man to do a quick check to make sure that he hadn’t accidentally done more damage to himself in his haste to escape. Luckily, he hadn’t, but a medic could never be too sure.

A soft whine to the pre-teen’s side made him flinch slightly and shift to the opposing side of the cot, a wary look shot down at the six-legged creature that looked up at Obi-Wan with a look that Mij knew even with a half-hearted glance to be nothing less than an absolute begging for love and attention. As well trained as Stim was –the name was hilarious for a medic-owned striile, thank you–, he was still just the galaxies largest attention whore and everyone on camp knew it. Except, it would appear, the poor Jetii’ka who was looking at Stim as if he was about to bite the poor ad’ik’s hand off.

“Alright, you probably have some questions, right?” He grabbed his chair and pulled it over to sit beside the pre-teen’s bed, but far enough back that the ad’ika wouldn’t have a fighting chance to avoid him if he suddenly lunged.

Of course, at this distance, it would be quicker and easier just to pull a blaster on the boy, but he imagined that it wouldn’t do much for his hard-won patience and calm to be informed of that fact.

“Why…help me?” The boy's gaze slid between Mij and what remained of his possessions that they had managed to scavenge from the battle-site, which very importantly included the jetii’kad lying oh-so-innocently atop the small pile.

“Because, quite frankly, you’ve become a bit of a legend in the camp, ad’ika.”

“H-Huh?” Whatever the Jetii taught their young, clearly, they hadn’t gotten too far into their training of this particular ad’ika, because the confusion was easy to see on his face.

Though it could also be the pain and clear exhaustion affecting his responsiveness, that was very possible too.

“The dar’manda that you fought- Ah. Hm. The…exile that you fought was a member of Kyr’tsad, or Death Watch. A fanatical, extremist, terrorist faction amongst our people that we have been trying to stamp out for years now, and have been the cause of many casualties and tragedies in that time.”

“Oh. I see…” Obi-Wan blinked owlishly at him, his gaze shifting guiltily between his legs and the armoured medic at the foot of his cot as he realized that he might have been staring a bit too much in his surprise.

“Taking a Mandalorian out, even a half-wit Kyr’tsad, is a mighty accomplishment for one of your presumed age. And thanks to you, we’re actually aware that they’re on the planet now, which is a boon that I can’t even begin to describe to you, ad’ika. Without that knowledge, who knows what they could have done to us. So, I mean this from the bottom of my heart when I say, partaylir ibic entye.”

“P-Partahleer ibic enteh?” Obi-Wan stumbled over the words with a scrunched-up expression, looking clearly put out by the sincerity of Mij’s words, even if he had yet to be taught the significance of them.

“I will remember this debt.” Mij translated, amusement bubbling beneath his visor at the wide-eyed look of alarm that came over the pre-teen in an instant.

“I-It’s really not worth owing a debt to me. It was pure luck and nothing else.” The boy muttered, the energy in his voice dying a quick and painful death as he began to silently pick at the thick material of his initiates robes, at least what had been left on his lower half.

“And yet one of you is able to get back up and one can’t. Don’t discredit luck, ad’ika. It’s gotten far greater men than either of us, far further than they would have ever reached otherwise. Now, how does your arm feel when you raise it?”

XXXxxxXXX

A few hours later, Haat Mando’ade Camp

Jaster couldn’t keep the grin off his face as he stood out the front of Mij’s tent alongside the medic himself, his buy’ce sat firmly atop his head and his Ori’ramikad at full alertness within the loose formation that they followed him with.

The knowledge that Kyr’tsad was planetside had taken all of about a few minutes to make its way through the camp once the scout squadron and their victories had made their way in, and with it had come a fire that had slowly been dwindling from his people in the month of monotonous peace.

Which, he imagined, was the preferred and expected outcome of the Kyr’tsad considering that they had apparently known of the Haat Mando’ade being on-world while keeping themselves hidden. While they were here there were things that they couldn’t do that they could in one of their own bases or fortresses. Waste ammunition on training, risk injury via that very training, afford to let their guard down to properly relax and unwind in whatever traditions the Mando’ad around him happened to hold.

Staying on Galidraan with the same, monotonous routine day in and day out and those restrictions had slowly worn down the battle-readiness and combat-effectiveness of his men and women. Had an attack come, especially from Kyr’tsad, the fight that they would have been able to put up would have been pathetic compared to their true might. A deadly trap that they had been ensnared in and hadn’t even realized until the copper-haired Jetii’ka had burst onto the scene and forcibly broken down the poisonous illusion around them.

Which meant that now the camp was in full war preparation mode, full beskar’gam at pretty much all times, and a preparedness and alertness that had been sorely missing in the past couple of weeks. To call the Haat Mando’ade rusty after only a month of this routine would be an exaggeration, but to claim that small flecks of orange had not appeared over the month would be a lie as well, and they all knew it.

Sadly, this also meant that Jaster couldn’t go anywhere without his guards following him anxiously at all times. A necessary precaution, he was aware, but a highly aggravating one as well.

“Are you sure that it’s alright for me to go in if the Ad’ika is taking a nap?” Jaster questioned the medic, his half-questioning and half-deadpan expression somehow managing to show itself just through the tilt of his head and the slouch in his shoulders.

“It’s a rather fitful nap; I can’t exactly claim that he’s getting much rest from it.” Mij sighed in annoyance, adjusting his kom’rk idly, “Usually I’d say not to, but at this rate, he may actually wear himself out more in his sleep than while awake, so this is probably the best option.”

“You make it sound like talking to me is such a third-place option, Mij.” Jaster mimed clutching a hand over his heart as he walked inside the tent alongside the medic.

At his side, the buy’ce of Mij only rolled slightly, a clear indication of the identical actions that his eyes must have taken in that moment, no doubt.

“Because it is. Perhaps talking to you for long enough will put the poor boy to a deep enough sleep to help him out a little.”

“Hah hah.” Jaster deadpanned, able to find no tells in the man’s body language but absolutely certain that he was smothering a laugh beneath that buy’ce of his.

With a silent exhale, the Mandalor merely turned to look down at the sleeping, most likely saviour of his people, raising an eyebrow beneath his buy’ce as the teen twisted and turned in his cot. He couldn’t blame Mij for letting him come in and interrupt the kids' sleep right now, it looked like whatever he was getting was most certainly not restful.

“Ad’ika. Ad’ika, up you get.” He spoke, trying to entice the pre-teen out of his dreams as he knelt at the side of his cot and gently touched a hand to his arm, suppressing both the flinch and his urge to pull a weapon as both of his eyes snapped open in an instant.

Grey-blue eyes stared blankly into the visor of his helmet, somehow seeming to see nothing at all and yet straight through the Force-inhibiting beskar simultaneously. A weight in his gaze that Jaster couldn’t name, couldn’t even recognize, and yet one that he knew was important in a way that he could never properly put into words.

The pre-teen’s eyes blinked slowly, and the weight behind them disappeared, clarity and light returning in an instant and alarm following shortly after.

“Ah-!” The teen lurched back with all the speed that he could muster, but luckily for him Stim had been prepared this time and thus had placed themselves propped up on the opposite side of the cot to stop the boy from hitting the ground yet again.

Which, once he realized what exactly had caught him, only made him flinch back firmly onto his bed to avoid touching the six-legged creature. An act which only got a sad whine in return as it sat upright with four legs on the ground and two curled up against its chest, giving Obi-Wan its very best puppy dog eyes.

“I think you’re going to break Stim’s heart, Ad’ika. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him be denied attention quite so well.” Jaster couldn’t help but joke, only getting a slight grimace from the teen before he took a small but meaningful breath and seemed to unwind and relax ever so minutely.

‘Ah. There’s the Jetii teachings that I was expecting.’ Jaster thought to himself, taking a moment just to marvel in and ingrain every moment of Obi-Wan’s relaxation into his mind with as much detail as he possibly could.

Because as much as he had tried, his knowledge on the Jedi was still woefully small despite even going so far as to call the Jedi Temple multiple times-! No, now wasn’t the time to start getting annoyed over being blocked by the Head Jedi Archivist…again.

“It’s a-“ Obi-Wan’s mask of impassivity fractured as his grip on his pants tightened and his eyeline flicked away from Jaster for just the briefest of moments, a muscle in his jaw tensed, “Pleasure to meet you, sir. May I ask what has brought you here?”

Every single lesson and lecture he had ever learnt on negotiations and diplomacy, disappointingly little considering he had never been able to join the Padawan lessons, swirled around through his mind with the speed and force of a train going at full tilt as he asked the question of the Mandalorian in front of him. A Mandalorian that, based on everything that he had seen so far, was incredibly important; not that Obi-Wan would be able to tell anyone why or in what manner.

“Hm, pretty polite of you, Ad’ika. I had thought that the Jetii would have taught you bedtime nightmare stories of our people.” Jaster spoke, clearly in jest but not so much so that he didn’t believe what he was saying.

No, if Obi-Wan had to hazard a guess, he fully believed that the Jedi would do that, but found the idea more humorous than anything else. Not that he could entirely blame the man for that kind of viewpoint either, he was certain the Mandalorians told horror stories of the Jedi themselves.

“Mij explained the difference between you and Kyr’tsad before. I know that you are not my enemy.” His voice wavered for a moment as he said the word ‘enemy’, a natural warble that elicited a strong enough flinch out of him for both Jaster and Mij to see it without even needing to be looking.

Honestly, Jaster couldn’t help but feel bad for the boy. He was exhausted in more ways than one and incredibly injured, not to mention surrounded by people that everyone close to him has no doubt vilified for as long as he can remember. It was bound to be a strain on anyone’s emotional control, and the boy in front of him was no exception.

Already, he could see the boy growing angrier, though seemingly at himself, for the catch in his voice when he had tried to claim them not his enemies, and then growing more annoyed when he realized he was losing his cool in front of him and Mij. Not that Jaster actually cared all that much or held it against the boy in the slightest.

Honestly, he just wished that his own children had half the level head on them that this young Jedi seemed to have. The boy was clearly no seasoned diplomat or negotiator, but the beginnings of one were plain to see in his decisions and mannerisms. The choice to try and civilly talk to him, even taking his exhaustion and injuries into account, and not shutting down or rudely cutting them off, was one that he could appreciate and respect.

Perhaps if he introduced this ad’ika to Jango and Arla, he could finally get them to stop pulling knives on the people they were meant to be negotiating with.

…Probably not, but a Mand’alor could hope.

“We are not; you are correct.” Jaster nodded simply, his gaze travelling over the myriad injuries that coated the teen's form, “You asked what brought me here before, and the answer to that is varied.”

There was a short moment of near silence as the pre-teen took a deep breath in through his nose and tried to hold it in some kind of picture of tranquillity, only for a flinch of pain to shatter the boy’s decorum entirely as his entire held breath left his lips with a shuddered wheeze.

“Try not to stretch your ribs, ad’ika. You have bruises on quite a few of them that are sure to be painful.” Mij consulted from the sidelines, just getting a wary nod from the teen.

“I…will answer what I can,” Obi-Wan muttered, looking every bit the age that he was as he tried his best to meet Jaster’s gaze.

“You assume that I have questions for you?” Jaster jested, his head tilted to the side.

Obi-Wan’s expression looked somewhere between shell-shocked and sick, his mouth opened to say something, no doubt some kind of apology, only for Jaster to cut him off before he could even start.

“You’ll have to forgive me, ad’ika. I was just joking with you. I do have some questions to ask. But I’ll start with the most important part first.”

The pre-teen’s eyes widened as his expression melted into one of pure shock as the man’s fist met his chestplate with a solid ‘twang’ of beskar on beskar. His stance perfectly ramrod straight and his helmet tilted to lock onto Obi-Wan’s face with an almost robotic precision.

“On my oath to the Resol’nare, my duty as Mand’alor, and great Manda above. Partaylir ibic entye, Jetii’ka.”

‘What- Resol- Manda- Oh no.’ The realization hit Obi-Wan just a moment too late, the empty “It’s not worth that much.” leaving numb lips as the full weight of the situation crashed down on his head.

Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ex-initiate, the failure Jedi, the one that couldn’t even find one Knight or Master to train his sorry hide, regardless of how hands on or hands off they decided to do so, had somehow managed to find himself on the same planet as the Leader of the Mandalorians and with that very same leader swearing a debt to him.

He felt like he was going to be sick. He was going to be sick. No, wait, none of this was his stuff, all of it was Mandalorian and had worth to them. He could keep it all in, he’s sure he could. Release his emotions into the Force, that’s what he should do. Wait no, Force exhaustion, he can’t. Manually keep the bile down it is.

“You may not think so, but trust me. You have given us far more than I think either of us will realize for a little while to come.” Jaster chuckled, clearly meaning his comment in a light-hearted way, yet all Obi-Wan could feel from it was a sense of dread, “Consider yourself lucky that I have only sworn one debt, for now. There are other members of the Haat Mando’ade that will likely go a lot further than that.”

“That’s….really not necessary,” Obi-Wan muttered, looking down and fiddling with the thick fabric of his pants once more.

“It’s easier to accept it and move on, Jetii’ka. Not even your upbringing will dissuade them, I’m afraid.” Jaster chuckled, though he did make an internal note of the flinch that the teen let out; it seemed slightly different to his pain-caused flinches somehow.

“If you say so…Sir.” Obi-Wan tacked on quickly at the end, his head shooting up to give Jaster a worried look, and the anxiety practically overflowing from the teen in a way that he didn’t think a Jedi was capable of.

‘Though he is just a boy in what would amount to a nightmare’s den for him.’ He reminded himself, trying to make sure that he didn’t push the boy too far or do anything that might be considered too much.

“I do. Now, I believe I mentioned that I do have some questions for you. And I would very much like to ask them now, Jetii’ka.”

“Oh! Right. Yes. I’m sorry. Please…ask away.” Truly, while clearly unrefined and quite blemished at the moment, Jaster could see the makings of a diplomat in the boy with the way that he tried to centre himself and rebound from his mistakes.

He would definitely have to keep an eye on this particular Jetii, that was for sure. Not to mention, it would absolutely help to have a contact within the Jedi Order. One could never know what the galaxy would throw at them, and a quick and reliable way to get a message through and into the Jedi Order would be a great help should a situation ever arise that needed him to get in touch with them.

“Of course. First of all, my name is Jaster Mereel, of Clan Mereel. What may your name be, ad’ika?”

“Oh. Obi-Wan Kenobi.” The pre-teen muttered in a slight daze, caught off-guard by such a simple and innocuous question when he had honestly been preparing for something far, far more invasive.

Yet the moment that he spoke his name, he realized his mistake, flinching a little at the way that both Mandalorians just seemed to still. He had forgotten, after so long at the Jedi Temple, surrounded by people who didn’t know heads from tails about Stewjon –the planet of his birth–, that of everyone in the galaxy, save the Stewjoni themselves, the only ones that would have an idea would be the Mandalorians.

It had been centuries since Stewjon had considered itself under the Mandalorian banner, now standing as a highly isolationist neutral planet belonging to no conglomerate, but the practice of The River and the Kenobi’s was one far, far older than that split. Thus, a practice that no doubt would have been recorded somewhere in the Mandalorians' history books, even if not common knowledge to the general public.

“That- to name a child that-“ Jaster muttered, his fists clenching as his shoulders seemed to shake a little.

“It’s just how Stewjon does things. Getting angry over it won’t change anything.” Obi-Wan muttered, a deep frown on his face, but a hard steel in his eyes.

While he had never forgotten the meaning of his name, and the origins that had spawned it, being with the Jedi had honestly helped him to establish a meaning to that name other than one destined for isolation and the river. He may never come to outgrow the true meaning of his name, but he could at least make sure that he did his best to leave it in a better place for the next Obi-Wan Kenobi to grace the galaxy. Perhaps one day, with the sacrifices of enough Obi-Wan’s, they would even come to give the name a new meaning. But that was a task for well in the future, not one worth getting stuck in his head over now.

“That doesn’t make it ok, ad’ika.” Mij responded stoically, an angry huff leaving Jaster’s comm’s as he began to pace back and forth.

“And the Jetii just let you keep that name? They didn’t even try and give you a new name? A proper one?”

‘No. Because they must have realized it was the one most fitting.’ The thought flashed through his mind even as he flinched at the harshness of the Mandalor’s words, hot anger bubbling in his gut at the attack on his friends and family.

“The Jedi don’t know the meaning of my name.” He bit back.

He had to get a hold of himself. It would do him no favours to get angry here. No favours to make enemies of the only surviving culture to go to war with the Jedi and come out the other side. He couldn’t afford to lose his stupid temper here, not here and certainly not now.

“And they never sought to ask? The Jedi of all people truly cared that little of your birth culture?” Jaster questioned, sounding both angry and disappointed in equal measure, yet confused too.

As if he were trying to wrap his head around the viewpoint of the Jedi, find something that he wasn’t seeing that would make this all peacefully make sense, and fail to do so entirely.

“I do not wish to speak of this anymore.” The declaration left his lips before he even realized that he had spoken. The boy hunched forward and refused to look at either of the Mandalorians as he spoke.

“Ad’ika choosing to hold the name is one thing, but for them to not even bother granting you a new name is-“

“I don’t want to talk about it!” Obi-Wan hissed, sitting upright with a fire in his eyes and his teeth gritted so hard it felt like a couple of them might crack under the pressure.

The silence that followed his exclamation was almost deafening. The lack of noise suffocating the young boy and the beskar armour of those around him, plus his inability to currently use the Force, dunking his senses beneath thick, disorienting oil. He couldn’t maintain his equilibrium no matter how hard he tried, and every mention of the Jedi just seemed to throw what little balance he regained right out the window yet again.

He just wanted to rest.

“…Alright, ad’ika. We’re sorry.” Jaster finally murmured, sadness and regret thick in his voice as he stopped pacing and faced Obi-Wan front-on once more. “Do you mind if I ask the other questions that I had?”

With his temper momentarily boiled over and both the physical and mental exhaustion creeping up on him like a hunting tooka, Obi-Wan could do nothing but nod silently and lie back on his bed.

“Thank you, Obi-Wan,” Jaster said sincerely, clasping one fist inside the other and nodding his helmeted head quickly.

Oh, how he so violently wished that he didn’t have to worry about an attack from Kyr’tsad right now so that he could safely take his helmet off without being yelled at…

Oh well, what’s done is done. He’d find some way to make it up to Obi-Wan, he’d make sure of it. But for now, it was probably best to ask his questions and get the boy’s mind off the conversation that they had been having, a double win if Jaster had ever heard one.

“First of all, how did you even end up running across Kyr’tsad-“

Chapter Text

“Hm. So that’s the Jetii kid.” Jango Fett, adopted son of Jaster Mereel and one of the last two members of the Fett family, muttered to himself as he walked into the Haat Mando’ade camp’s training ground.

After his father’s conversation with the kid yesterday, he had told Jango and Arla all about him, who he was, and what he had done. Despite the fact that he was a Jetii, the two Fett children couldn’t help but find the red-haired boy impressive. Dealing with a member of Kyr’tsad was something that the two of them would struggle with, so to hear that some random Jetii’ka had managed to do so, and without their buir around too, was an enjoyable surprise.

However, his father had also told them of how quickly the boy had shut him down when he had tried to ask about the boy’s name and where his Jetii’ruug was. Which Jango could understand as far as his name went, he didn’t know the exact details behind it like Jaster and Mij did, but he knew enough of his ancient Mandalore history to know that the name held some not-so-positive connotations amongst the Stewjon people.

What confused him, though, was why the kid had shut down so violently when Jaster had tried to figure out where the Jetii’ruug was, or how he could get in touch with them.

That confusion had actually been why Jango had gone looking for the kid as soon as he had woken up, only to find out that he had left the medical tent to go to the training ground to work on some basic exercises to stop himself from seizing up and to keep himself limber.

Yet now, he saw the young teen going through a series of slow motions, katas, with his fancy Jetti’kad and a look of supreme concentration on his face. The movements were simple, linear, and above all else efficient, none of the special twirls and flips that he had seen from the few holo-vids available of Jetii fighting or from the few history books that Jaster had managed to strong-arm him into reading.

He had come out here to ask the kid some questions and get a face-to-face look at the kid that had half the camp trying to adopt him, but now that he was seeing him going through fighting stances, he couldn’t stop the idea beginning to bloom in his mind. Which is why, after about twenty seconds of watching, he began to make his way forward, scanning the training field for the chest where they tended to keep some of their training weapons.

It was when he was about six steps out –four and a half meters, too close to confidently pull a blaster if the teen made a sudden leap at him– that the Jetii finally noticed him. The boy jolting and switching his Jetii’kad off in an admirable display of weapons safety that he’s sure his own father would have begun crying at, considering his and Arla’s propensity to keep their safeties switched off as much as possible.

“Oh. Hello. Am I in your way?” The boy looked left and right, as if trying to tell what he might be blocking Jango from getting to, which only got a slight snort from him.

“No, you are the way.” Jango responded, mirth clear in his tone as he made a small hand gesture towards the other teen, “Saw you doing those katas and got interested in seeing how good you really are.”

The teen stared at him for about a second before his eyes widened slightly, realization sparkling across his expression at the exact same time as mortification seemed to envelop the kid like the world's least helpful blanket.

“Oh- That- No. I’m…I’m really not that good with them. The, uh, the katas.” Obi-Wan muttered awkwardly, clipping his lightsaber to a small hook on his belt as he did so.

“Really? Seemed pretty solid to me.” Jango shot back.

He didn’t believe the Jetii’s reaction for even a fraction of a second. Oh, he definitely believed that Obi-Wan himself didn’t think he was very good, but he’d heard how brutal his fight with the Kyr’tsad had been, had seen –briefly– the corpse of his opponent, and had seen his movements just then. The young teen may not be a master combatant, but neither was Jango, and that was perfectly fine if you asked him.

The both of them had room to grow, to refine, and to learn. And Obi-Wan Kenobi was, with no lie to be found in Jango’s mind, the only person even close to his age that he had found with movements even close to as refined as his own. Sans Arla, of course. Not that he’d ever say that to her face or let her know that he’d said that.

“That…” Obi-Wan seemed to flounder for a moment before shaking his head slightly, “I’m really not. I practice a lot, so my movements look fairly smooth, but that’s just when practicing slowly like this.”

“Oh, really? Guess we'd better put that practice into action then.” Jango chirped, a sharp grin stretching his lips as he walked past Obi-Wan and kicked one of the chests open with a sharp jerk of his leg.

“Wha- Wait no-“ Obi-Wan’s confused interjections were cut off entirely as something long and thin was thrown over Jango’s shoulder towards him, his right arm snapping up to grab it on instinct.

With a quick look over his shoulder to check on Obi-Wan, the Mandalorian could only whistle quietly as he saw that, whether through skill or luck, Obi-Wan had actually managed to catch it by its handle, though a bit closer to the ‘weapon’ part of the training tool than one might be comfortable with. As for Obi-Wan, he merely stared at the object in his grasp for a couple of seconds before realizing that what he was holding was some kind of modified stun baton about the same length and size as a lightsaber or vibrosword.

“You only use one weapon, right? Not a dual wielder?” Jango asked, grasping his own baton out of the chest and standing upright, doing a couple of test swings with it with a squinted look of concentration.

“No, only one,” Obi-Wan responded slowly, looking between his baton and Jango.

He didn’t want to get into a fight with a Mandalorian while actively relying on them for his own health and being held at their mercy, but he got the distinct, sinking feeling that he wasn’t going to get out of this situation without agreeing to the mysterious Mandalorian’s wishes. Which was….less than ideal, but hopefully that whole ‘warrior culture’ of theirs would come in handy for a change?

He didn’t think that it would; his luck wasn’t that good, but a poor ex-Initiate could hope.

“Seemed that way, you ever used one of these before, Jetii?” Jango questioned as he rolled one of his shoulders and shook his legs out a little bit.

“I can’t say I have, no,” Obi-Wan responded dryly, examining the weapon in his hands.

A rubbery handle with sharp indents and grooves, to aid one’s grip, and a small control panel not too dissimilar to a lightsaber. Which meant that it was the work of seconds for him to switch the weapon on, staring blank-faced at the thin, dimly glowing strips along the metallic bar that stuck out of the handle with a growing sense of doom.

He really wasn’t getting out of this. Not just that, but he was now being expected to fight this Mandalorian with a weak body and a weapon that he had never even held in his life, let alone have any kind of proficiency with.

At least it was rounded like a lightsaber and not stuck solely to a singular edge, that was to his benefit if nothing else.

“You figured it out already, you’re a natural,” Jango responded with an easy-going grin and a small twirl of his own baton before, with a quiet hum of electricity, its own glowing strips of energy lit up along the metallic rod making up the main portion of the weapon.

“Thank you for the compliment?” The failed initiate responded somewhat awkwardly, sliding into the opening stance of Shii-Cho.

“You’re welcome, Jetii,” Jango responded before his expression hardened to match the blank look of concentration on Obi-Wan’s own features.

The first strike slid off Obi-Wan’s defence as if the pre-teen was never even there. The following three strikes met the same result with just as much proficiency, though it was in the following swipe that Obi-Wan made at Jango that finally revealed something interesting to him.

‘Wide, sweeping movements. Quick, effective. Too slow for fighting me.’

Jango brought his baton up and around to knock two of Obi-Wan’s strikes off-course and away from his body, and stepped in close to force the red-haired ex-Jedi onto the back foot.

He was successful in that endeavour; however, his rough, aggressive thrust of his baton towards his opponent’s side only skittered off the glowing rod of Obi-Wan’s own baton, sparks and small arcs of electricity dancing off their respective weapons.

‘His defence is faster than his offense, tighter too. A different movement pattern.’ Jango thought to himself as he backed up a step and knocked Obi-Wan’s wide swing away with a far tighter swing of his own baton.

‘So long as I stick to Shii-Cho on offense, I shouldn’t have to worry too much about my injuries; there’s no way I could pull off even the simplest of Ataru moves at the moment.’ Obi-Wan rotated on the spot to dodge a grab at his side from Jango’s free hand and knocked his baton downwards when the older teen used his momentum to bring his weapon around towards his shoulder.

‘It’s a fairly clumsy movement pattern when you really look into it.’ Sparks of electricity danced between the two of them for a moment as their weapons met three times in quick succession, a thin sheen of sweat already forming on Obi-Wan’s brow, ‘But the movements encourage a certain aggressiveness that keeps me on the back foot. However, it’s his defence that’s worthy of praise.’

‘If I can keep up my Soresu, what little of it I know, I can chip away at his stamina and hopefully call an end to the fight without having to make contact with my baton.’

It was the only way out of this without making the entire camp angry at him, he figured, making sure that the teen in front of him came out of this completely unharmed, or as much as could be reasonably expected. He was already on thin ice, with them being Mandalorians and all, and the last thing that he wanted to do was ruin what little goodwill he had somehow, accidentally, managed to trick them into feeling for him.

Their batons scraped off each other again, and a fist grabbed the front of Obi-Wan’s shirt, a startled yelp leaving his lips as Jango rolled forward and used his momentum to throw Obi-Wan over his curled back and launch himself after him. However, even that, while a complete surprise and more than knocking Obi-Wan off his feet both figuratively and literally, wasn’t enough to give Jango a free hit on the pre-teen, their batons clashing once more as Obi-Wan rolled into a crouch and placed his weapon between them.

Unfortunately for Obi-Wan, however, his injuries chose that exact moment to flare up in red-hot flares of pain that slackened his arms and drained any semblance of stamina he might have had. Jango’s baton broke clean through his guard and struck his arm, getting a cry of pain from the ex-Jedi as he collapsed onto his side involuntarily, just enough electricity surging through his system to lock his entire body up, but thankfully not enough to cause any real harm when striking such a non-vital location.

“Jango Fett!”

Unfortunately for the Mandalorian teen above him, who had just gone from a proudly victorious warrior to a death-row inmate in the span of about a quarter of a second, it appears that Mij didn’t have quite the same thoughts about the weakness of their batons as Obi-Wan himself did.

“Mij! You’re looking…spry.” Jango attempted, futilely, to try and cool down the medic’s anger as he stomped towards them, Stim on his heel like always.

“What exactly do you think you were doing with my patient?” The elder Mandalorian snapped, glowering down at Jango as he approached the teen.

At least both teens could only assume that he was; the helmet made it a bit hard to tell, but it definitely added to the intimidation factor of it all.

Once Mij got close enough, Stim broke off and galloped the last few steps to Obi-Wan’s side, nudging him with his nose and getting a tired groan from the pre-teen as he pushed himself into a sitting position now that the electricity had finally died down in his system.

“He was practicing katas with that Jetii’kad of his, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.”

“So, you dragged a still-healing patient into a spar with stun batons?” Mij responded dryly, the reprimand clear in his tone.

“I didn’t know that he was still so injured.” Jango argued back, his distaste with being reprimanded like this evident to even the most blind or deaf of individuals, “How could I? He was moving around as if there wasn’t an injury on him.”

“Apologies.” Obi-Wan muttered, bringing both Mandalorians’ attention to him and his somewhat exhausted attempt to stand up while wiping some sweat from his brow, “I’m the one who accepted the request despite knowing of my injuries.”

Both Mandalorians frowned at that, though once again Mij’s expression could not be seen. The idea that Obi-Wan would be willing to try and protect Jango, even in a situation where Obi-Wan was very clearly not at fault, was one that had both of them giving disapproving looks.

“You’re not the one at fault here.” Mij denied with a shake of his head, “While you shouldn’t have accepted this utreekov’s offer, you can hardly be faulted for the way that things ended up.”

At his side, Jango only rolled his eyes, having been on the receiving end of enough of Mij’s rants and admonishments to know what was coming next. Which was why by the time that the adult turned to look down at him once more, he merely had his arms crossed and an expectant look on his face.

“And you. I know that you’ve heard stories about the fight, and I know that your father told you he was staying in my tent. What part about that screams ‘not injured’ to you?”

“The fact that you let him out of your tent at all and to do katas of all things.” Jango bit back, teenage rebellion on full display as it refused to let him back down in the face of what he saw as very much not his fault.

“Just katas!” Mij’s retort was hot and heavy, just barely restrained to that strange grey area beneath shouting.

At their side, Obi-Wan awkwardly shuffled away from Stim as he tried to get the copper-haired youth to pat him. His eyes flicked from the striile desperately trying to get under his palm to the arguing duo to the left of him. He just knew that things were going to go wrong. Of course, they would. He was Obi-Wan Kenobi, the ex-Initiate who left chaos and destruction in his wake, no matter what he tried to do.

“Enough. I’m going to speak to Jaster about this. He can decide what your punishment can be.” Mij sighed, placing a hand on his visor and shaking his head, ignoring the sudden veiled pleading from the teen not to bring this up with his father.

Obi-Wan was going to be sick. He’d just been in a spar with the Mand’alor’s son, the effective prince of Mandalore. He’d just gotten the prince of Mandalore in trouble over something that he should have known better than to accept in the first place.

“Obi-Wan,” And oh if he couldn’t hear the sheer disdain in the man’s voice at having to use his name, “Come with me. I need to make sure that none of your injuries have reopened or gotten worse.”

“Ah. No, I’m fine….really.” Obi-Wan smiled anxiously and lifted both of his hands in a weak surrender motion, the deactivated stun baton held in a loose grip in one hand.

“I’ll be the judge of that.” Mij huffed, his gaze turned down to see the sulking form of Stim, who nudged Obi-Wan’s leg with his head.

Something that the pre-teen seemed absolutely, very firmly set on ignoring as much as he possibly could if the slight strain in his expression was anything to go by.

“It only hit my arm, and the voltage wasn’t that high. I promise I’m fine.” Obi-Wan attempted again, ignoring the slight tingling in the tips of his fingers.

It was just a phantom sensation; it would pass. There was no reason to take up even more of Mij’s time and resources on something so small.

“Once again. I will be the judge of that. Now let’s go, Jetii’ka.” Mij made a gesture towards his tent, and Obi-Wan yelped, beginning to be shoved in that direction by a very determined Stim.

He tried to make a complaint, though it died a fairly quick death when Stim shoved him once more, getting another surprised yelp, and Mij stole the inert baton from his hand at the same time, distracting the pre-teen enough that they managed to get him all the way back into the medical tent before he had his wits about him once again.

“Alright, now. I’m going to need you to take that shirt off.” Mij ordered, picking up a flimsipad from a nearby stack of boxes.

“Mij- uh, Sir?” Obi-Wan began awkwardly, clearly about to try and distract him so that he didn’t waste any time on the Jedi child, only to pause awkwardly as a curled up warmth about twice the size of an average tooka was unceremoniously dropped onto his lap.

“W-what is-“ Obi-Wan muttered in confusion, looking between what he realized now was a young striile, and the inordinately smug-looking Stim at the side of his cot.

“Well, aren’t you special?” Mij snorted, seeing what his striile had done and clearly taking more enjoyment in it than the ex-Initiate himself, “One of the striile that we brought with us happened to be pregnant without us knowing and gave birth shortly after we arrived planetside. For Stim to actually get one of the pups away just to give to you must mean that even the mother trusts you.”

Obi-Wan merely let out a short, despairing whine at that knowledge. His lips pressed together tightly when the pup in his lap began to lounge out up his chest immediately following that whine, its head far closer to Obi-Wan’s own than the teen would ever prefer it to be.

And then he took a deep breath in, and his expression crinkled slightly, getting a bark of laughter from the older man as he grabbed a small handheld scanner.

“Right, I suppose that in here the smell of antiseptics and bacta would have been a bit too strong for you to realize with Stim. Striile have a fairly distinctive scent to them that most males don’t tend to find too appealing.”

“I can smell that,” Obi-Wan muttered, voice strained and held tilted as far away from the pup as could be possible.

There was another chuff of laughter from Mij as he approached and began to scan Obi-Wan, having a much easier time with it than the last time he attempted, purely because of the striile pup curled up on his lap.

He’d have to remember that strategy in the future; if it was viable, it seemed to be a great way to keep a patient still and distracted so that he could do his job properly and easily.

“Given that you’re a pureblood Stewjoni, it shouldn’t take you too long to get used to the scent,” Mij informed him, reading through the results being relayed to his buy’ce’s internal HUD by his medical scanner.

“Wonderful. Just what I was thinking too.” Obi-Wan replied, the sass and sarcasm thick in his voice as he tried to lean away from the pup and then shifted to lean in the complete opposite direction when Stim tried to get closer.

The bark of laughter that left Mij couldn’t be described as anything less than startled, but the sheer enjoyment in his voice couldn’t be faked or forced.

‘Well, would you look at that. The Jetii’ka does have a bit of bite to him after all.’

The man stilled in the middle of reaching for some antiseptic, suddenly very, very glad for the buy’ce hiding his expression from the ad’ika.

‘…It might be best for his mental state if no one else finds out about that.’

He could already see it happening, like a prophecy delivered from the Ka’ra itself. The camp was barely being held at bay, and in some semblance of peace, by Jaster’s declaration that none of them were to aggravate or stress out Obi-Wan while he was still recovering; thereby meaning that most of the camp had yet to even see the Jetii’ka in person.

However, if they were to meet him, find out that he had done fairly well in a spar with Jango while injured, and he had a bit of fire to him?

Kyr’tsad wouldn’t even be needed; they’d wipe themselves out in the ensuing fight to try and get to Obi-Wan first. Damned be the consequences.

“I wouldn’t be so quick to turn down a striile and their attention, Jetii’ka. Once a striile bonds with you, there aren’t many corridors they won’t follow you down. They’re also natural empaths.” Mij responded instead; it was best to keep his thoughts to himself; the kid was a ball of anxieties enough as it was.

“Huh? They are?” Obi-Wan couldn’t lie about knowing very little about striile as a species, and the intrigue that bred inside him at that little nugget of information.

What little knowledge he had of the striile came from their involvement in the Jedi-Mandalorian War, and the fact that they were trained to be excellent Jedi killers. The fact that they were empaths hadn’t even been alluded to in the flimsi’s and datapads that he had read, though that could also be because he had been an Initiate at the time.

However, he wasn’t getting the same kind of feeling from either striile before him like he had from Wroshyr Fi’ged’s targon. The difference only fuelled the intrigue growing inside him, a dangerous prospect when he had been known to needing to be dragged out of the archives by the clan’s Docent in past cases.

“They are. Though not in the way you’re thinking.” Mij shook his head, walking back over to the teen and shifting one of his arms to take a look at one of his injuries, “It’s less of a ‘can make others feel things’ empath and more of…how did Jaster put it?... It’s more of a sixth sense in a striile’s case. Able to sense and follow emotions like a scent.”

Ah. That would explain the differences, then. How fascinating, genuinely. That would also explain why they had been put to such great use during the Jedi-Mandalorian War. Jedi, through their use of and connection to the Force, were naturally far louder empaths than their fellow man. Normally, they were taught to shield such outbursts at all times, more for their own collective mental well-being than anything else, but during times of crisis, stress, and pain, such shielding could weaken or even drop entirely.

And in that case, who better to find and hunt them down than by a creature that seemed almost custom-designed to prey on the Jedi’s weaknesses.

“Oh. That’s fairly interesting. That would make them a particularly unique type of Empath, to my knowledge. Less of a ‘communicator’ and more of a ‘receiver’.” Obi-Wan muttered, hissing quietly as the armoured man placed some antiseptic along the slightly red, mildly swollen injuries stitched shut.

“Sorry about that,” Mij responded, seemingly more on reflex than any actual remorse.

Honestly, given that he seemed to be the Head Medic for the Haat Mando’ade, that didn’t surprise Obi-Wan much. He’d probably seen and dealt with far, far worse than Obi-Wan’s paper cuts.

“Luckily, you didn’t break any of your stitches or reopen any of your wounds, but you’ve definitely pulled on them a bit. I’m just applying some antiseptics to them and re-applying the bacta patches.” Mij explained as he went along, most likely more for Obi-Wan’s own comfort than for any other actual need to.

It grated at Obi-Wan’s already limited self-control that he actually did find it reassuring to know exactly what the man was doing. He was twelve, not a child, and he was in enemy territory, too. He shouldn’t be this pathetic.

“Told you it wasn’t that bad…” He petulantly muttered, which Mij overlooked in exchange for covering up one of his injuries once more.

“That’s for me to check out and decide as the medic.” He calmly replied back, getting a short exhale from the boy before he tried desperately to calm himself down once more.

“So…everything is alright?”

“You haven’t undone any of your healing so far, but don’t do something like that again. I don’t care if you need to shoot that little osik in the thigh to make him back down. Don’t let him goad you into a fight again.”

“I hardly think that shooting the Mandalor’s son is going to end well for me.” Obi-Wan deadpanned, his anxiety disappearing as quickly as a ship going into hyperspace.

“You’d be surprised. So long as it doesn’t leave any kind of lasting wound, a little blaster bolt here and there can be pretty beneficial to a Mandalorian’s growth.”

“I prefer my life right where it is, thank you. No premature deaths for me.”

Mij just chuckled in amusement at that and stood up, making a small gesture to Stim and walking away, the striile regretfully leaving the side of Obi-Wan’s cot and following after their master. Now Obi-Wan could rela-

“Now…How do I deal with you?” Obi-Wan muttered, staring with trepidation at the striile pup currently lounging on his lap and chest, and looking quite comfortable as it did so, too.