Author's Note: Ahh! My last workday before the 2 week holiday break! Going to watch the Rise of Skywalker tomorrow...no talking to me about it until then!
Chapter Twenty-Four - The Weapon of A Sith Lord
Asuna and Kirito flew along a short distance of the sandy landscape of Korriban as their skiff shuttle passed down into the Valley of the Dark Lords. Powerful swells of the Dark Side of the Force could be felt in this lowly sector of the planet, and clouds of sand and dust formed in high columns to force out the basic players scurrying around the tombs down below.
Asuna Yuuki, however, was not a basic player, and it was here that her plan would unravel into its next leg. She was taking her captive new friend to the Tomb of Naga Sadow, an ending point for beginner Sith Warriors before they made their way off the oppressive landscapes of Korriban. In contrast to the Jedi forge of Tython, this was the tomb where Sith players were forced to steal their lightsabers from the graves of fallen Sith. This was her plan for her newly acquired ally.
She awarded Kirito the red lightsaber of Darth Barristan after his victory in the Academy Stadium, but noticed he would require another blade to make up for his broken purple sabers lost after the fight. She took note of hid emotionless acceptance of her gift.
It was well known that Kirito had spent most of his time in this game with players on the Republic faction, but she could feel the anger and fear resonating inside him. She had to capitalize on this power before her master obtained it for himself. Asuna Yuuki was ready to win this game in the name of the Dark Side, but some feeling inside her had possessed her to overtake her own master and Emperor for the top seat on the Sith Empire, and lead her people to victory without him. She needed a player of immense power to make that dream possible, and Kirito showed more promise than most that she had already seen.
Which is why she was taking him to the tomb of Naga Sadow. To set foot in the tomb of Naga Sadow was to breathe in death itself, as the Sith had spoken for many years in their own lore. This tomb was old and decrepit, and provided a student of the dark side with the perfect ambiance to acquire their new role as a servant of the Sith Empire.
"Here's the entrance to the tomb. It's very close to the Academy." Asuna was proud to admit as the shuttle stopped off at the doorway to the Sith catacomb. "It's a waste of resources to walk across this ugly planet even when the tomb is the next-door neighbor to the academy. I prefer to take a skiff any time I can on Korriban."
Kirito could sense a bit of arrogance on her voice as the closest confidant to the Emperor. She had every right to refuse walking anywhere, but he also knew laziness was not a trait that Asuna's possessed. He followed her reluctantly over the ancient stone steps of the burial chamber, and also made note of how few player characters hovered about the grounds.
"You're wondering where all our players are." She was very good at reading his thoughts at this point. "We're so far along with the war, most of the players on our side have already passed through the beginner levels, and are all helping us in battles across the galaxy."
Kirito remained silent, but remembered even seeing a fair amount of beginner players training and exploring the fields and hills of Tython back in the Republic. The Sith had cracked the code in efficient fighting styles, and apparently had also figured out how to motivate their players to fight in the war at a much quicker pace.
"It's just mind control." Kirito said blankly. "Your Emperor's just tricked the whole faction into doing his bidding."
Asuna held her head down, but continued to walk forward. For finally making him talk, she did not appear to be happy. "All's fair in love and war, right? If the Emperor brainwashes his troops to do what he wants, then it sounds like a winning option to me."
"Even when you're one of the people whose trapped inside the spell too?"
"Bite your tongue." She retorted with a sharp hiss, never turning around. "You don't know what I have in store for ending this game."
"I know you were once a powerful commander in a game just like this, only you fought with good in your heart, and not blind allegiance...It's the reason I married you in the first place."
"That lie no longer has any meaning for me." Asuna snapped when hearing him describe their passed. She tried staying out in front of her hostage new apprentice, but her face was half turned for him to hear.
Kirito ran forward to catch up. "Look inside yourself, Asuna. Search your feelings, or whatever they say in those movies. There's still good in you. I can see it in your eyes." He had noticed since they reunited days ago that Asuna's brown eyes were not fully turned to yellow, and even reverted to a straight brown when her anger was low.
Asuna had stopped walking, and made sure to hide her face this time, not wanting Kirito to see her eyes now. "You don't know the power of the Dark Side."
Kirito disliked hearing Asuna with such fire in her voice, but appreciated the fact that it still sounded like it was coming from a good place in her mind. The real Asuna was still fighting against the Sith emperor, even if it looked like she was his loyal apprentice on the outside.
They passed through a hollow forcefield to lock out non-permitted players, and as the dusty tomb appeared to be captured by the darkness, Asuna powered on her curved-hilt lightsaber, and held it high in the air.
"Come on. We need to go this way."
"Have you finished checking the ship's cargo hull?" Lisbeth talked with two guards stationed outside the entrance ramp for the smuggler ship Pina, which was under the custody of the Sith Empire aboard their space station hovering near Korriban. "When you're finished, check the pilot's logs to so we know what missions they've gone on."
"We looked through some of the logs already, ma'am. This was indeed the same ship that allowed Kirito to escape Alderaan after our invasion."
"Glad we finally found it then." Lisbeth replied with a nod of approval. "If that's the case, then this ship has the best working cloaking device in the entire game. Strip it from the internal computer and study it so we can make replications for our fighter fleet."
"Eh, sorry, no can do, Missy." Klein wandered into the discussion with his hands already raised upward. "The internal computer isn't exactly on board right now."
"Keep those hands where we can see them, Smuggler!" The two guards shouted their alert as both men raised guns to meet Klein's arrival. Lisbeth felt her left eyebrow twitch with anger, and stopped her foot on the ground as both her hands clenched into fists.
"What in the hell are you doing out here!?" She replied ferociously. "How did you escape the brig, and make it all the way to the hanger bay?"
"Hehe, let's just say this isn't my first time surveying a Sith space station. I've been known to pirate some supplies from the Sith lines for a while now. Like recently I got into some deep trouble trying to take cargo off a Sith juggernaut ship over the moon on Ilum."
"I don't care about your criminal record, ass!" Lisbeth let him come forward, but got extremely close to him as she began her interrogation. "I want to know how you escaped the jail cell? Start talking!"
She raised an imperial-ordered pistol to meet his forehead, and Klein crossed his eyes with disapproval as his hands still reached for the sky. Suddenly, an alarm sounded in the hanger, and flashing red lights echoed as all the doors to the hanger sealed shut from the rest of the space station.
"What's going on!?" Lisbeth panicked slightly before returning the barrel of her gun to Klein's head. "Is this your little friend's doing!?"
"Yea, but I didn't think she'd get caught so easily...stupid alarms."
"It's all good, ma'am." Said a guard from behind as she and Silica came walking over to the group. The imperial had Silica by the arm, and the lowly smuggler girl kept her head hung low to the floor with the Pina device barely stuffed in her hands. "This girl managed to shut all the doors out of the hanger using her device. It seems like she hacked the main computer."
"No kidding!" Klein blurted out, half impressed. "That's what you were working on in the cell, wasn't it, Small Fry."
"Grrr..." Silica hated the nicknames Klein gave her. "I managed to hack the space station's admin controls with Pina. I tried locking the hanger so no one else would chase us during our escape."
"Your escape." Lisbeth rolled her eyes and laughed. "Well, this isn't much of an escape if the two of you idiots just hand yourselves over to the enemy. Open the doors to the hanger, Girl. I think we'll have to send you both to Dromund Kaas after this infraction."
"Honestly, I can't." Silica held up her device, and showed them all that the Pina self-computer was powered completely off. "I used all its power to shut the doors. I need to hook it back into my ship to power it back on."
"Mgh..." Lisbeth was growing testy again, and put her weapon up as she signaled to the guards to seize Klein. "Fine. Take them inside, and make them turn the damn doors off."
The group marched up the ramp to the Pina, but just then the main hanger door to access the rest of the bay opened up to deliver Admiral Sinon followed by a wealth of supporting imperial players.
"LISBETH!" Sinon shouted to her fiend aboard the Pina. "There's a traitor on board! They tried shutting the doors to the hanger and locking us out of the bay!"
"An Imperial player?" Lisbeth turned to hear her comrade's warning, but just then the guard that held Silica at the front of the line turned to put a laser in the backs of the remaining two guards, who were both in charge of watching Klein at the middle of the ramp. Klein took one of their guns, and grabbed Lisbeth by the arm tightly. He put a gun to her temple and slowly marched her backwards into the ship.
"Don't shoot, Sniper! We got your friend in a pretty bad spot right now."
"AGH!" Lisbeth writhed in anger as she tried to pry herself from Klein's grip. "SHOOT THIS ASS, SINON! I WANT HIM DEAD!"
Sinon needed no command from Lisbeth to make up her mind, and had already drawn her rifle to shoot the gun out of Klein's right hand. He dropped the weapon, then pulled Lisbeth closer as he pulled a pistol from her side, and kept his left arm hooked around her neck as he turned to send more shots off at Sinon and the others. Silica had raced inside to power on the main controls, while the masked imperial helping Klein at the ramp followed him up with supporting fire.
Sinon fired off another shot, but Klein rolled Lisbeth to stand right in front of him as a shield. The powerful rifle bullet did not make contact with Lisbeth, but it did manage to destroy her expensive jetpack strapped to her torso. She flailed her arms in more anger as she tried biting and clawing her way away from Klein, but he countered by beating her in the gut with the back end of his pistol every time he rounded the corner for cover.
"Just simmer down, girlie. You're gonna come with us to Coruscant and tell Amun-din what the Sith's plan is with our warp technology."
"Eat me." Lisbeth was moaning through the pain at her side, and tried to turn away from him. "I'll blow your damn ship up before it has time to leave the hanger."
"I don't think that's possible!" Alicia removed her imperial helmet and gave Lisbeth a wink. "The brig we'll put you in is a separate instance from the rest of the game. Once we turn the engines on and shut the door, then you're trapped inside a separate room."
"Lousy traitor..." Lisbeth glared at the floor, and tried coming up with a second plan. Just then, she pulled out a larger than normal thermal detonator from her pocket, and switched it to charged. "Then I'll just have ta take you all out before we leave!"
"YIKES!" Klein threw her body into a wall, and watched as the grenade rolled away from the door. He quickly tackled Lisbeth back to the ground, and shouted over to his new friend. "Alicia! Toss it!"
Alicia nodded, and grabbed the ticking explosive from the ground to toss it out of the hull, but as the bomb left her fingers, a bullet pierced her chest, and sent her flying into the back wall.
"ALICIA!" Klein yelled out as the doors to the Pina closed, and engines powered on to full blast, allowing Silica to pilot her way off the space station, and prep the cloaking device for their timely escape off Korriban once and for all.
Sinon covered her eyes after taking the life of the traitorous Alicia, but blocked herself from the explosive fires that surrounded the hanger as the Pina starcraft lifted itself into the air, and flew out into the safety of space. She now had to figure out some way to report Lisbeth being captured to her supervisor, which at this time, happened to be the very impatient Wrath of the Empire.
"Here, the tomb of Naga Sadow." Asuna stopped in front of a dried orange coffin, only illuminated by feint torchlight surrounding the walls of the chamber, and the ruby red glow of her lightsaber. "Although this crypt doesn't actually house the Sith Lord, it was built in honor of him, and was used to keep the bodies of other prominent Sith characters."
The Sith Lord turned to the still silent Kirito, and lowered her saber to let the point hover over the ground. "Grab a lightsaber from one of the coffins. We can duel here, and see which forms of combat you've learned how to master so far."
"You want to duel me, in here." Kirito replied plainly. "You want to use a real lightsaber on a student you have no intentions on killing."
Asuna kept her expression rather flat as well. "If you die during a training duel, then you really aren't worth being my student anyway. Real blades are the only way to test true power."
That style of thinking was a far different philosophy than what Leafa presented him with back on Tython. Everything with the Jedi felt like a kindergartner's first week of school. Here, things felt more like a kindergartner being forced to swim in the deep end of the pool before learning how to float.
"I can't fight you for real, Asuna." Kirito tried to plea. "I won't go all out in a fight with you, no matter what you might say."
"Oh, not this again." Asuna rolled her eyes. "Look, I don't know what has happened between us in the real world, and right now, I don't give a damn. As far as what you've seen from me, I'm a totally different person than the Asuna you married in some other video game."
She turned her shoulders to fully face her half-student/half-prisoner. "If this version of me is so hard for you to accept, then strike me down here and now. End my life, Kirito, and log me out of the game."
Kirito had no idea if it would be that simple. He and the others still had no idea what truly happened to players that are killing using the Holocron System. They are apparently stored in a unique setting from the game, but after that, only his brief moments with Suguha gave him any clue.
"Wait!" He thought quickly to himself how Suguha seemed more normal after dying on Alderaan and teleporting to Dagobah. If he managed to kill Asuna, then maybe her ghost would return to normal on Dagobah too. It was quite a long-shot, and killing his beloved was far easier said than done.
Kirito walked slowly past her, and marched up to a Sith tomb sealed shut by stone and time. He raised a hand, and forced the lid of the coffin to slide open, and off the back of its resting place. Asuna watched Kirito channel his anger, and lit up with sinister glee as he drew a faded lightsaber from the unmarked grave of a mysterious fallen Sith, and powered on its still sharply lit ruby red blade in his off hand.
Kirito turned to face Asuna, who was still standing in the central floor of the chamber. He grabbed the lightsaber of Darth Barristan at his side, and now held two red lightsabers with fire in his eyes as he stared down the face of his romantic enemy.
Asuna looked up at Kirito standing boldly atop the ancestral plinth. She had a look of sarcasm in her eyes, and brought her feet together to give him a Form II salute. After twirling the lightsaber in front of her body with one hand, she lowered it to her back-right side, spread her stance apart, and left her body open as a sign to show her readiness.
"AGH!" Kirito had started to forget all the patience and serenity he learned from training with the Jedi, and leapt off the stone steps with a shout of anger echoing the chamber. He brought both lightsabers high on either side, and sent them crashing down to meet his target Asuna slowly back-pedaled as she blocked every one of his attacks, and started studying him as a fighter while performing her own elegant dance of combat.
"Your attacks are far too standard for being Mathis's student! Do something a little more unorthodox for me!" She watched the fire build up inside his eyes, and made sure to keep an eye on his feet now and again as he sent more flurries of powerful attacks clashing into her saber. She never used her left hand for combat, and kept it low at her left side for balance. Occasionally she would raise it to send a rock or piece of debris flying toward Kirito to keep his guard up, but a quick flash of one of his swords would always be enough to dispel the trick, and allow them to keep their duel to just blade on blade.
Kirito was moving fast, but Asuna's movements were all small and very well controlled. He noticed her eyes moving back and forth throughout the fight, and realized she was just as much a student when she fought as he was. "You've specialized in dueling, I take it. You try to study an opponent in the middle of a fight to exploit their weaknesses."
Asuna broke the conflict, and both Force users jumped back as she raised her left hand. "I've mastered a combination of the seven forms of lightsaber combat, but yes, most of my work is reflected in Form II. I don't need power and rage to win a fight, just elegance, and a small degree of time."
"Elegance...more like arrogance." Kirito could see some of Asuna's natural confidence shining from this evil persona of her now. He could respect her skills just like the real Asuna. This Sith Lord version of his beloved wife was quite the duelist, and was no doubt a master of the Force as well.
Asuna carried on. "You, for example. Based on your technique, you've gathered a lot of fighting knowledge from other video games. You also fight with speed, and an intense amount of aggression. You do an excellent job at combining Forms I and IV."
"Yea, Mathis tried telling me about all the lightsaber forms. It got pretty annoying really quick."
"Then let me guess." Asuna shrugged. "You tried ignoring him, and he beat you."
"Agh, that's so not the point!" Kirito snapped back into the fight, and lunged into an attack as he tried slashing off Asuna's weapon from her hand. "My fighting just comes from other games, like you said. It doesn't matter what special form I use in this universe!"
"Very true." Asuna replied. "You do have an impressive amount of speed and agility! Great for a single-opponent fight like this!"
Kirito hated the patronizing compliment, and felt even more anger swell as all of his hits kept getting repelled.
Asuna cracked a smile. "Form IV is a very easy style to lose your energy in as well. If you're not careful, your enemy will simply take the fight out of the fighter!"
She powered on her energy, and slammed her saber down hard to his left side. Kirito went to block, but his arms started to feel like jelly as he simply slid out of the way from her attack. He then brought both blades to his right side, and cross-blocked Asuna's counter attack as she tried switching sides.
Kirito noticed that instead of simply using her lightsaber as a shield in her defensive stance earlier, she almost pushed off onto his lightsaber blade every time. When Asuna defended his strikes, her parries acted less as a brick wall, and more as a rubber wall. It forced Kirito to move his arms more and more, back and forth into his attacks, and quickly ran him out of his already impressive level of stamina.
Then, he started getting desperate, albeit slightly creative in the process. Kirito jumped backwards in a retreat, then tossed one of his sabers like a boomerang to hit Asuna square at her front. The noble Sith Lord hit it like a baseball, and sent it flying back in his direction. Kirito sent the sabers into the ceiling next time, which forced a cloud of debris to fall down over Asuna, and made her stop to block it was a move from her left arm.
Kirito shot forward as Asuna defended herself from the cloud, and as he swung his lightsabers out to his side, he quickly brought them back in to hack her in two. Asuna caught onto this rather quickly, though, and managed to send the cloud of rocks at Kirito in his charge. She raised her lightsaber up, and brought it down in front of her like she was ready to drive the point into the ground. This motion stopped Kirito's cross chop in its tracks, and as she brought her blade back up in an aggressive slash toward the sky, Kirito backed off and made space between them yet again.
Asuna took a short breath, and raised her left hand forward as a violent column of purple lightning shot from her fingers, and into Kirito's sabers. He held up all the strength in his arms that was available, but barely struggled to hold out in his defense.
Asuna kept the onslaught powered on high, but suddenly drew the lightning back, and leapt forward with her sword drawn to the front. Kirito shot after her, and as both warriors screamed at the top of their lungs, Asuna's blade met the air right outside Kirito's left abdomen.
Kirito's right saber was also ready to gut Asuna at her waist, but suddenly an alert sounded from the Sith Lord's utility belt. Both fighters gasped in a quick breath, and drew back their weapons as Asuna powered on her holographic comms. link.
"Lady Rose." It was Lord Trentyn. "The Republic has brought their own auxiliary force to fight on Tatooine. We're told they have a competent commander leading their squadron, probably a Jedi. Our men are barely able to make it back to our base for a defensive rally. We need the Korriban garrison here as soon as possible."
His message cut off from there, and as Kirito looked to see Asuna's eyes shut in displeasure, the Sith Lady turned for the exit of the chamber.
"Come. We'll need to move quickly in order to make it to Tatooine."
"Hold on, who was that?" Kirito followed after her in confusion. "And why is he allowed to summon you like some dog to fight his battles!?"
"I'm not responding because he asked me to help him." Asuna Yuuki sharply replied as she kept her thoughts to herself. "I'm going because this just happens to speed my own plans up in a rather favorable way. We're going to pay this attacker a little visit, then grace the good Lord Trentyn with our presence as well. Hopefully he's ready to receive me in my current mood."
So Alicia sacrificed herself to save the others, and the Smuggler duo has captured Lisbeth!
Meanwhile, Asuna has been summoned to help on Tatooine, and it appears she's bringing her new "apprentice."
Until the next one!