This is the last Star Wars fic I'm going to be posting for two years. (ish.)

This story has been in the works for two and a half months, and it took a LOT of work to get it ready to post. Which is kind of unusual for me! Usually if a story isn't flowing I just... don't... write it? I just wait until it flows and then write and post it. But I was determined to get this one work, which was a LOT more effort than usual. It was really weird.

Not to mention it's six chapters. Normally I post chapters on a written by written basis, but for this one I wanted to get everything written before I posted it and... erm. Wow yeah that's way harder. I actually had to use the comment section of Google docs to remind myself what needed to be fixed, instead of feverishly throwing myself into a four thousand to six thousand word story for two days and ceasing to think like a normal person for a while. It was weird man. And both easier, and harder than doing it my usual way. I think it makes the first story cohesive.

Idk how many people here have read some of my other stories, but I'd be interested to see how the quality lines up between the two writing methods. Is it better? Worse? The same? I certainly think there's less typos.

Keldabe was the capital of Mandalore.

There was some contention over this, as there was not a thing in the di'kutla galaxy that could make all the people of Mandalore agree on anything. But by most accounts, Keldabe was the capital.

Satine's grandmother had written her concern their people's contention, in the swirling gentle lines of the traditional style of Mando'a- "Our people know no right from wrong, only what is wanted and hated. So must they be taught before we establish the peace of democracy."

Keldabe had been the first city to adopt a council than a monarchy a century and a half before. Even then it had been a large and important cultural center to the Mando'ade, and it had only prospered since then. Now it was a shining example to the people of Mandalore, home to six million Mando'ade.

Satine intended to lead it.

The Harr Alor'a Shebi, The Leader of the Council was elected once every five years. But Keldabe was more than then capital of a planet, is was the capital for the New Mando'ade movement. The Harr Alor'a Shebi had long been considered their leader.

Satine had fronted her campaign with Shar Dajun'a Unjurir. The Plan of Disarmament. A series of laws that would come into effect over a period of twenty years. It banned weapons and beskar'gam, amor, in public spaces. It outlawed duels to the death and forced the people to take their grievances to the court. And, it set nineteen as the new age for maturity.

It was the most progressive bill that had been proposed in forty years. Even her father was shocked at her proposals. But Satine was determined to uphold their family's legacy. Keldabe would be an example again, and the rest of the New Mando'ade would follow. By the time her children had grown, Mandalore would no longer worship brute strength.

But even in Keldabe, there had been pushback. Quite a bit of it.

Satine understood their ire better than their protesters claimed. She herself had been raised in the ways of her ancestors. She had begun her training at five and earned her beskar'gam at fourteen. She knew the names of her ruug'la aliit, her ancestors back twenty generations. She had sworn to the Mando'ade creed and to her own personal family creed.

But Mandalore had to change if they were to survive. For thousands of years they had managed to maintain their numbers through adoption and a fierce protection of children, but their weapons had become too destructive, the ire between clans too great. They would destroy themselves this way.

And yet, one late afternoon, Satine found herself reading a report from the city guard, who informed her that not only were the protestors claiming she wished to destroy any semblance of family within Mando'ade culture, she was also to blame for the food shortages.

It was absolutely ridiculous. The food shortages were caused by the war between the True Mando'ade, the last strain of honorable warriors Satine knew, and the Traditionalists. Nearly thirty percent of Mandalore's entire farmland had been destroyed for the next two hundred years, and they had to import much of their food now.

It was true that prices had gone up, again, more recently, but that was because of the thrice damned Trade Federation, not because of any political reach Satine held. She herself had recently overseen her house's production of food so that excess would be given away, and to minimize what they took in themselves so that the extra money could be given to charities. But it seemed the protestors cared little for that.

To top it all off, a newly elected New Mando'ade governor for another major city had been murdered. The Traditionalists were under suspect. The city was in uproar, and Satine feared they were only weeks from open war against the Traditionalists.

For years, the New Mando'ade had managed to remain neutral in the Traditionalists neverending conflict against the True Mando'ade. But the True Mando'ade had been all but wiped out now, thanks to the Jetiise. The New Mando'ade now stood alone against the barbaric ideas of the Traditionalists, and so of course the Traditionalists felt the need to destroy them as well.

Satine swore quietly as she read through the details of the assasination. It had been a bombing, and it had killed half the council as well as the president.

"Such language for a woman of your station." A wry voice said from across the room.

She froze in her work, and turned to glare at her Jetii protector.

On the opposite end of the room, the Jetii Obi-Wan Kenobi was slumped against the back of his chair, slowly flipping through a flimsi book, an ankle perched delicately on one knee. His face was perfectly innocent. One almost could have believed it was a ghost that spoke rather than the Jetii, until you saw the devilish twinkle in his eye.

Satine didn't trust the Jetiise. Not really. Her father insisted the whole affair with the True Mando'ade had been a tragic misunderstanding, but Satine thought if they couldn't figure out who were the savages in that conflict they weren't worthy of being called upon.

But her father worshiped all things that came from the Republic, and so he had requested Jetiise to come to help sort out the mess that was Mandalore.

Satine had found them vastly disappointing. Far from the great warriors from tales that tore ships from skies and had destroyed an entire people, they were instead a man with far too much hair, and a boy who had too little. Together they tied for the ugliest haircuts Satine had ever seen.

The one with too much hair talked much and did little, and the boy hung around, made smart remarks and the occasional sensible suggestion before being shot down by the elder one, who was his bajuren, teacher. That is, until the bajuren had assigned him to be her bodyguard. Then the boy hung around Satine and made smart remarks. The suggestions, it seemed, were solely to be wasted on his bajuren.

There he sat, wasting space, doing nothing but reading.

Haircut aside, he wasn't so very hard on the eyes. In fact, he was rather adorable, with the boyish look to his face and his clear blue eyes and- was that a drink in his hand?

Dear Ka'ra it was like he was trying to be irritating.

She could see the jetiikad at his belt. He'd tossed his robe on the floor as the setting sun had heated up the room. The kad wobbled slightly, teasing the warrior that allegedly sat beneath that terrible posture and lazy countenance.

She had been reading reports for hours. Her eyes could hardly focus on lines of text, and her head was swimming with data and decisions. The processor in her datapad was so overworked it was nearly burning her hands. Her aches from her last proper spar had disappeared yesterday, and her leg bounced constantly under the table. And yet there he sat, as if he had nothing better to do but to read documents and sip lemon water.

She clapped her datapad on top of a letter from one of the family mining facilities, and stood.

"Be'in."

She saw him freeze, the tension ramping up in his shoulders. His jaw clenched.

He looked up from his holo and stood to face her with his long suffering pride, as he always did. "Your grace?"

Court politics, more often than not, meant saying polite things in the most unpleasant manner possible. Satine had been a part of politics as soon as she had been old enough to begin to grasp it.

Still, even she was impressed with how much viterol Kenobi could stuff into only two polite words.

"Ni ba'slanar ki'aka." She informed him. I am going sparring. For a moment she forced herself to keep a straight face, then let her mouth curl up, the way she knew would irritate him.

His jaw worked some more. His lips pressed, mind whirling for a moment, translating. She'd been littering Mando'ade into her speech since she'd met him. If a Jetii was going to be her protector, then the Jetii would understand her language.

He heaved a heavy sigh. "Very well."

The walk down to the sparring room was silent, save for the Satine acknowledging the passing servants. Most of them ignored them save for nodding quickly to Satine, yet Kenobi watched each of them with his cold steely eyes, as if waiting for one of them to jump out and stab her.

The sparring arena was a sizable room with tall windows lining one wall to let in streams of the setting sun. Satine strode across the mat to key in the password to the storage room. It was filled with several sets of beskar'gam and racks of weapons lit by dim lights.

She dropped her dress on the floor, heedless of Kenobi outside, and began strapping on her beskar'gam over her bodysuit. The set was heavy. She'd trained for months with weights tied to her arms and legs to gain the strength to wear it. Even then, it had taken six months of training for her to learn to fight properly again.

Beskar over the past centuries had become increasingly rare, with only the richest of families able to afford true Beskar'gam. Satine's herself was nearly pure beskar, save for a small amount of Je'hul added to increase it's flexibility. It had come three generations back from her great great grandmother. It was said she killed three Mando'ade and melted their beskar'gam down and separated the precious metal to make it her own.

Satine's own mother had worn it with pride, and she'd given it to Satine when she'd turned fourteen. That had surprised her, she'd expected it to be given to Bo-Katan.

She wondered if Bo-Katan would have left if she'd had it.

She walked to the middle of the mat, with a beskar spear at her side. For a time she fought an invisible opponent, stretching out her muscles and sharpening her senses. When she was just beginning to sweat underneath her beskar'gam she raised her pistol and shot at Kenobi.

His jetii'kad blazed a brilliant blue-gray, reflecting the bolt to the ceiling.

"I beg your pardon?" He said angrily, blood flushing from his cheeks to his ears.

Silently, Satine clicked up the settings on her blaster. She shot again, and a third time. Each time he reflected with ease, but growing confusion. His reflexes were excellent.

Satine shoved her blaster into the holster on her leg and charged with the spear.

He jumped into a form, likely a Jetiise one. She swung the spear towards his shoulder. He stopped her with his kad, and she responded by kicking his left leg while his kad was occupied.

He grunted and stumbled back. Satine followed, beating down at him with both sides of the spear. Here was his failure. His reflexes were more than good, nearly perfect, but he kept dancing back, losing ground, settling again and again into set poses like a silly statue. Eventually he became trapped against a wall. She caught his kad in another lock, the metal grinding against the plasma, and raised her knee to smack his hand. Another spin of her spear and the Jetiikad fell and bounced across the floor far away.

She raised the spear and mimed stabbing him through the heart. He flinched.

"Jetiise." She spat harshly, dripping as much poison as he had in her office. How they had killed the True Mando'ade she would never know. He didn't even wear any beskar'gam. She set her spear against the ground. "Have you only fought others who use forms as you do?"

She hadn't used forms since she was a child. After the basics, she had improvised upon them and developed her own style. She fought now mostly through instinct and experience, improvising most of her own moves on the spot.

"Do you usually attack people like this?" Kenobi said blithely.

"You are within the arena. I can pit a challenge against you for whatever reason I wish." She replied.

He shuffled between her and the wall and bent to pick up his kad. He let it hand from his hand for a moment before attaching it his belt and standing. "And for what reason did you attack me?"

"I have no need for a useless bodyguard." She said, cold as ice.

"Most people aren't warriors like you. They have blasters." Obi-Wan said, straightening. "I'm a peace keeper, not a warrior."

Satine tossed her spear away. She snatched her blaster from her waist and began firing.

At once he ignited his Jetiikad and deflected the bolts, settling once again into those positions he so treasured. Bolts reflected wildly away from him, flashing around her like some insane light show.

She expected he would fail after a minute or two, but he kept on with it, until he looked almost relaxed as he deflected blasts that, adding up, might have sent him to a bacta tank for a week. Try as she might, his defense against her blaster was too thick for her to easily break. So she activated her flamethrower.

He shouted in surprise and dove to the side, his kad still flying as she continued to fire upon him.

"What will you do to apprehend me?" Satine shouted over the roar of the flames.

"Ideally-" he panted, diving under the fire, bouncing back three blaster bolts as he went. "-I'd reflect the bolts back at you to knock you out."

"Why do you not?"

"I don't want to hurt you!"

"I have my beskar'gam Be'in."

Abruptly the bolts aimed themselves towards her, and here came the challenge. She began angling herself so the bolts would pound against her beskar'gam, dodging collections of two or three. She had to fire more sparingly now, but she kept the blasts of flames anytime he tried to come closer.

"This would be easier if there was a vantage point here." Kenobi gasped. "There's no terrain, if I had the high ground-"

"But you do not." Satine said shortly. "And you still cannot detain me. What do you do now?"

"Well most people don't have Beskar armor-"

"But I do!" She snapped. "Think, Be'in! You are on Mandalore, the planet of warriors and soldiers. There is no Mando'ad without their Beskar'gam and their weapons. You do not have the luxury of what should be."

"You sound like my master." he growled lowly, but she could see he was thinking.

He kept on as he always had, dodging and reflecting the blasters and dodging again. Her beskar'gam grew uncomfortably hot against her skin from absorbing the blasts, even with the insulation inside. But she was starting to see the rhythms he was settling into, no matter how hard she tried to keep him on his toes, deflecting again and again with ease.

He was trying to outlast her. She realized, with interest. An interesting tactic.

Obviously the fuel in her arm could not last forever, though the Mando'ade had long since perfected its chemical components. Without the fire for the support, he would be able to advance towards her and disarm her.

Could he last that long? Could she defeat him fast enough?

Satine edged her way towards her spear again. But despite how much he danced around her, Kenobi stayed between her and weapon she could defeat him with. She found, with irritation, that no matter how she shot and fired upon him, she could not move him away from it.

She watched the fuel gauge at the bottom left of her helmet carefully, and manually sputtered and killed the flames when she still had a small portion of her tank.

She snatched a knife from her belt and threw it, bolting past him, still firing. But as she dipped to pick up the spear he grabbed her arm and spun her away. She turned and activated the flame thrower again.

Kenobi threw his hand forward, closing his eyes. Instead of firing forward, the flames twisted up like smoke, brushing the top of the tall ceiling uselessly.

She gaped, staring up in shock. It was long enough for Kenobi to catch her. He used his superior weight and strength to bring her arms behind her back and slapped a pair of cuffs first on her hands, and then her legs.

"There." Kenobi muttered between gasps.

Satine twisted her wrists. They did not allow for the same range of motion the cuffs she had trained with, and thus she could not pick them, nor displace her thumb to free herself.

"In a battle-" She began

"But there isn't a battle." Kenobi said, as he snapped her hands and ankles free again.

She saw the proud little smirk on his face, and something inside of her suddenly hated every stupidly cut hair on his head. She tore off her helmet and poked his chest. "That may be, but every Mando'ad can fight blade to blade. All it will take is one fool with a stick of beskar and I will have to rescue you myself."

Kenobi's ears reddened again. He crossed his arms. "Your grace, I understand your concern, but your father requested we come. We help where we can."

Satine laughed sharply, turning away. "Help. You do not help. You are the cold cloth that lays on a feverish forehead. You treat the symptoms, but never the illness. I do not need a boy who can deflect blaster bolts or a man who gives advice and nothing more." She picked up her spear and set it against the ground. "I need leaders for my people who are dedicated to peace. Diplomats for our public image. I need someone to make my people see reason. This is what I need. Not some bodyguard."

He was silent for a time, his eyes sparking with thought and anger.

"We can do much more than talk or reflect blaster bolts, your grace." He said at last, picking up his jetiikad. "We will stay until the issue is resolved."

She stared into his steely blue eyes. "I will hold you to that."

"Good." He replied shortly.

Let him try to tame the flames of Mandalore, as generations of Satine's family had tried to do. Let him continue on believing because he had a connection to this force he could not fail. Let him live in his arrogance, his refusal to accept his flaws and-

He leaned over and picked up her spear. He tossed it at her. "I must learn to be more flexible." He conceded. "If you would teach me?"

Then again, perhaps not.

To justify Satine beating Obi-Wan: they're very alike in that they aren't naturally talented, but they are both hard working and persistent. Therefore, each one will be better at what they have more practice at.

Dueling has only recently started making a comeback at temple, and Qui-Gon forces Obi-Wan to only train with the basic techniques, because he thinks that Obi-Wan can refine them into something truly incredible. (Not that Obi-Wan knows that.) Therefore Obi-Wan is better at blocking blaster shots than dueling. Satine is better at dueling than she is fending off Jedi. Each one won in their own area of expertise, and each one will help the other get better at their weakness.

But I guess the TLDR is that Obi-Wan absolutely would not have won against Maul without Satine's training.