The Weaving Force: Chapter 94 (Patreon)

Chapter 94:

Iskt

The battle, if you could call it that, had collapsed into complete chaos.

Master Victoria had fought the sith, half the Mandalorian Death Watch had chased after her, a good chunk had rushed across the base, screaming out orders to wipe the data and destroy anything they could get their hands on.

The last few of them were still fighting.

And so the numbers that had seemed so overwhelming before, became much more manageable.

With eight Royal guards, Three Jedi, one Ventress and one Mr. Dennis- the remaining Mandalorians were soon put on the backfoot and were being systematically overwhelmed, as the brunt of their return fire was deflected by lightsabers, their beskar pierced by specialized weaponry from the Royal guard and before long, Ventress lunged into their battle line with a fearsome, wrathful howl.

Iskt wasn’t gonna go anywhere near that.

Still; the sheer numbers that had gone after her made him worried about his Master. Unlike most he knew what the secret to her invincibility was and how it didn’t quite guarantee absolute safety.

But, he also knew, just how powerful she was. The rare few glimpses he’d seen of her sparring with Master Yoda, Master Windu or Miss Taylor still left him in awe, wondering if the day would ever come where he’d even get close to that. 

But now wasn’t the time for introspection. 

Rushing forward, Iskt finally got within range of one of the Mandalorians, the man rounding on him with a burst of flame from his flamethrower.

Iskt ducked under it, the heat tingling his flesh where it drew close before his hand whipped out, grabbing hold of the Mandalorian’s wrist to jerk the limb aside.

Lightsaber met vibroblade, the metal beginning to warp and melt from the heat. Whatever metal it was- it wasn’t beskar. 

The warrior tried to kick him to gain some distance, Iskt took the blow in the chest, strong enough to knock him back but not enough to really hurt.

The hand that had been grabbing the man’s wrist lost its grip, but immediately whipped around, lightning fast to grab the ankle of his still extended foot.

Iskt pulled.

‘You win however you have to’ Miss Taylor’s voice rang in his mind. ‘Whatever weapon, whatever tactic, whatever tool, whatever lie you have to do; you do that. You win. Because you’re not allowed to die.’

The Mandalorian cursed, losing his footing and Iskt brought his fist, still holding the lightsaber smashing straight down into his helmeted face-

‘When you’re strong enough that you can break the people you’re fighting. You’d think that you have to hold back. But sometimes; the opposite is true. The longer the fight drags on, the more you run the risk that the pulled punch, isn’t quite as pulled as you’d like. The more you’re rolling the dice every time you need to make contact. If the dice ever roll against you; that’s a broken neck, thats him hitting his head on a sharp corner. Or snapping his spine on a bad fall. When you hit them; you make sure they can’t make you roll that dice again. You hit them hard enough that you’re sure they’re not getting up for a while even if they want to.

The impact was strong, the Beskar steel crushed one of his fingers, he felt the bone shift, his digit crack. It hurt, but the pain was secondary, the Mandalorian’s head whipped downwards cracking solidly against the steel floor. He was dazed and groaning with the impact.

Iskt wondered for a moment if he should use his lightsaber, cut off a limb, maybe injure him worse. The man could still feasibly recover and stand up.

Then the decision was taken out of his hands.

Two shots, slipping through the openings of his armor, courtesy of a royal guard made the Mandalorian warrior tense and go still underneath him. He spared a glance at the royal guard who shot before his attention was drawn back to the fight at hand. 

Ventress was tearing into the mob, taking on three of the death watch Mandalorians at a time, the woman was a furnace of fury; burning still with the fear of her near death just minutes before. Iskt made a note to keep an eye on her. Master Anjr and Knight Lisen were providing support with their force powers, pulling metal plates from the wall to act as moving cover, their own blades providing protection as the Mandalorian royal guards moved behind them. It looked like something they’d practiced. And he wondered just how closely the Master of the Mandalore enclave was working with the royal house to have these men pull off these battlefield maneuvers so comfortably. 

Either way between their efforts the first room was cleared, then the second; The thin Mandalorian rear guard collapsing utterly even as Iskt could still hear the sound of combat in the compound ahead. His Master. 

“We need to find out what they were doing here!” He heard Mr. Dennis shout, Blaster barking as he fired at the last few holdouts. “We can’t let them purge that data!”

A Mandalorian rushed the human slave runner, but Mr. Dennis’ hand slapped at his helmet. Iskt winced, cold blooming across his senses, a sudden void in the force emerging around the Mandalorian’s head, concentrated around his frozen helmet. The other two Jedi, Master Anjr and Knight Lisen were similarly affected, almost visibly recoiling at the sensation. 

The Mandalorian with the frozen helmet choked, lurching in place as his suddenly unmoving helmet nearly snapped his neck, he barely had the time to react before Mr. Dennis placed that blaster flush against his knee, past the Beskar plating and opened fire.

Iskt could hear his howl of agony from here, even muffled as it was, trapped in the inviolable helmet cage. 

“We have to find their server roo-”

Iskt’s senses flared in the force and he brought his green blade up in time to deflect a shot from the rafters above, reaching with the Force with one hand outstretched before pulling.

The catwalks came apart, metal crumpling, torn down from its moorings and bolted plates. There was a scream of fear, a small, armored body falling from its perch.

Master Anjr’s force presence reached out, catching the falling victim before letting her fall the last foot or so with a heavy crash of armor on metal.

The Trogodile Master stepped forward, green blade in hand. “Surrender child.” He demanded. “You won’t be harmed.”

The Mandalorian, who was indeed a ‘child’ Iskt now realized, though honestly given human sizes she may have been older than him, scrambled away, rushing to get to her feet as her hands fumbled for the blaster that had fallen beside her.

Iskt rushed forward, a burst of speed letting him swallow the distance until it vanished in an eyeblink.

Words of warning from both his teachers and his own experience swimming across his thoughts. 

His clawed foot stomped down, the bracers of her beskar taking the weight and force but still the girl cried out as her arm was suddenly and violently pinned to the floor. 

“Don’t try it.” He warned. 

He could feel her frustration, her rage and anger. Surface thoughts flittered across his senses as she tried to think of any number of ways she could still escape. 

His eyes followed her thoughts; trailing to her right boot, catching sight of a bone knife sheathed there.

He knelt, slowly, making sure to keep most of his weight on the leg pinning her arms to the floor as he reached over towards the knife.

The Mandalorian child started to struggle, thrashing under him and spitting out a string of curses and creative descriptions of his ancestry he half caught.

Still his weight was far too much for her to shove off, especially with no leverage. A single kick nearly caught him in the cheek but pulling back he avoided it.

Cheekily he answered. “My mother is a saint-” He rumbled. Having never met the woman; he had no idea if that were true but using Miss Taylor and Miss Victoria as a measuring stick couldn’t hurt.

Though judging by the sounds of combat and the screams of pain emanating from Master Dallon’s fight ‘saint’ might be pushing it.

He eyed the bone knife now in his hand, some primal part of him could appreciate such a thing.

Master Anjr marched up to him. “It’s alright Padawan.”  The Trogodile hissed, reaching them to place a hand on Iskt’s shoulder.”She’s been disarmed.”

—

Yoshiro:

He’d fought many beings in his life. Battled across many wars.

Mercenary. Bodyguard. For honor. For money. For clan, or the simple joy of killing a worthy foe.

He knew all their faces. All the looks they had.

Some were afraid. Some determined. Others were confident, stupidly so.

But there were a few, a rare few, that stood on the field of battle as though it was solely theirs.

Dallon reminded him right now of those few.

He could see it there; that small smile on her face, her eyes darting slowly, counting her opposition, deciding then and there who she would eliminate first.

She didn’t just feel in control.

She was in control.

His grip tightened on the haft of his warglaive. The powered servos of the armor growling like a tiger on some jungle world, cornered and dangerous as his men spread out as much as they could.

Then, Dallon was ready.

She shifted her weight, the blue blade cutting a line through the air as it fell to her side, the tip nearly touching the floor.

Then she exploded forward.

Reflex and instinct made him move, thrusting with the glaive straight onto a target he could barely see, her body a blur of motion to his old eyes, only to see her swerve past it, along the outside of his guard.

He jerked his arm to the side, trying to deliver an elbow to her face, only for the lightsaber in her hand to intercept the limb, the armor crackling against her blade as she held the weapon and armor plate a mere millimeter from her smirking face.

It wasn’t the blade he had to worry about.

His other arm moved down, across his torso, the energy shield blooming across the surface a split second before he felt the impact of her hidden punch crash into his arm. The blow rocked up the whole limb, shock absorbers and kinetic dampeners barely saving him as pain radiated out of the point of impact, sparks flying from servos that damn near ruptured as the full force of the punch went up and into his shoulder before he and seven tons of power armor were sent sailing across the room like a cheap toy.

He smashed into the far wall, vision obscured by upturned dust and debris as his men opened fire in a frenzied deluge of blaster bolts.

Even through the dust and grit, he could see Dallon dancing through the multi-colored rain.

Her blade twirled and spun, deflecting anything that might hit her, and her body stepping between the gaps of the bolts her blade didn’t bother catching. Her little, barely there smirk not even twitching as she made a mockery of their efforts. 

Yoshiro snarled, peeling himself free of the wall to join the fight again as Dallon took to the skies.

Vicky:

She’d always loved… fighting. 

When she was younger, it was the rush. The heady superiority of being Glory Girl. The hero of Brockton Bay. 

Of course, the Protectorate had Armsmaster but he could be transferred out, they all could. She was the local girl. Brockton Bay was hers and she had the power to prove it. 

Even Lung, if she caught him early enough, was someone she could have knocked flat on his fucking ass. Kaiser too.

There was something to be said about being at the top of the world. The center of attention. 

Or pretending to.

Now, after many years of self evaluations, long conversations with Taylor and introspection, she knew that wasn’t the whole story. A mixture of teenage invincibility and a deep seeted mess of issues regarding her own insecurities and fears given her parents’ disregard of her every non-cape related accomplishment, alongside feelings of inadequacy and inferiority.

She’d grown up. She and Tay both had.

But that rush. It had never really gone away. That smile always always crept onto her face in the middle of a contest. A fight.

Mandalorians were right about one thing.

Droids were boring.

Here and now, with a living and breathing enemy, she was reminded of that. Even knowing that they wanted to kill her, and that she was likely to kill them before this was done, she could still feel that smile threatening to creep up onto her features. 

The Force sang in her ears. Warning here, whistling there. Telling her where the attacks were coming. Letting her see what she needed to block, dodge, what would strike her shield harmlessly, or even what would glance off her armor in the brief, infinitesimal window available to them as the Fragile One recharged her protection

Layer upon layer of defense interwoven seamlessly. It was almost second nature now. A cornerstone of the fighting style that was uniquely her own. Because no one else had her partner at their back. 

In a way, it was like home, still. Sitting at the top of the world.

Or pretending to.  

She punched away the Mandalorian big boss. Him she’d deal with later. She had to thin out the chaff first. 

Mandalorian jetpacks let the battle turn into an aerial ballet as her blade danced in a whirl of blue light as her enemies scrambled to get away from her and crossfire. Desperate to find the weakness they all hoped was there but that she had no intention of letting them see.

She reached the first of them, a woman that was firing two heavy pistols as fast as her fingers could squeeze the triggers; the shots were overcharged, the barrels blazing a cherry red. Against any other Jedi, Vicky could imagine the force of the blasts would have threatened to knock their saber out of their hands, or at the very least it would have driven them back.

Her two fingers had enough strength in them to block the blasts while spinning the saber rapidly to keep intercepting the follow up shots and others around her. 

Subtly, she used the Force to slow a handful of others in her blindspot; an application of Tutaminis that would make it seem like they’d just barely missed her

She reached with the Force, yanking the weapons out of the Mandalorian woman’s grip.

Her blade came up. Her blade came down.

The woman crossed her beskar vambraces together, trying to stop the swing.

Beskar was strong. Nearly indestructible.

The woman underneath it wasn’t.

Sheer force broke bone. Vicky heard it, one arm snapping like dry tinder, the other shifting as a joint somewhere dislocated. The woman screamed as the saber pushed through to slam down into her breastplate, very literally battering her hard enough to send her crashing down into the wall and floor, her jetpack howling as it tried to resist the movement only to sputter and die as it was crushed between the weight of the woman’s body and the unyielding duracrete. 

She felt the anger of the woman’s fellow Mandalorians, their rage, it burned like open furnaces all around her, pinging off her senses like little bells.

Twenty-two.

Twenty-two Mandalorians surrounded Vicky.

There were more in the facility, but the lion’s share had chased after her.

That was fine. Good even. Iskt and the others, she was sure, would make use of the mistake on their end of the fight.

Her senses flared, a warning in the Force as she shifted to the side, turning to look and leaning away as the Mando-Boss threw his glaive at her like a javelin, the full suit rushing in after it on howling jets of fire

She caught the weapon as it passed her, her iron grip clamping down on the heavy bladed counterweight before she swung it around, its crackling energy field at the weapon’s business end threatening to carve the Mandalorian’s fancy power armor in two with his own weapon.

Then, in a deft display of surprising acrobatics, the old Mandalorian spun in the air, his fine control and experience in aerial combat on full display as he spun into the swing, one fist catching the electro weapon by the neck as his remaining fist lashed out in a backhand that threatened to take her head off.

Her senses screamed danger, her foresight telling her that she could stop it but another attack might slip through.

She let go of the weapon, and with a wave of the Force shoved the old man down.

His jets howled and screeched, but he regained control of his trajectory seconds before he hit the ground, landing on his feet as the underside of his wrist, the one that had been about to punch her, opened up to reveal a heavy repeater strapped to its underside.

So that was what the Force had warned her about.

The old man opened up, green bolts sailing through the air to join the salvo from his remaining fellows as Vicky felt her smile grow just a little bit

With a pull through her thoughts, various sheets of metal were torn from the walls alongside tables, chairs and other pieces of loose coverage that she placed between herself and the deluge of blasterfire.

Her cybernetic eye shifted its readout, letting her see clearly through the strobing effect and the sheer wall of floating debris.

There.

The wall was compressed together, forming a ball before she shoved it, shooting out its various component pieces like a shotgun blast towards the largest clump of Mandalorians.

Two more were struck hard, one in the air, one in the ground, both went down, the others were pelted and rushed to get into cover-

The stragglers on the left, suddenly found themselves isolated and alone.

Vicky rushed forward, accelerating from quite literally, zero to a hundred in the blink of an eye, her free hand whipping out to grab one Mandalorian by the helmet, her fingers digging into the beskar as her Lightsaber lashed out with her other hand, snapping another Mandalorian’s leg as the blade cracked into his knee and bent it backwards a split second before her shoulder crashed into a third, sending him sailing back in a heap of broken bones and flesh before she smashed the one she’d grabbed by the helmet into the metal flooring. 

If his neck wasn’t broken; then lucky him. 

There was a burst of fire, actual fire, from a flamethrower as the old man in the power armored suit rushed in to try and capitalize on the opening.

Again, Vicky’s cybernetic eye shifted, letting her see through the blinding flare of flames, seeing that the old man had lined up a swing with that glaive in what would have been her blindspot.

As the flames washed over her she trusted Fragile’s protection for the few seconds it would give her timing her dodge perfectly as she ducked under the glaive and into his guard, her own lightsaber swinging at the curia.

The weapon struck true, scoring a gouge across the plate before the armor crackled with visible sparks of lightning, leaping onto her saber hilt like a lightning rod before shorting it out.

Vicky’s eyes widened, surprised, catching the old man’s satisfied smirk.

Her fist clenched, ready to deliver another titanic blow.

Then; her senses flared, danger bursting across her thoughts, emerging from literally nowhere.

Vicky’s head snapped to the side, over her shoulder in time to see two red Lightsabers bearing down on her.

Komari.

It was a dance of agility and reflexes, Vicky ducked and weaved between the Sith’s strikes, lunging for her with a snarl before her senses flared again, from behind- the old man thrusting with that glaive at her exposed back, making her sidestep, giving Komari another opportunity for a series of frenzied, lightning fast swings she had to dodge around. 

But dodge she did.

When Komari’s wrist fell right into her hand, Vicky could see the flash of fear on the woman’s masked face, the realization that she was about to lose this arm.

Vicky’s fingers squeezed.

It was like crushing chicken bones.

All the while Vicky had sensed the others moving, she knew she had time, a single blaster bolt striking her shield at her shoulder.

Komari screamed and the kick she answered with was pure reflex and desperation; but it was fast, lightning fast and given with no thought, no intent. No way for the Force to really give a warning to something that it barely had time to give warning to.

The Sith’s shin struck Vicky on the side of her jaw, and this time, the Jedi’s head snapped back.

Somehow; no one even breathed.

—

‘I… I hit her?’

Komari’s eyes were wide as dinner-plates, the agony in her wrist all but vanishing. The whole of her world narrowing to the point of contact between herself and Dallon as time itself seemed to slow.

She'd used all her her training, all of her skill as an assassin to get the drop on her. And it wasn't the Lightsabers that did anything it...

‘A kick… it… How?’

She’d seen this woman shrug off everything. From blaster bolts, to catching a lightsaber to an Orbital bombardment. But…

A fucking kick!

She didn’t understand it, it didn’t make sense, but the dazed half stunned look on her slack face, her shadowed eyes; even the grip along Komari’s wrist slackening. It was unmistakable.

Komari had hit her.

Yoshiro lunged forward with a roar, trying to seize the opening; whatever it was. He’d seen it too clear as day. The other Mandalorians opened up with full automatic fire to the point that their blaster barrels were in danger of melting.

Then, Dallon recovered.

Komari saw it first; the woman’s face twisting in rage, that cybernetic eye flashing bright cyan as she bared her teeth in a snarl framed by a bloodied lip a second before she roared.

The force rippled out of Dallon in a wave, and Yoshiro in his suit was shoved back, the blaster bolts that had been about to fall on her slowing to a crawl, the Mandalorians firing them shoved into walls, and Komari herself was only spared seemingly because the woman wanted to deliver the blow with her own fist.

She tried to dodge. Of course she did.

It still struck.

As Komari’s vision began to darken; she barely even wondered if she’d wake up again.

The only thought flitting about her mind was a simple question.

‘How… did I hit her? How does it work?”

(X)(X)(X)

Well congrats boys; you unlocked the boss' second phase :p

TBH I thought the fight would be concluded by this chapter, but I underestimated what was needed again.

Good news is; a decent chunk of the next Vicky chapter is already written soooooo we have a head start :)

Still, next chap will probably (hopefully) be the conclusion to the Queen Administrator's examination on Kashyyyk and so we can all look forward to her conversation with the Council :)