John POV

'Twenty four. Twenty… four of the most expensive weapons in the entirety of the Army and you used them all. I expected maybe 5 to be used, in conjunction with your fleet, not for you to use all of them instead of. We can fix ship's, Master Chief, we can replace soldiers but we cannot replace… those… missiles.' The Chancellor wasn't best pleased to hear about all 24 Nova missiles being used at once. While it had proven to be a good test, they had wiped out the largest Separatist fleet on record and disabled the pirates, but it was a very expensive one. Apparently the cost of mining nuclear material, keeping it secret, transporting it in secret and turning it into warheads, in secret, was a very costly affair. Whoops.

'Then there's the fact you disobeyed protocol. This isn't orders that you don't agree with, or you doing this to save lives, you deliberately broke protocol and dragged children into a warzone. Do you know what will happen if anyone finds out that you dragged boys not even 13 years old, not even teens, into the middle of a war zone we have been fighting over for the past month. You took these boys into the theatre that the Military High Council had named the most dangerous theatre of war. If the Separatists, hell if a nosy reporters find outs, the backlash will be tremendous. So, what do you have to say for yourself?'

'They're Mandalorians sir.'

'What?! How is that any sort of justification?'

'They're Mandalorians sir. They've cleared basic training and are more than old enough to join their brothers in war.' The Chancellor took a second to assess me.

'You want to take them down to Felucia with you don't you? Are you mad?!' Maybe I was, but they were Mandalorians, that made them ready enough to go.

'Their as good as any of the fully trained clone troopers I've been getting recently.' While I had some reservations about the Jedi in the past they had proven themselves to be fairly competent as commanders as the war progressed, but they were never soldiers. And this was never more apparent than with General Shaak Tii. Before she took over as leader of the Cuy'val dar after Jango's death she had reviewed Jango's training methods and deemed them to be too extreme and held hints of Separatist sabotage. She meant the live fire exercises.

Mandalorians, throughout our history, had never pulled their punches, not even for our children. This is because we know if we let up, if we stop pushing them, they will only ever be so good never their best. So we pushed and we pushed.

So, in keeping with Mandalorian tradition, Jango setup live fire exercises for all troopers over the age of 14. And then a Jedi got rid of it. The ones most affected were the ODSTs and Commandos as their training was likened to extreme torture by the togruta. Funny, Jango, Halsey and the rest of the Cuy'val dar all said it was only borderline.

I made sure to inform the Chancellor of my thoughts on the matter, these new troopers weren't ready for war and I would rather take the boys, at least they had time to learn.

'That may be, Master Chief, but I am afraid, even if you are exercising your cultural rights, I cannot allow you to take those boys down to the planet's surface. The new Mandalorian army and navy are all restricted to 16 years of age and the Duchess is not budging on this one, despite all the pressure being placed on her. I cannot allow boys of only 12 to go to war when even Mandalore isn't doing the same, I'm sorry.'

I then suggested using the boys to force Satines hand. A couple of photos, a videos or two, with a snappy caption like if they can do why can't you or something and vuala instant Mandalorian progaganda. Then put a bill to the senate called the Mandalorian Heritage Reclamation Act or something. People see the photos, see that the boys are ready to fight and reclaim their heritage and force Satine to drop entry age by order of the Senate. She won't be able to refuse and Mandalorian becomes that bit more militarised, and we ensure the next generation don't join Death Watch by snatching them while their young.

We also release potentially damaging information ourselves, giving us the trust of the people by being transparent and removing doubts we may be hiding anything, after all wouldn't we hide child soldiers if we were going to hide anything, which covers up the nukes. We also put a positive spin on harmful information by twisting it to help our cause. Then theirs the fact the Chancellor gets praised for standing up for peoples rights and heritage for Mandalore which increase his popularity and allows people the hope he will stand up for theirs.

The Chancellor gave it some thought before telling me to wait two days before deploying the boys because if we are going to do this, we are going to do this right. The boys would stay with the fleet while the Kaminoans quickly produce 12 sets of battle ready armour, with at least 1 spare set each, all in traditional Mandalorian style, thin t-shaped visor and everything, all they would have to do was change the outside aesthetics on some premade armour and resize it. The armour will then be delivered to the fleet along with a camera crew, who will be recording the boys progress and the rest of the Battle of Felucia, before the footage is handed over to ONI for editing.

During that two day wait I would be taking over from, and helping to relieve, Aayla Secura and the 327th Star Corp, who would become my reserve units. They had it bad down there, having had hostile lifeforms, deadly diseases and entrenched droids, but at least we didn't have to worry about the locals so at least they had been afforded some creature comforts here and there. And with the 501st taking over they could take full advantage.

The Chancellor also said he would be sending the reserve Nova missiles ahead of the armour and reminded me not to use them all at once, as they were our only reserves and it would take time to replenish them.

With that done, the Chancellor ended the call. I immediately commed Rex and told him to start readying the men for our landing on Felucia. I would leave Rex here to watch over the boys as I needed someone to drill the boys these over the next few days, especially Boba who lacked any formal military training. Once Boba was up to speed he would be Platoon Lead and be in charge of the other cadets.

As I went down to the hangar I noticed a buzz in the air. See, there was a bit of a friendly rivalry between certain Legions that flared up every so often, and one of those rivalries was between the 501st and the 327th. Because Legions often didn't see each other when on leave some rather bored clones at ONI decided to make a sort of scoreboard so everyone could keep track of everyone else. It was a little bit of harmless fun but brought with it a lot of bragging rights and a lot of betting.

We had a lot of different columns that ranged from Most funny fuck up, which was held by the 235th for when the entire Legion got the Runs when a trooper didn't disinfect the Legions drinking water, a very messy affair, to the Most deadly assignment. Currently, that was held by the 501st, we had a few others like Most changes in command and Most Jaig Eyes but they weren't close to being contested by anyone. But our pride and joy, the title of the Most deadly assignment was. And our challenger, the 327th Star Corp.

Some would say it made light of serious and deadly affairs but as an old Mandalorian saying went if you can't laugh about it later, why the fuck live through it now? It was a bit of an odd saying but it basically meant if you let the past haunt you, you forget to live.

Currently we held the title after the two battles of Geonosis, our title being awarded for the Second, but as time went on, Felucia and the 327th had been racking up points.

It was scored using a fairly arbitrary system that made no sense to anyone but the ones in ONI who made it but hell if the men didn't take it seriously all the same. Currently Geonosis was ranked top for hostile populace, extreme weather, deadly diseases, flesh eating disease/wildlife, dangerous wildlife, entrenched droids, droid factory world, experimentals, revisiting and a host of other things.

Felucia had scored points for extreme weather, extreme terrain, deadly diseases, flesh eating diseases/wildlife, double points in dangerous wildlife, entrenched droids and a few more. The were docked a few points for friendly locals and comfy living but the scores were multiplied by the time spent on a planet and time was ticking, which only brought the 327th score up.

On planets such as this you really don't want to stick around so you finish as fast as you can, but with that score multiplier, I didn't doubt the 501st would be putting in a little extra effort to finish faster just to save their title.

Ahsoka POV

I really felt like falling asleep. I mean, I know politics was boring, not so much the politicians, like Padme and Riyo, just the act itself, but I didn't know it was this boring. My eyelids were heavy, my brain was grinding to a halt and the speaker had only just started. Why in hell did I have to listen to all this force fed crap that none of these people believe in when I could be out with Master Kenobi fighting battle droids, shooting, slashing and crushing things? Oh yeah, Master Kenobi had the hots for perhaps the galaxies most reviled politician.

After the disastrous leak of Senate video files Satine had become the new face of a broken democracy. The Separatists used her to slander the Republic, the Republic used her as an example of what not to do and the Neutral Systems were currently in talks about whether or not a vote should be held to elect a new leader and spokesperson for their movement, as they felt Satines negative attention wasn't helping their cause. I think Obi-Wan was the only one not actively keeping his distance. Well, him and Padme. The three of them had been spending more and more time together which had created a few rumours here and there. Some salacious, some sinister. I personally didn't care. So what if Master Kenobi was using our mission to evaluate the corruption within the Mandalorian government to see his friends, who was in dire need of some comfort and support.

At least I didn't care, until I was assigned to give a talk about corruption at the local Royal Academy of Government. I was currently sitting in on one of the students mock debates and you could smell the bullshit from here. They mustn't have moved onto covering up the smell in their curriculum just yet.

The debate was on the ethics of war and you could see the fact the people who were arguing for war being unethical were clearly trying to big themselves up and try to say oh look at me, aren't I brilliant. I oppose war as it kills people and that makes me a good person as I don't want people to die, even the peasants. Oh, my thoughts on soldiers. They should all die, we'd be much better off without them. They only kill other anyway. Arrogant pricks.

Their opposition wasn't much better as they had been clearly been forced to argue against them, that you could fight a war and still be morally good. They had obviously found the first point they could find, oh, people fight wars to stop others from dying, and stretched it out by pumping it full of crap so it would just reach the minimum of their debate time. They seemed to be saying oh heavens. I am only doing this because I have too, okay. Really I'm with you because I'm such a good person. Aren't we good people, yes we're good people. These pompous assholes were so full of themselves I wanted to retch.

'And what about you, Master Jedi?' Huh?

'Would you like to have a say? A Jedi peacekeeper forced to fight in this ghastly war must have an interesting view for the students, yes?' That's the headteacher, now do you get why I say they were force fed this stuff. The debate was being put on for the whole school as a demonstration of a real debate. Really? It looked like indoctrination to me.

Still, I got up from my seat at the back of the auditorium and made my way to the stage.

'What are my views on the ethics of War? Well, war is a hard thing to describe to those who have never seen it but I will try. War is a mess, in both reality and in our hearts. It is a blood conflict that causes the deaths of many innocents, even your own. It is horror and it is light.

'Some of the greatest philosophers of the ages will say that War turns men into monsters and I've seen many monsters while I have fought this war. I've seen men, who once gave money to the poor, throw others into the paths of the droid army just for a chance to live. I've seen men poison those who have taken no part in this war just to punish their enemies for resisting and fighting back. I've seen monsters that lives amongst the Separatists and I've seen monsters among the Republic, neither side is free of them. But, there are also Heroes too.

'Let me tell you a story about a man named Waxer. Waxer is a member of the 212th Attack Division. He, along with his partner, is responsible for finding out the enemies position, strengths and weaknesses. In other words, he is tasked with finding out the information needed to best kill your enemy. Waxer has, painted onto his helmet, a little picture of a Twi'lek child. If you ask Waxer who it is he will tell you it is a little girl from Ryloth he met during his time there and he just remembers her for… no particular reason. If you ask his brothers they will tell you something completely different.

'During the Battle of Ryloth the Separatist used the Twi'leks they had captured as meat shields to protect themselves from bombardment, so we had to go in on foot. It was a bloody battle that killed many clones and many Twi'leks, including the parents of a little girl called Numa. As Republic forces moved closer and closer to the prisoners a Republic thermal detonator landed at the prisoner's feet and the only one to notice was Waxer. See Waxer wears Numa's face as a reminder.

'A reminder of the little girl he saved that day.

'Running from the safety of his unit Waxer ran to the detonator, picked it up and threw it as far as he could. And for his brave act he was shot three times as he chose, not to defend himself, but others. After saving Numa's life Waxer, with three bleeding wounds, destroyed the squad of droids around him and freed the prisoners. Next, he scooped up the little girl, dived into the rubble of the broken buildings around him and waited for the battle to end. When all he could hear was the shuffling of feet Waxer emerged, gun at the ready and with Numa still hidden. After seeing the helmets of his brothers Waxer pulled that little girl to safety and was treated for his wounds.

'The greatest philosophers of the ages will tell you War turns men into monsters, well they're wrong. If war does anything then it reveals. It reveals the acts a person is truly willing to commit if they could, it reveals their real desires and wants, and it reveals their true face, for the whole galaxy to see. If a man in peace will give money to the poor, why will he sacrifice them in war? Why would a man who is so used killing risk his life to save another rather than let them die?

'Because, like war, these are actions, war being the act of revealing true character, and an action is neither ethical or unethical, right or wrong, it is the reasons behind the actions, the reason why you do it, that decide that.

'The man who gives money didn't do it because he wanted to improve the lives of those who are poor, he did it so people would call him kind and generous. The man who kills, who fights wars, Waxer, does it, not because he likes to kill, but because he wants to defend others and stop them from dying. You praise charity as a righteous act, even when done for selfish reasons, yet you call killing an immoral act, even when done selflessly. But you forget an act is just an act, nothing more or less. You forget War is an act, and now you need to remember it is the reason behind an act that makes it right or wrong.

'Thank you.'

I walked back to my seat in a deafening silence. The headmaster seemed to take a while to gather himself and promptly dismissed the hall. Well that was fun. By the looks on everyone's faces they hadn't been expecting that from a Jedi.

I waited until everyone had left before making my way to the next lesson on my schedule. Uhh I was so bored.

'An impressive speech.' I will admit I jumped, a little, but I swear I made no noise what so ever in the slightest and, even if I did, it could never be described with the words squeak, meek or cute. 'Though I suppose that's what they get for inviting up a Mandalorian Jedi.'

'Lord Admiral Hood.' The man promptly stuck out his hand.

'At your service.' The man then asked if I could follow him but I said I needed to get back to my schedule. To which Lord Hood replied that we both know this whole thing is just to keep me occupied while Master Kenobi visits his old friend.

Yeah, of course we both knew that. I swear I wasn't going to kill my son of a Hutt Master when I next see him, promise.

Hood took me to the speeder garage where a well dressed man in a naval officer's uniform was waiting but it had some key differences. One was the colour, a darkish green, second was the symbol on his shoulder, a bird of some kind holding some arrows and a thunderbolt. Lord Hood called it a Shriek Hawk.

'Death Watch use a swooping Shriek Hawk as their symbol, we decided on a soaring one.'

'Why?' If you enemy chose one symbol shouldn't you try to distance yourself from it, not try to claim it as your own.

'Once upon a time Shriek Hawks ruled our skies, but we never hated them. Some times they brought fear and sometimes they brought awe, their power and majesty was an inspiration to us all. The Shriek Hawk has actually been a big influence in Mandalorian ship design, all the way from shuttles likes the Aka'jor to fighters like the Kom'rk. The Death Watch use the Shriek Hawk to say they should be feared. We use it to show we are not, but we are still powerful all the same.' I… was at a loss for words. A symbol of fear and dread turned into a symbol to rally behind, for protection and strength, it resonated on a level I didn't quite understand.

Hood and I got into the back of the speeder, he even held the door open for me, the gentleman, while the officer got in the front to drive.

'My son, if you're interested.' I grew a little flustered and averted my eyes. Still, as a Jedi I could feel the smug amusement coming from the older man. Jerk.

When we stopped it was because we had just arrived at the Mandalorian Armies training ground and I had gotten myself a guided tour. While I was used to numbers of this size, a Legion usually consists of 90,000 after all, but this is the first time I have really seen an army train. We were constantly in and out of battle so it was either fight or rest, seeing soldiers train was a new one. We weaved ourselves through the tents, they still hadn't built a proper military compound as the Mandalorian government was building another domed city out in the wastelands that would be for military use only. While they were still separating the soldiers from everyone else at least they now had free travel.

Lord Hood took me from exercise to exercise, showing off his new force. For only a few weeks of training they seemed to be getting the basics down well but you could tell these weren't the Concordian warriors, these troopers hadn't been training for a lifetime.

Next we moved into one of only two proper buildings and moved towards an elevator. Hood gave a nod to his son, Thomas, who pulled out a key card and slotted it on the side of the elevator to open the doors. From there he pulled out a second one, inserted it into the panel, chose a floor and pulled it out. It was a little complicated but Hood explained it was to ensure no unauthorised personnel could access unwanted floors as, if you didn't have both key cards, mixed them up or didn't pull out the second card within a certain time frame of selecting a floor then, alarms went off and the elevator went straight to the detention centre where they sorted out the mistakes from the intrusions.

We were heading to B2F, the second level underground, which was a very fast ride, but Hood had yet to tell me why. The doors opened into a room of seated chairs that got higher each level back you went, so that everyone could see. In front of all the chairs was a large, blacked out window. Thomas moved over to the side of the room and flicked a switch. The screen lit up and the speakers came on. Just in time to see one of the Wolf Pack slug a guy strapped to a chair across the jaw. The sound of the smack reverberated around the room, and we weren't even in the room it happened in.

A Wolf was a very accurate description of this soldier because he started to stalk his way around the man in the chair, whom I had just noticed to be naked.

'Just give up, you Mandalore shit stain. You think you have what it takes? Well you don't. I've put every single Concordian soldier through 10 times more than you and they didn't even flinch. Look at you. Pathetic little Pass-a-fist.' Another lightning fast punch.

'Come on, little pig, just one little squeal and it will all be over. You could go back and join the rest of your pathetic brothers from Mandalore, the disgraces that they are, or you can just go home and cry to mommy about the mean and nasty man who did mean things.' A twin set this time, in the chest. The man in the chair was hunched over but they seemed to have tied him up in a way that anything other than a straight back would be uncomfortable, borderline painful.

'You think I want you in my new Corp. I was trained as a Commando by Walon Vau himself, this is nothing compared to what I, or my brother went through, while you were sitting pretty and dusting off your shaft. You think I'm gonna let a boy like you join the Mandalorian Super Commandos then you had better pull your head out your ass and say something.' This punch was aimed at the groin. The strangled moan was painful for me so I couldn't imagine what it was like for him. The man spat up a bit of blood and the Wolf left him to spit it all out before grabbing the man under the chin.

'Anything to say?' The man spat the rest of the blood in his mouth into the Wolves visor, causing the Wolf to drop the man's head and let it bounce a few times before the man had the energy to stop it. The Wolf just used his hand to wipe the blood off his helmet before using his bloody hand to grab the man's hair and pulled his head back so the pair of them were eye to visor.

'Get him cleaned up. He joins the rest tomorrow, no matter what the doctor says.' The two Mandalorian guards, in full, traditional armour, cut the man loose and dragged his body out of the room before and equally naked Twi'lek female was dragged in.

'I asked for the next soldier and you get me a slave? Get me my fucking recruit.' The two who dragged the women in just tied her to the chair. With that Thomas turned off the screen.

'What the hell was that?' To be honest I was surprised I wasn't shaking more than I was, as that was brutal.

'The final trial individuals have to go through before being accepted into the new Mandalorian Super Commandos Corps. It's a rigorous interrogation scenario where the individual in question cannot make a single noise or they will be rejected. Though, some allowance is made to those who try to suppress their groans and moans of pain. Any who speak or cry out are rejected.' They were torturing them.

'Why, why do this? They're your soldiers.'

'Precisely. These soldiers have join us, not Death Watch, and what Death Watch will do to them will be far worse if they are ever caught. The Super Commandos will be operating as independent units, usually deep behind enemy lines. If they are ever caught they cannot reveal anything. And this sorts out the ones who have learnt what we taught them and those that haven't.'

'It's degrading.'

'Do you really think our enemy will treat them any better? You may be used to having some ethics in your war but we aren't. Our enemy is willing to do anything, we must do the same. We do this to better prepare our troops and protect our home and people, isn't that why you do it?' Ugh. Well, I couldn't well stand up to that now could I, not without being a hypocrite.

'We aren't doing it because we like to, Ahsoka Tano, we're doing it because we have to.'

'So why show me?'

'I am in need of your help.'