Grand Audience Chamber

"I'm choosing my oath. I'm choosing not to let the past dictate my future. Only the Force can do that."

Na'an braced herself. She had had three days to prepare herself for this possibility: that the last friend from her youth, the final person who had known the child Vidalu Na'an, her teacher and her goal and her beloved Sir, had gone somehow horribly wrong. She could feel the storm far more clearly than the guards could, a gathering of energy that smelt sharply of ozone, and knew all over again that she had never seen the full force of what Rutil Iorek could do. How much worse would this be, than she had ever been able to prepare herself for?

"You don't have to make me do this," she pleaded, aware for the first time that her voice sound high and thin--a little girl against a titan. "He can face his justice properly. Just let me take him to the Masters, let him stand trial."

"I wish I could. Really, I do." She was saying anything that came to her head now, looking for some way out of what her teacher clearly intended to do. This wasn't what Rutil was supposed to be. But the curse she had half-jokingly talked about with Leigh and Adelle seemed to be real, and total, and not even the old Zabrak was immune. "But listen to yourself! 'Peace is a lie'? You know what you sound like?"

Her left hand slid into her pocket, gripping at her own shoto this time. She could draw and ignite the blade in less than a second if she had to--even less, if she reversed the order. Her pants weren't worth her life when fighting Rutil Iorek.

Rutil was on her in a flash, almost faster than thought. Without thinking herself, Na'an ignited and twisted her shoto in the same stroke. The crimson blade sliced through her pocket as easily as if it were made of tissue paper, blazing through the air to meet her opponent's weapon at her chest in a shower of blue and red sparks. "Leigh!" she grunted, focusing everything she had in her arms and her knees, willing them to stand up against the Zabrak's superior weight. "DO IT!"

Leigh spared no time for emotion or for analysis; this was one of multiple scenarios she had already accounted for in her preparatory calculations. She barreled ahead, diverting power from non-essential systems into her weaponry, arm cannon already charging up for a middling-power shot. Her priority, though, would be clearing the room of blockades and collateral damage, and for the moment that meant Aherk. She knelt to scoop him up in her good arm, noting that his shrunken state was more than just visual--he had lost considerable weight. "Hold on to me," she ordered, and backed off immediately, already aiming for a clear shot at Rutil's center mass. All she had to do was get the right angle...

It was quickly obvious that just holding the lock forever would be impossible. Rutil had the strength advantage, and both of them knew it. Na'an had to break it, and break it her way fast. She had lower ground to work with, and years of practice operating under a height disadvantage. Rather than maintain the lock, she slid into Rutil's space and angled her blade up, throwing his arm into the air and both their blades free. Almost in the same motion she swung down at his shoulder, aiming for a clean slice at his arm.

The wonderful thing about saber combat was that the blade, as powerful as it was, held no weight in and of itself. Na'an had learned that early on in her training years ago from Rutil himself; the weight behind normal blades would no longer control her momentum with a lightsaber, leaving her free to do as she liked with her body. The result was particularly effective the more control you had over your own movements. And for all her faults, for all her bad judgments and all her soured hopes and all her failures, there was one thing she had always had, had always found some small comfort in.

Vidalu Na'an was no Jedi, but she could rival any of them for physical control.

Na'an let the blade continue to swing, throwing her weight behind it into a forward flip. She inhaled into the flip, letting the Force pull her higher and curl her inwards into a rapid spin. She could feel the faint whoosh of air as the tip of her blade barely missed scoring the floor, suddenly grateful she had never bothered making a full-sized saber, and then she was upright again, swinging down at Rutil's head with all the power of her momentum behind her.

In the back of the room, Leigh's firing algorithms aligned suddenly. Na'an had pulled this stunt before, going high so she could clear the field below, and by now she knew her partner's timing by microseconds. "Brace," she said to Aherk, pulling him minutely closer to herself, and fired her cannon in three quick concussive bursts.

Leigh had spaced the shots out, accounting for the probability that the Zabrak would attempt to dodge out of the line of fire. As it was, Na'an had been pushed into the first of the three shots, catching her in the shoulder. She pitched forward again, slamming into the floor with a hard whumpf barely braced by her forearms.

Leigh backed off immediately, readjusting her strategy. She cursed herself inwardly for not accounting for strategic telekinesis, in the same calculation that she acknowledged the wisdom of using concussive shots instead of live fire and resolved to keep it off until she had a clear signal and a better shot-to-collateral ratio. There was also the matter of the man in her arms, for whom the sudden noise of the cannon could not be entirely healthy. Her best move at the moment was to remain near the door, remove anyone who would attempt to interfere, and wait for another shot.
While she was doing those things, however, she had strategic intel to gather. She activated her audio circuits, turning them inwards to her comm channel. Miss Bastiel, you have not responded to our inquiry. Status report.

The impact of the blow to her back had driven the air from Na'an's lungs; she wheezed as she pushed herself to her feet, one deep unsteady breath before she lunged into another attack. She aimed for his legs this time, a series of quick circular swings to help her readjust and regain the fight's flow. Ataru was an aggressive form, designed to keep the opponent on the defensive with a flurry of attacks. It didn't work if she slowed down, and she had to have oxygen to fuel that kind of pace. She couldn't let a blow to her torso knock the wind from her for long, or Rutil would take brutal advantage in ways that would kill her in moments. If she could get him off guard with a fast recovery, however, even if for only a moment...
Please, she begged her body, or the Force, or anything that could be listening, Breathe!

It was as if she were a youngling again, struggling against someone who knew her moves before she even made them. Na'an forced her way through the sequence, every breath in her footwork tight and painful and always, always blocked. She was always so far behind him when it came to sheer combat brilliance--but then, she'd never thought that she would ever have to face him seriously. He was larger, and stronger, and had taught her everything about Jedi bladework she had ever known. Even now, with nearly twenty years of experience between then and now, he could still send her flying with a simple flex of the Force.

It was once she was in the air, however, that she felt her chest suddenly loosen again. Na'an sucked in a gloriously deep breath, smelling smoke and spicy whiskey and a whiff of ozone, and immediately it set her blood to tingling in her veins. The Force had not abandoned her, then; she had options. She twisted as she flew towards the back of the room, reaching out for a sense of where she was in space. Rutil had planned out this move well--he was clearly planning on taking advantage of her aerial mobility, and was already bolting to make a pre-emptive attack where her feet would land.

If that was the case, it would be better if she didn't land there.

Na'an deactivated the shoto as she spun, instead choosing to thrust out her free hand outwards to her side. She felt the Force Push slam into the stone wall as clearly as if it were her hand, rather than the Force. Her forward momentum stopped sharply, the blowback from her Push rocketing her sideways towards the other wall. She somersaulted in the air to land against the wall with both feet, gripping a loose stone with her free hand to perch there. Another Push sent her blazing back towards Rutil faster than she could usually run, and she activated her shoto in time for a jab at her teacher's stomach.

"Sir, please stop!" she said, her voice echoing loudly between the clashing blades. "Torture, murder? Hiding out in a ruin? Gathering civilians for a war? This isn't sane!"

Na'an was barely able to keep up, each strike coming harder at her than the last. Her teacher's strength had always been overwhelming; now she could feel it in the fury of every blow she blocked, shuddering up her arms through the blade. It was only the relative grace of Ataru that even let her keep a pace with the old Zabrak, each block leading fluidly into the next in comparison with his hard staccato. He was at her side--now her front--now behind her--swooping at her feet, forcing her to jump--lunging for her head, sending her spinning under his arm--then behind her again. There was no pattern to it, no logic, only the rage and the ever-strengthening power of his strikes.

The knowledge came sharply, in the way of all the worst kinds of betrayal; a stab to the heart and the brain. Na'an knew this style, had been attacked in this style before, although she had never seen it from her teacher. This was Juyo. Rutil Iorek was attacking her in Juyo.

He meant to kill her. No more conversation, no more chances. Using this form meant he wanted her to die--for her disobedience--for being a disappointment--and he would likely kill everyone else who came on this trip just to make his point.

She deflected another blow only just before it decapitated her, twisting the blade to send his arm out in a wide circle. The power and angle of the strike, however, sent her staggering back, and she suddenly realized that the course of the fight had only taken them steps from where Leigh stood in the door. Even in Ataru, then, she was on the defensive. The room was wide, spacious and sparsely decorated, giving her little to work with for the more acrobatic style. If she wanted any kind of advantage to get back on the offensive, it wouldn't be here; if anyone was going to get out of this temple alive, then, they needed to get out of this room.

Another strike came in, hard and fast; Na'an dodged it this time rather than blocking, using the split-second movement to turn and signal Leigh. Leigh processed her expression with seeming dispassion, but also with the speed Na'an had grown to rely on. She cocked her cannon arm and backed into the hall, clutching the frail body of Aherk to her chest as gently as she could. "Forty-three degrees west of north," she intoned, adjusting her aim as Na'an followed into the hallway, dodging all the way. "Prepare for debris."

Na'an nodded. They had to time this carefully; Rutil's attacks left him wide open between strikes, but only for fractions of a second. Na'an sucked in a deep breath, and felt the Force buzzing inside her, in her lungs and in her larynx. She held it just long enough to let it build, a bubble of pressure right below her heart...then opened her mouth.

"GO!"

The Force Bellow ripped out of her, shaking the stones at her feet and in the door and in the walls with all the force of a sudden tide. At the same moment Leigh fired--not at Rutil, but at the door itself, forty-three degrees west of true north.

He would not have the chance to see it. Before Rutil had had a chance to right himself, Na'an had already deactivated her shoto and thrust both hands outward, gripping the air as if it were stones. The Bellow had rumbled deep into the building's walls and floor, shaking the construction subtly but strongly; between that and the more focused shot from Leigh's cannon, the archway leading into the Grand Audience Chamber was only a good Pull away from collapsing entirely. Na'an flexed through her arms and through the Force, and that collapse became a reality. She, the droid, and the dying man they protected disappeared into a crashing of marble and dust, blocking anyone from following them into the corridor.

****

"He will follow," Leigh said, already turning to run down the corridor with long, powerful strides. "And we are running into a compound filled with his followers."
The collapse of the chamber exit had bought them a few precious minutes, and neither of them had planned on wasting it, sprinting into the network of hallways connecting the Praxeum. The corridor leading into the rest of the Temple was long and winding, with multiple branches leading off into other parts of the building. While scanning for signs of life down multiple branching paths, she simultaneously downloaded as recent a map of the Yavin Praxeum as she could find. "We have several options, but this is his territory. We need to select a plan of operation, now."

"I know, I know!" Na'an rubbed dust from her eye feverishly, then ripped off her eyepatch as she followed the droid at a sprint. Her eye rolled a little, then started tracking as it returned to active use. "Look, if I have any chance against him I need a place with cover," she said, her voice still a little raw from the Bellow. "On open ground with no environment, he's got me dead to rights."

Leigh nodded. "There are gardens near the rear of the facility. Floral life and open-air construction provide strong options, and will keep you away from the bulk of his followers as you prepare to engage."

"Those Gardens are a--" Na'an stopped abruptly, forcing a breath. When she started sprinting again, she banked on a corner Leigh took easily. "Fine. Get Aherk to Adelle, I'll catch up."

Leigh's hologram snapped on, a disapproving expression hovering on the back of her dome at Na'an. "I am not comfortable leaving you to fight your teacher alone to protect this ma--"

"And hell if I'm going to be why that man dies!"

This time it was Leigh who stopped, and regarded Na'an with a careful eye.

Her friend was disheveled, but intact save for a hugely spiked heartrate and respiration. Since removing her patch, her prosthesis had turned fully active quickly, tracking only microseconds behind the organic eye. She was strong, relatively rested, and despite her obvious distress functioning quite well. It was only the feverish look in her good eye that gave Leigh cause for concern...and that was, in all likelihood, due just as much to the possibility of Aherk's death as the probability of Na'an's own. "Get him to Adelle," she said again, and her voice was steel. "Please."

Leigh quickly calculated probabilities yet again, then made her decisions. She turned towards a different branch on the next fork, going left where Na'an would go right. Her path would lead towards the Strategy Center and the Medical Bay; Na'an's, back towards the garden exit. "Go right. I will return for you," she promised, loud enough for Na'an to hear as she sprinted away. "Do not dare to die before I do."