Chapter Nine

Buffy rolled her eyes as the old man drew his lightsaber. "What is it with you people and rejection? I don't want to join the Jedi, so I'm too dangerous to roam free. I don't want to join you bozos, so I have to be destroyed. This whole place is a psychiatrist's wet dream."

"My dear," Dooku said cajolingly, not sure what a 'psychiatrist' was, and therefore dismissing it as irrelevant. "I have no wish to see you destroyed. I ask again, join our cause to bring order and stability to the Galaxy."

"You say that like 'order' and 'stability' are always good things. Personally, the freedom and chaos of having the free will to make my own decisions is always of the good."

"And yet, you have not joined the Jedi." He observed.

"Still my own decision." Buffy shrugged. "I had my reason for not joining the Jedi, just like I have my reasons for not getting involved with your little power play. Why don't you just take my refusal back to your Master and leave us alone."

The lightsaber ignited. "Regretfully, that cannot be."

He advanced on her slowly. He would not underestimate this woman as so many others obviously had. One of the first things that he had learned from his Master was that the truly powerful often hid that power, for one reason or another.

Buffy smirked at his wary approach. "I see that your Master taught you more than you taught your student. She really needs to get a handle on those wild emotions if you plan to send her after trained Jedi like Kenobi and Skywalker."

He momentarily froze in shock. He had not even informed his Master of his plans to use his Apprentice to distract Kenobi, and definitely not of his plans to have her eliminate Skywalker. He was well aware that Sidious wanted Skywalker as yet another Apprentice, and he had wanted the competition removed as quickly as possible. His resolve settled. Now she was a danger to him as well as to his Master. If she knew of plans that he had not told another soul, there was no telling what else she might know. Better to eliminate her now, whether she was willing to turn or not. She was far too dangerous to be left alive.

Buffy didn't need the Force to know what the former Jedi Master was thinking. His face was expressionless, but the eyes gave him away. She kept all of her focus on the man, knowing that he would be her toughest opponent by far. She remembered the dream-vision of Genosha. This man had basically reached the level of Grand Master when he'd combined with knowledge of the Jedi with the teachings of the Sith. Only Yoda had been a real opponent then, and she doubted that he'd done her the favor of getting lazy in his practicing since that time.

:You two focus only on deflecting anything he throws at you, either physically or through the Force.: Buffy told her mates as her body geared itself up for the fight. :If he manages to get one of you in that choke, don't panic. I'll get you out of it.:

:Be careful.: They responded simultaneously.

She pulled her own lightsaber from the inside of her coat as he stepped close enough to comfortably strike at her, but she didn't ignite it. She wanted to see what he'd do first.

He watched her, waiting for her to attack him like most young people would have done. He was a little worried when she merely stood there, her weapon held negligently at her side, watching him with unblinking eyes. Only warriors long accustomed to battle had such patience and control. He would have to make the first move, and test just how practiced she was at the art of war.

He swung his lightsaber in a series of moves that only experienced Jedi would know. He barely took a moment to notice the unusual color of her blade. It was the same color as her eyes. She blocked the moves with ease, but gave away nothing of her own abilities. For a moment, he was unsure how to proceed. He was unaccustomed to fighting a Force-sensitive warrior of such extensive skill that had not been Jedi-trained.

Finally, Buffy got tired of waiting. "C'mon, c'mon, I've got other things to do today."

Angered at her obvious disregard, he launched into a full attack, calling on skills honed from a lifetime of battling as both a Jedi Master and a Sith Lord. He was sure that her defeat would not take long. After all, one so young could know only so much. To his astonishment, she continued to block his blows, even going so far as to push him away long enough to launch an offensive attack of her own. As he found himself hard pressed on the defensive, he wondered if he had perhaps underestimated her after all.

After the fight had lasted almost fifteen minutes straight, with neither of them gaining any ground, Dooku used the Force to leap out of striking distance and threw his hand out towards the two women watching them from the side. He clenched his hand in a grab, and the slim blue-skinned woman's head tilted back and her hands instinctively went to her throat as he used the Force to close her airway. Before he even return his attention to his opponent, he was thrown backwards by a Force Throw so hard, he felt like he'd been hit by a stone boulder. He could see the fierce anger in the feral, amber eyes as she stalked towards him, and felt an unreasoning panic flood his senses. He threw out his hand again at the women standing off to the side, and this time, bright bolts of lightning arced from his fingers towards them. He tightened his grip on his weapon and waited for her to leap over to intercept it.

However, to his absolute shock, all she did was throw her own hand towards the two women as well and the lightning curved away from his intended targets to where she stood, coalescing in the palm of her hand. His eyes widened. He had never seen anything like that before.

"That," she growled coldly as she closed her hand into a fist, dispersing the gathered power, "was a mistake."

Her next attack was so fierce and so fast that he could barely manage to keep her lightsaber away from his body. He could feel the force of the blows vibrate up his arms and, in a move of desperation, he lashed out with a Force Throw, throwing her away from him. Anything to give him a little space and a moment to recover and regroup.

Before he could take his first breath, he felt a shift in the air around him, and flung himself to the side just in time to narrowly avoid being clawed by a snarling silver-furred sand panther. The cat had stayed out of the way for the entire fight, watching closely as the Alpha defended the pride, right up until the male had sent his attack to the Alpha's mates. The cat knew that it's new pridemates could not attack on orders of the Alpha, so it would have to defend them until the Alpha could once again engage.

Buffy rolled through the throw until she could push up into a neat flip. She landed in a ready crouch in time to see the sand panther attempt to attack the Sith Lord. :Get back: She sent to the animal, not knowing if it would get the message, but unable to keep from attempting it anyway. Surprisingly, the cat backed off immediately and loped back over to pace protectively in front of Shar and Koyi. Thankfully, it had all happened before Dooku could recover enough to take a swing at the cat.

Gathering his strength and pulling on the Force, Dooku pulled his second lightsaber. He did not often resort to using two, as he did not really like using multiple weapons, but his previous confidence in victory had been severely shaken by the skill and savagery of her attack. There were extremely few in the galaxy who could Master the art of wielding a pair of lightsabers, but he did not fool himself by considering that she could possibly not be one of those few.

Buffy's focus narrowed when he pulled the other weapon, but she didn't draw her own second lightsaber. She wanted that to be a surprise, either here if she absolutely needed it or, more importantly, to throw off the real Big Bad if he ever decided to get off his ass and come after her himself. She advanced first this time, coming in with a speed that surprised him momentarily and let her get in the first strike. He barely moved away in time, and the blow that would have amputated his right arm, merely left a cauterized gash. It took everything he had to block the pain and keep his grip on his weapon.

The fight lasted for another few minutes before it ended with an abruptness that left him unbalanced. With the lightsaber of his good arm, he struck out with all of his flagging strength, and penetrated her armor coat but, instead of blood and the smell of burnt flesh, his lightsaber blade flared, then winked out.

Cortesis, he thought, dismayed.

Before he could switch it back on, he felt a small fist slam into his ribcage with a force that lifted him off of his feet and convulsed his entire body. He felt several of them shatter, and instinctively dropped his weapons to wrap his arms around his midsection to protect it from further damage. Before he could crumble to the ground, everything about him froze. He couldn't move, speak or even blink, but he his sense of the world around him.

"You can't die just yet." Buffy said as she lowered him carefully to the ground. "There's another fate in store for you. The partial stasis will keep those bone shards from tearing up your insides and keep you from dying of internal bleeding. We'll send a medical unit from the city. I have a message for your boss, though."

She knelt down until she was staring him directly in the eyes. "Tell the 'esteemed' Chancellor Palpatine that if he ever, and I do mean, ever comes after me and mine again, I won't just expose him. I'll annihilate him, and then I will see to it that the Sith never rise again."

They were back in space before Shar asked. "Do you think they'll heed your threat?"

"Not likely." Buffy admitted. "But it will make him stop and regroup. I'm an unknown factor, and I've just defeated two Jedi Masters and his best Apprentice. They'll all be planning their next attempts much more carefully."