I watched as the perfect depictions of six poorly-armed mercenaries vanished. Only to be replaced by an entirely different and far more dangerous group of adversaries. First, and at the front of the group stood three IG-100 MagnaGuard/Legends . Each one emblazoned with red and black markings similar to Dathomiri Nightbrother tattoos around their eye-like photoreceptors, on their respective chest plates, and upon their metallic forearm sheaths. All three droids carried what I knew to be lightsaber resistant, meter long electro-staves now powering up at each end with crackling coronas of red electricity, but I'd watched more than my fair share of both Clone Wars cartoons in another life. Meaning I recognized the bulging droid forearms for the concealed blaster housings they were. Fortunately, the IG-100s were incapable of switching seamlessly between their staves and forearm blasters, because the pop-up mountings momentarily changed the configuration of their hands as well. Causing them to drop anything they were carrying as their blaster-mountings revealed themselves and became active. The menacing automatons stood more than two meters high and carried themselves with a fluid grace which was ever so visually jarring to perceive in a machine.
Watching the droids, I recognized them for the Jedi-killers they were designed to be. Feeling in that moment all my extraneous fears and worries flow from me like water off a Melody's back. It was always like this for me on missions. I'd be preoccupied with all the potential ramifications and possible hazards. Right up until the moment preceding the clash, when everything became clearer than clear, and all the extraneous nonsense took a backseat to instinct, training, and the thrill of keeping myself balanced within the current of the Force as I acted and reacted. It's song had become the primal rise-or-die drumbeat I recalled with such vividness from Mimban, Mawan, Mestare, and a dozen other places. If the three droids had been alone, I would have already plunged into the fray.
Chillingly, however, the threesome of droids were no more than muscle for the trio of true threats. Standing behind the wall of synthetic protectors were two men who looked to be in their early thirties only a hair shorter than the droids. Each with meticulously groomed black hair as short as it was straight, and mustaches grown to link up with carefully trimmed goatees. Tall and possessing a well-developed yet lean musculature much like my own physique, both pale men were identical in every respect except for the tattoos on their respective faces. It was the red lightning bolt above the left eye, plus the three scarlet curves meant to look like claw marks down the man's left cheek which allowed me to identify the man on the right as Vinoc . Making the other man with identical yet reversed tattoos his twin brother Karoc . They'd both been Dark Acolytes of Darth Tyrannus in the original timeline, but now they obviously served Bulq. Neither man was the deadliest Dark Side adept the Separatists could muster, but backed up by three Magna-Guards and with their leader watchfully waiting for Yaddle and I to round the corner? The twin Dark Siders would be more than a handful. Especially in the confines of the tunnels.
Paler even than the twins, that leader was a dangerously beautiful woman who was herself nearly six feet tall. Surprisingly, rather than going bald to show off the tattooed names of the Rattatakan warlords she'd slain to avenge the death of her first Master, Asajj Ventress/Legends was wearing her straight silver hair in a pageboy-cut that swept low on the right. A pair of narrow scarlet lines ran back from the outer edge of her left eye to disappear into her hair, but it was the impression of the woman rather than any visual depiction of her dark utilitarian garb or the body beneath the clothing which stayed with me even more than the cast of those deep-set gray-blue eyes. Despite the shrill keening of the Force's discordance in her presence, I could sense a considerably more focused and intense power than I might have been given reason to expect in Asajj at this point in time. Studying the image Spider-R2 continued to send me, I thought she looked a little older and a bit more weathered than Anakin's foil in the cartoons had seemed.
What I saw made me wonder how long Ky Narec had been gone in this timeline, and how long it had taken Sidious to maneuver Bulq into position to prey on this heartbroken young woman despoiled by the rage I could sense pulsing in her from here. Taking another look at those shadowed silver eyes, as much as I wanted to help her, there was a part of me I didn't like that truly wanted nothing more than to match myself against her. The steady song of the savage jungle continued to drum in my head and heart, but I forced myself to focus on my breathing, feel, then let go of emotions, desires, and expectations. I wasn't a child anymore, and neither Master Yaddle or any of the people presently being endangered by these three had any use for some callow youth ruled by his passions.
My perception of the Force's song shifted as I calmed and centered myself. It still drummed with the urgent intensity of continual danger. Still went on keening due to the presence of the two lesser and one greater shadow in it's locality, but there was a powerfully sustained series of softer and more even chords that were more peaceful and reflective nature. It didn't change the situation, but then again it changed everything, for me. This wasn't a contest whose results existed for my personal validation. There were innumerable innocent lives in danger, and these people were the cause of all that. Hell, the Force had literally brought me here to make things turn out differently!
Yaddle took one glance at the hologram of the opposition I caused my wrist-unit to display, but didn't seem in the least surprised by anything she saw there. Closing her large eyes for the length of a couple heartbeats, she spoke to me in a low voice while waving one short arm in a slow circular motion. "Floors, ceiling, and walls, their stone the mites have chewed. Forced them into hibernation here, I have. The infestation's source, prevent us from reaching it, they mean to. A larger chamber, behind them, there is. Force them back, we must. Engage them there, we will."
I took in the Jedi Master's impressions, then grinned a grin even my unflappable Master had once called dangerous. Opening the pouch at my belt to reveal a pair of Ion grenade/Legends , plus a pair of sonic grenades. For the last two years, I'd begun carrying eight to ten ion grenades around in my pack whenever I could manage it, and a pair actually on me so long as circumstances permitted. I knew the Sith and Separatists both made constant use of all manner of droids, and the sonic grenades made for a non-lethal means of incapacitating groups of adversaries. I didn't expect them to defeat trios of Magna-Guards and Dark Siders, but force them to back up several paces due to Yaddle protecting the grenades prior to detonation with her telekinesis? Well, Obi-Wan Kenobi had managed that much against Maul and his brother with one sonic grenade, so I liked our odds. It was the best I could do until success in the Trials gave me access to Master Arca Jeth's holocron, anyways.
Intuiting my meaning instantly, Yaddle smiled rather toothily herself, then nodded in satisfaction and caused the four grenades to float up and out of my pouch. Sending them slowly down the hallway until they were almost visible around the corner. Only then did I see the red warning lights appear as their activator studs were all simultaneously depressed. The four metallic orbs hung there blinking for long seconds meant to deny our enemies a meaningful opportunity to react, then they shot around the corner so fast the grenades seemed to blur. I was by this time already focusing on my Tutaminis while we dashed after the grenades preceding us. It wasn't remotely my strongest Force-technique, but much of my practice with it had been against debilitating sonic frequencies for battlefield conditions I'd long anticipated experiencing.
The grenades went off more than twenty meters ahead of us, but I felt the detonations in the confined space like thousands of dentist drills biting into the surface of my bones. With Tutaminis it was only a dizzying and distracting pain that caused me to stumble and momentarily slow my advance. Meaning I sensed more than saw the four figures in dark grays and black as they lurched and stumbled away in the face of the explosions. With the pain nearly gone by the time I reached the spot where our adversaries had previously stood, I did see the two droids lying crumpled in our path. Sensing not the slightest bit of power flowing within the inert masses, I vaulted them without pausing. The sound of Yaddle landing beside me the prod which spurred me onward after the still retreating figures.
The Force's warning was a shriller, higher, and more piercing note than any I'd yet heard. It had my lightsaber in my hand as I threw myself into a roll forward and to the right the moment I left the tunnel behind. I could feel the heat which singed hairs from the crown of my head much more tangibly than the scarlet flash from above me that I'd caught out of the corner of one eye before tucking and rolling. My lightsaber hissed to life as I rolled to my feet. Reflexes guided by the Force maneuvering the weapon into a reversed high guard position. Catching the blades descending with enough power behind them to push my own 'saber close enough to my head I could feel the heat of all three, before I pushed off and redirected the blade-lock with a corkscrewing rotation of my body. A movement which brought me round to face the slender silver haired assassin who'd just descended on me from her perch above the tunnel mouth. I stepped into the next parry and forced her back a step. Feigning a Force Push with my open right hand to force her evasion, before my blade licked out far to the right and vertical to the ground. Stopping Karoc's single scarlet blade cold as I channeled the Force through my body. Enhancing my strength, speed, and stamina with my Matukai training even as I back-flipped to evade his follow-up low-J cut at my legs. Ventress was on me as I landed, with Karoc only a tick late in joining her to press me two on one.
Again from the corner of my eye, I saw Yaddle bounding and flipping all about the upper left corner of the square we found ourselves within. The Jedi Master reminding me of a hummingbird flitting unpredictably about, this way and that. Constantly changing her angles of attack and vectors of evasion via a mastery of Ataru only Yoda could better. Preventing the droid and Dark Jedi from effectively combining forces to hem her in. I was meanwhile working my way through a series of swift yet methodical blocks and parries while getting a sense of my opponent's capabilities. I'd already taken an undoubtedly painful divot out of Karoc's jawbone on the right side after a late parry on his part, but now I was regretting teaching Ventress that her pressure was the only thing keeping the significantly less accomplished duelist alive. I was wondering why Darth Bulq considered it worthwhile even sending this second-rate Makashi stylist along. His movements and cadences felt strangely incomplete, and therefore almost entirely ineffective.
The Soresu Karoc slipped into when I took his right ear was significantly better, but I was so much stronger in the Force that bulldozing his redirections with Force-assisted strength wouldn't prove too difficult in the long run. Worse, falling back into the far more defensive Form was dramatically reducing the pressure upon me. His zone of defense was only useful to Ventress's far more accomplished yet strange Makashi-Ataru hybrid style insofar as Karoc became a thorny hedge she could try to pin me against. A split-second opening appeared as I blade-locked vertical to horizontal with the assassin's twin blades, so I hammered him with a Force Push before the man could shift his weight and complete his lunge. The tattooed fighter hit the wall opposite the tunnel we'd entered by with enough strength to blast the air from his lungs, but I hadn't been given nearly enough time to put the whole of my strength into the push. Karoc was stunned for a couple of moments, but was back on his feet by the time Asajj picked up the tempo three heartbeats later.
The switch came at no signal I could discern, but the suddenly sharper keening of the Force warned me anyways. One second a silently hateful Ventress was trying to force me back into a slowly advancing Karoc's advance, then a back-flip and reverse somersault caused her to pass in mid-air a front-flipping Vinoc. Her engaging Yaddle as Vinoc disengaged gave the scorched and wavering droid a much needed respite. Whereas the instant the lean black haired man's feet hit the ground, everything on my end changed. With an effortless grace, the twins both adopted what I'd perceived as a dangerously incomplete and therefore ineffective use of Makashi. The holes in their dueling vanishing as if they'd never been, because they weren't holes. Each man functioned as one half of a dueling whole requiring two bodies. Their eerie synchrony allowing each man to perfectly anticipate and complement the other as they worked me from either side like deadly mirrors.
In the other corner of the room, I saw the Magna-Guard finally lose it's right arm at the elbow. That was where Yaddle's green shoto-saber had struck nearly a dozen times to get this result. Only to have the droid switch to using it's electro-staff like a sword with it's remaining arm. Adopting a rough yet very serviceable Djem So presentation I found as disgusting as I'm sure the Jedi Master did. Scorch marks criss-crossed the construct's breastplate. Mute testimony as to Yaddle's ongoing efforts to bring the dangerous droid down.
Every time I forced a gap in the otherwise seamless tandem-dueling of the twins, I tried to yell a warning to Yaddle. The need to warn her about the redundant backup systems in the droid's chest beat at me with an urgency so great I'd only experienced it a couple of times before. Always when the life of another was in danger. Yet whenever I began to shout that warning, it was as if Karoc had planned two moves ahead to keep me so engaged defending myself I only had breath for the fight as two red blades assailed me right and left without a pause.
The hitch in Vinoc's footwork was almost imperceptible, but his recovery put his saber a hair off being perfectly balanced on it's horizontal to the ground high guard. The last quarter of my saber's length came down on the tip of his with the speed of a striking viper, looped beneath, then drove up from underneath his bloodshine-blade at it's midpoint. Sending it straight up and nearly wrenching it from his grasp as I stepped in diagonally and drove a knife-hand under his adam's apple. Vinoc lurched back and gagged as Karoc used the Force to go right over top of me. His blade clashing against mine from above as he passed and landed beside his brother to prevent me from pressing an advantage there.
That suited me right down to the ground, because Karoc could either keep me from killing his twin or shouting to Yaddle. I could see the frustration in his eyes as he realized as much, and spared him a black look that said "You know you're only prolonging the inevitable, right?"
Before I shouted loud and clear "It has a backup processor in the center of it's chest-plate, Master! The thing will keep fighting even through a decapitation, if that processor's intact!" The sudden recovery of Vinoc allowed the brothers to circle me once more. Forcing me to call on every bit of speed I possessed to catch up to Karoc's lunge with an left-to-right swipe meant to force his red 'saber off its line in time to beat Vinoc's descending cut aimed at the middle of my forehead. The crackling hiss of our blades coming together was an angry hornet's nest in a sack sound. I gave ground during the blade-lock. Allowing Vinoc's blade to creep closer to my skull as his brother smoothly pivoted and tried to cut me in half at the waist.
I dropped suddenly, and both brothers leaped up and back in anticipation of a cut at their legs. Which meant Karoc was caught out as he continued to drop from his leap when I rolled over onto my back and hurled my spinning lightsaber at his ankles just as he landed. He barely got his blade down in time to stop momentum from carrying the active energy shroud all the way through, but I could see I'd cleanly severed the tibia and heard the much thinner fibula crrk as his weight came down on his savaged left foot with an anguished groan.
Which left me rolling again and again to avoid the cuts and stabs coming at me from Vinoc. Who was suddenly jerked up and sideways, before being shook HARD in mid-air by what could only be Yaddle's telekinetic grip. Karoc tried to lurch and hop forward to threaten me enough to prevent my recovery, but the lightsaber I knew as well as my own hand had already been called back to me. It felt a little unsporting, but I didn't hesitate to reactivate my 'saber and decapitate the disoriented Dark Acolyte as he dropped chest-first toward the ground. I don't think I considered individuals who felt like such pollution in the Force people in that moment. At least I didn't until Karoc screamed as his brother's headless corpse hit the floor with a meaty thwud.
I could feel his grief and rage as intensely as if they were my own, but the feel of his telekinetic grip about my throat blotted out such considerations. Denying any emotional or ethical considerations, as my air being cut off by that ever-increasing pressure forced my mind down a kill-or-be-killed channel. In a just universe, what happened next would have been difficult. Not something requiring little more than the crystallization of my will into one momentary point of my mind set on survival.
Crrnnch-shllmp-plloop-oop. Karoc's body hit the wall with more force than I'd used to hurl a half-ton hssiss with bones thicker and denser than the largest of saltwater crocodiles into a stone wall like a line-drive baseball. People used the phrase "Broke every bone in his/her body", but they had no idea what their quaint little idiom would actually look like. What had been a human body left a long red streak on the wall to the left of where we'd come in as it slowly slid to the floor. Leaving thick streaks of viscera, and cottage cheese-like clumps of brain matter dripping and failing to stick in bits from a place high on the gray wall's upper third portion. It made my gorge rise to see the result of all my strength brought to bear, but there'd simply been no time for a more moderated response. The deep burning soreness, my persistent coughing, and the pulses of pain caused by those coughs made clear to me just how close the dead man had come to crushing my windpipe.
I heard a yelp of pain I recognized as Yaddle's and forced my head up. The diminutive Jedi's last slash-and-stab had finally finished the suspiciously durable Magna-Guard, but I'd looked up just in time to see Asajj back-flip and launch an upward cut of her left-hand saber as she did so. An inch-long corner of Yaddle's left ear had been amputated as she barely got her shoto up in time to redirect the cut from splitting her skull chin-to-crown. Landing near the tunnel mouth that would have been on our left as we'd come in to this chamber, the assassin dashed into the tunnel before I could muster the focus through my ongoing hacking to stop her.
Only then did I hear the beep-beep-beee, BOOM that put the lights out, and rained stone down on us.
Edit/Author's Note: I want to preemptively point this out for those going "WTF! The Jedi Master took so long to kill ONE LOUSY MAGNA-GUARD, she only got one assist aside from putting the droid down?" These three IG-100s were sheathed entirely in a phrik-cortosis alloy everywhere but at the joints, and even there a rice-paper thin layer was present. The stuff allows for almost no heat transfer, so these were basically three hyper-expensive droids good for precisely one six hour functional window before critical components began to melt. Had they not possessed ion grenades, Anakin saving Yaddle on Mawan might've gone for naught right here. Put in perspective, it would take Mace Windu or Yoda to solo those three all but lightsaber-proof droids.
Double Edit: Sorry, that's about the best I can break up the wall-of-text effect. Combat scenes are hard to know where to line-break and open a new paragraph
I've never actually tried to write a Star Wars combat scene in-depth before, so I'm very curious what everyone thinks of this one.
Triple Edit: OK, I did some tweaking of the fight-scene from the point of Ventress's disengage with Anakin and reengaging with Yaddle. It would be a kindness if you all let me know if this is an improvement.